The what-ifs are endless for former Missouri basketball standout Jontay Porter.
Once upon a time he seemed destined to make millions of dollars playing basketball. Even with older brother Michael Porter Jr. overshadowing him, Jontay had a bright athletic future.
What if he hadn’t suffered a knee injury playing at Mizzou?
What if he hadn’t reinjured that knee by trying to come back too soon?
What if he had played two or three years of college basketball, instead of one, and taken the time to fulfill more of his vast promise before turning pro?
And, of course, what if he had not fallen into the sports wagering trap that is just sitting there waiting to ensnare athletes?
Most basketball fans had no idea who Jontay Porter was until the NBA busted him for his easily detected violations. Most fans will remember him as an absolute idiot, since big-dollar prop bets on fringe players always trigger alarms – and his culpability couldn’t have been more obvious.
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But Missouri fans know that Jontay could have been a special collegiate player and an interesting pro, but for his injuries and his early exit to the NBA. He was a versatile big man, a terrific passer who could run an offense from the top of the key.
He could knock down 3-point shots on pick-and-pop plays. He had the length and athleticism to defend. Even after the two knee injuries and his extended inactivity, his skill set was starting to show through for the Toronto Raptors as he found a place in their supporting cast.
Had he stayed healthy and stayed at Mizzou for multiple seasons to build a stronger overall game, he could have earned a regular role in the NBA.
Had he not fallen into the gambling trap, he could have enjoyed a long pro career even after suffering knee injuries and limiting his college experience.
Missouri fans know that Jontay seemed like a bright and thoughtful fellow, somebody who could succeed outside of basketball. Alas, that premise will be tested after Porter killed his basketball career just as it was finally taking off.
This fate will befall others, because legalized sports wagering in general and the prop bets in particular will suck in athletes in many sports. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ will get busted, one by one, and the disclosures will take a toll on the integrity of major college and professional sports competition.
But the gambling money is too big for the sports industry to pass up, so there is no going back now. This is the sports world we have now.
Here is what folks have been writing about Jontay’s mess:
Jeff Zillgitt, USA Today: “In all of Jontay Porter’s idiocy, he provided a service to other professional athletes who might consider placing bets on games on which they are direct participants or in which they have insider knowledge to provide to gamblers. It’s almost impossible to pull it off in a world of legal, regulated and monitored gambling. It’s even more impossible when you’re as blatant as the NBA says Porter was. This isn’t like placing an illegal bet with Bill the Bookie and paying losses or collecting wins at the local burger bar on Monday evenings. That doesn’t mean this won’t happen again. Someone always thinks they can beat the system, and maybe someone can but not Jontay Porter and his simple attempt at trying to make extra money. It’s inevitable, just as it was inevitable it happened in the first place  The league’s investigation turned up stunning against Porter, the younger brother of Denver Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr., who was on a two-way NBA/G-League contract with the Toronto Raptors worth about $410,000. The NBA found Porter told a gambler about his health; another gambler Porter knew placed an $80,000 prop bet on Porter to underperform in specific statistical categories; Porter limited his participation in a game to influence the outcome of one or more games; he placed bets on NBA games through an associate’s online account and though none of the bets involved games Porter played in, one bet included a Raptors game in which Porter bet the Raptors would lose.â€
Danny Chau, The Ringer: “Porter’s gambling proclivity didn’t arise out of the blue. He began investing in cryptocurrencies in college. He has operated a social media account sharing stock and crypto trading tips since September 2020, claiming to be the cofounder of a swing trading advice service and community—the kind of get-rich-quick echo chambers on Discord that have become a dime a dozen since the early days of the pandemic, exploding in popularity after the fabled short squeeze on GameStop stock. (Porter once tweeted about the service from his main account, two days after the initial GameStop short squeeze happened on January 22, 2021.) But for someone whose main hobby and side hustle was hawking notions of financial freedom and literacy, his recent actions (and those of his associates) didn’t exactly reflect much of the latter. There may be different mechanisms at play between sports betting and stock trading, but ultimately, both are heavily influenced by transaction volume in the market—factoring liquidity risk is one of the very fundamental elements of understanding how any of this even works. Knowing that, one would never try to get away with a $80,000 parlay wager in a justifiably barren market on a fringe player coming off the bench for a tanking Raptors team. According to the league’s, Porter—who clearly knew the trendline of his numbers, having logged at least 20 minutes per game in the previous four contests—intentionally manipulated the game and his place in it. All for the opportunity to win $1.1 million, less than the salary he made playing 11 games for the Grizzlies in 2021. On a literal bet against himself.â€Â
