The recent gambling-related incidents in the NBA reopened an old wound the league had thought it had already cured. Reports of current and former NBA players being accused of committing nefarious actions, including allegedly faking injuries and trading inside information with gamblers, have many fans concerned about the integrity of the sport.

As much as fans would like to think every game is good, clean competition, there are pockets of these nefarious activities, such as the Tim Donaghy betting scandal, former Toronto Raptors guard Jontay Porter being permanently banned for violating gambling rules, and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier being arrested in connection with an FBI probe into an alleged sports gambling scheme. These disturbing incidents are ruining the purity of the game and forcing the NBA to make some changes.

The NBA is enacting several sports betting policies for its 30 teams, including changing injury reporting rules, according to ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania. Teams will be required to resubmit injury listings on game day between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. local time and update public reports every 15 minutes.

Sports is the best reality show. We watch because it takes us through a journey of emotions and we don’t know how it’ll end. With the explosion of sports betting, professional leagues are now in bed with betting sites like FanDuel and DraftKings. It’s getting more difficult not to think that some of these games are scripted. A bad play here or a bad call here, now makes you wonder if the fix is in.

Writer David Hill had this fantastic metaphor about the optics of gambling in sports: “The problem is that among the general public, the optics are unsettling. One day, we regulate betting on sports, and the next, we have a rash of cheating scandals. The common assumption is one of causality, when the truth is that it’s more likely a correlation. When you turn on the light, the cockroaches will scatter. If you turn it off again, they don’t disappear. They’re still there. The question isn’t whether legal betting is corrupting sports — it’s just how corrupt were they all along? And what more can we do — now that the light is on — to clean up the mess?”

NBA commissioner Adam Silver made a guest appearance on “Good Morning America” and addressed the betting scandal. His message to fans worrying about the game’s integrity? “The integrity is absolutely solid,” Silver said. The NBA commissioner said the investigation involving Rozier, who is accused of faking an injury to manipulate a prop bet, was an isolated incident and the league is working on guardrails to prevent another Rozier scandal.

Silver said he was deeply disturbed following the multiple arrests in a sprawling gambling probe, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Rozier, and former Cleveland Cavaliers assistant Damon Jones.

Silver said there’s nothing more important to the league — and its fans — than the integrity of the game.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the NBA is embroiled in a gambling mess. Gambling scandals are nothing new in the sport of basketball. As a matter of fact, it’s a big part of its history.

Here are the biggest basketball-related gambling scandals:

New York City area colleges involved in point shaving scandal (1950s). In 1951, allegations of point-shaving and match fixing in college basketball revealed widespread bribery and corruption involving major colleges and universities in and around New York City. The scandal has been mostly associated with City College of New York (CCNY) in which several players were implicated in point shaving and match fixing.

Boston College point shaving scandal (1978). The scandal involved a scheme in which members of the mafia recruited and bribed multiple Boston College players to manipulate the spread.

Tim Donaghy scandal (2007). Donaghy officiated NBA games for 13 seasons from 1994 to 2007, until he was caught in a gambling scandal. The FBI found Donaghy bet on games he officiated during his last two seasons and made calls that impacted the point spread. He was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release for his role in a sports betting scheme.

Michael Jordan gambling escapades (1990s). Jordan paid off a convicted cocaine dealer for gambling debts. In 1993, a book by Richard Esquinas claimed Jordan owed him $1.25 million in golf gambling debts. The NBA investigated Jordan’s gambling habits but ultimately found he did not violate league rules regarding betting on NBA games. The 1993 investigation and Jordan’s subsequent retirement fueled a conspiracy theory that his retirement was a secret suspension.

Gilbert Arenas accused of hosting high-stakes poker games. Former NBA player Gilbert Arenas was arrested in July 2025 on federal charges related to an illegal, high-stakes poker ring he allegedly hosted at his Encino, Calif., mansion from 2021 to 2022. He was charged with operating an illegal gambling business, conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business, and making false statements to federal investigators.

Jontay Porter was banned for violating gambling rules. Former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter, the brother of NBA champion Michael Porter Jr., was permanently banned from the NBA in April 2024 for violating the league’s gambling rules. He admitted to investigators that he schemed to take himself out of games for gambling’s sake, pleading guilty to a federal conspiracy crime in the scandal that already got him banned from the league. After tipping off some of the men, the player claimed injury or illness and withdrew from the Jan. 26 and March 20 games after only minutes on the court, the complaint said. Porter played only briefly on those dates before complaining he was hurt or sick and exiting the games. His points, rebounds, and assists in both games fell below sportsbooks’ expectations.

