Why Sports Gambling Will Not Be the Downfall of Professional Sports

Imagine if God texted you the final score of all NBA games on Halloween. What would you do?

Guessing you wouldn’t report him to the FBI, let alone your priest.

You have several days to concoct a plan, so you’re likely to consult a friend. Or your spouse. Nah, forget that one.

Now that you have his direct line, probably the smartest thing to do is examine the resale market on God contact information. That’s gotta be worth a pretty penny.

The dumbest thing? That's easy. Grab a suitcase full of cash and run to Las Vegas, or jump into your FanDuel account and start parlaying sides and totals.

Because five digits is your limit: There are eight games scheduled on Halloween. If you bet just $1 on every side and every total separately, and God wasn’t pulling a fast one on you, that’s 16 winners. And if you made every possible parlay – from two-teamers to the grand-daddy of them all, a 16-teamer – even at $1 a pop, you’d stand to win almost $43 million.

Now picture gathering up your friends and doing that at more than one site.

Imagine the new lifestyle.

Thanks, God.

But also imagine the alarms you’d set off.

For crying out loud, fringe NBA players (and that’s putting it politely) are getting banned for life for telling “friends” they’ll be making early exits from games. And those schemes are only costing the house a couple of thousand dollars.

The point is: While the NBA takes gambling seriously, they have only integrity at stake. The casino boss has his penthouse apartment on the line.

You see, legal professional bet-taking companies know where their bread is caviared.

Through blackjack, craps, roulette and various other odds-friendly sources, they’ve bilked trillions out of fun-loving visitors, one small percentage at a time.

But sports betting is a different animal. You might know that the dice will come up seven 16.7% of the time, but you can’t predict if, at any point, a busload of Chiefs fans will empty into your sportsbook, each risking their life’s savings on Patrick Mahomes magic.

And if they win, you lose, because the big bosses upstairs told you to stay away from sports betting in the first place. Too unpredictable.

That’s why cheating enforcement is greater these days in the NBA than it is in taxes. A stranger can’t walk into a casino and make a $100 parlay without the house scanning the money for fingerprints.

Think about it: Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier have gotten caught. That’s what kind of a microscope professional athletes are under these days.

You better believe that when Herbert Jones shot 0-for-8 the other night, some strange guy sat in a strange car across the street from his house the next day, monitoring any suspicious deliveries or visitors. Even the FedEx guy got his package scanned.

And when Nikola Jokic clanked 11 of his 13 3-point attempts in a recent game? Those weren’t ICE agents tapping into his phone line on his drive home.

There are those who believe sports betting either has or will ruin sports. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Because, unlike the old days, the NBA has safeguards against game-fixing. They’re called casinos.

They are protectors of the game. Not destroyers.

Go ahead, try pulling up God’s text and making a 16-team parlay this week. Before the ink is dry on your Caesars Palace ticket, you’ll be pulled into some back room, then poked and prodded deeper than a horse that’s won the Kentucky Derby by 31 lengths.

Heck, the overly cautious NBA might delay the start of its Halloween games until the guy on your phone named “God” explains where he got his information.

The moral of this story: If the Big Guy sends you that list of winners, report him to the authorities.

It’ll be your way of helping save a sport that really doesn’t need saving.