Ray Ratto, The Defector: “It was of immense help to Adam Silver that his test case for the downside of employee gambling was as disposable as Jontay Porter. The benefits of having a fringe player involved in betting that didn't create many ripples outside the lunatic fringe of the community was a clear godsend to the NBA, particularly given that Porter's most eye-catching transgression—facilitating prop bets on himself to not meet the minimums set forth by the books and then leaving a game after three minutes with an illness—was more comedic that dangerous. But the implied danger revealed in the NBA's investigation was sufficient for Silver to throw the book at Porter with a lifetime ban. and not look quite so much like a hypocrite on the greater issue of gambling in this particular workplace.â€
Frank Schwab, Yahoo! ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ: “Porter's name will be remembered for a long time. It's still rare for a professional athlete to risk his career by knowingly violating betting rules. There will always be athletes who break the rules on gambling, like there are a few athletes who break rules on domestic violence or performance enhancing drugs, but they'll be found out pretty fast. That's what happened with Porter . . . There will be more sports betting scandals. The cautionary stories before Porter didn't stop him from taking a shot. And ultimately, the legal sportsbooks will monitor the unusual activity, report it to the proper channels, and those athletes and coaches will be punished harshly. That's what was supposed to happen with legal sports betting.â€
Jim Trotter, The Athletic: “This was all so predictable. Leagues and team owners knew this type of behavior was not only possible but inevitable when they jumped into bed with organized gambling. History has taught us — and continues to teach us — that people always believe they can cheat the system, that they can catch the watchdog napping. It’s called human nature. Porter likely is not the only one to engage in such behavior; he just happens to be the one who got caught. Pro sports leagues and their owners have no one to blame but themselves for placing more value on maximized revenue streams than the pious ‘integrity of the game’ mantra they recite in these types of situations. But what’s done is done. The clock isn’t going to be turned back. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ leagues and players, who share gaming revenues as part of their collective bargaining agreements, are not going to turn off the financial spigot, and media outlets such as The Athletic and ESPN (which has launched its own business with ESPN BET) now view their partnerships with gambling sites as expected sources of revenue.â€
Phil Mushnick, New York Post: “That didn’t take long, did it? So now what? Anyone have a copy of the plan? My guess is there will be no changes, no effort to rid or even reduce leagues-partnered gambling as there’s too much money to be vacuumed from the jeans of self-imagined slick young fans, especially via parlay bets, the big-payoffs super-sucker bets the leagues’ bookies sell hardest for that cynical reason. The reason singles tennis became the most suspicious international sport is that it took only ´Ç²Ô±ðÌýplayer to attach the con to the piracy, making for a one-pronged conspiracy. Even for sports execs who prefer ignorance to caution, Jontay Porter has proven that prop bets, short of leaving computerized paper trails, beckon like Pandora. And what are the odds, forgive the expression, that Porter is the first to bet the Under on himself in any legal capacity? What the commissioners, their charges and team owners largely don’t understand — or donâ€t care about for the sake of maximized TV dough — is that proposition bets were rarely available to bettors through illegal bookmakers. Illegal bookies didn’t have marketing departments, advertising agencies, demographic researchers and number-crunchers to create prop bets, then aim them at — as seen on TV — young, thoroughly self-convinced, caps-backwards wise guys.â€
MEGAPHONE
“This matter also raises important issues about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players. Working closely with all relevant stakeholders across the industry we will continue to work diligently to safeguard our league and game.â€
NBA commissioner Adam Silver, on the prop bets that help drive legalized sports wagering.