University of New Orleans point shaving incident. Former University of New Orleans guard Dae Dae Hunter said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he participated in point-shaving. Hunter and two New Orleans teammates are among six players who had their eligibility revoked by the NCAA after an investigation. The Committee on Infractions found that Hunter, Dyquavian Short and Jamond Vincent, Arizona State’s Chatton “BJ” Freeman and Mississippi Valley State’s Donovan Sanders and Alvin Stredic either manipulated their performances to lose games, not cover bet lines or ensure certain prop bets were reached, or provided information that enabled others to do so during the 2024-25 regular season.

Gambling is deeply embedded in the sports landscape. With technological advancements and the ubiquity of mobile apps, placing bets has become easy.

Americans are more skeptical of legal sports betting than they were a few years ago, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted over the summer. The survey found that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults say the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country is “a bad thing” for society and sports, up from about one-third in July 2022.

Younger adults are more likely than older adults to have bet money on sports in the past year, according to a Pew poll, with about 3 in 10 adults under the age of 30 saying this, compared with only 12% of adults age 65 or older.

Is there a fix for the problem? Unfortunately, the fix is in, and there is no turning back.

Whether it is self-inflicted or not, the Washington Bullets…oops, I mean Wizards…have been a huge disappointment this season, and the team’s problems go beyond Arenas and his penchant for carrying weapons and storing them at the Verizon Center in case someone calls him out on a gambling debt.

Washington is only 11-22 for the season and has dropped seven of its last 10 games. The latest loss was a 121-98 thrashing at the hands of the Cleveland Cavaliers on Jan. 6.

Those are very dismal numbers for a team that was projected to be a playoff contender in the East, boasts three legitimate NBA All-Stars in Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison, and owns a resume that includes four postseason appearances in the last five years and an offense – when all three stars are healthy – considered one of the best in the league.

And, as if the team needed more bad news, Arenas was recently involved in a troubling gun incident with teammate Javaris Crittenton in which Arenas admitted to pulling out unloaded guns from a strong box stashed in his locker.

Arenas – who has five years remaining on a $111 million contract he signed in 2008 – says it was all part of a “practical joke” and denied threatening or assaulting anyone. He reasoned that he brought four guns to the Verizon Center to keep in his locker in order to get them out of his house and away from his children.

Well, NBA commissioner David Stern didn’t find the humor in Arenas’ so-called prank, as Stern suspended Arenas indefinitely without pay and the incident is still under investigation by the police.

Even some of his peers are having a tough time defending Arenas.

“Gilbert has been a little quirky at times on and off the court. This should get him straight,” former NBA player and current TV analyst Jalen Rose said on ESPN’s First Take. “If he doesn’t get a felony, he doesn’t get any jail time and he has a misdemeanor or anything less, if I’m David Stern I suspend him for the rest of the season.

“[The season] is only halfway through, and the Washington Wizards are the most disappointing team in the league anyway,” Rose continued. “They’ll get a lottery pick and it gives them and their fans a fresh start for next season.”

Washington’s implosion was definitely a mystery to many oddsmakers and handicappers, including Las Vegas Sports Consultants, which had the Wizards at 50-1 to win the NBA championship at the start of the season. Did the oddsmakers simply overrate them?

“Absolutely we overrated them,” said Mike Seba, sports book manager with Las Vegas Sports Consultants, who dropped the Wizards down to 200-1 in his latest power rankings.

“This is a classic case of the parts being greater than the whole,” said Seba, who added that the Wizards’ troubles started well before the Arenas-Crittenton situation.

“You have great individual players, but this is a team that doesn’t play together. They don’t look like the same team as they did before,” he said. “There are not enough basketballs to keep them happy. Too many offensive weapons and there’s a lot of animosity.”

It’s quite obvious that the Wizards are not playing with the kind of free-flowing style that they enjoyed under former coach Eddie Jordan and, so far this season, the players have not bought into Flip Saunders’ more structured approach.

“Flip has tried to come in and change things. With this kind of a team, they’re better off letting them play,” Seba explained.

When Arenas, Jamison and Butler are in sync, which was in the 2006-07 season, the Wizards were fourth in the NBA in scoring (104.3). This season, they are in the middle of the pack at 17th (99.1).

But whatever the team’s issues are, the firestorm starts and ends with the eccentric Arenas, the noted self-proclaimed goof ball whose been known to drift in and out of reality from time to time.

Often times, Arenas seems to be more concerned with his statistics than his team’s success, which hasn’t exactly endeared himself to his teammates. “Arenas is not the same player since the injury,” Seba said. “He’s still a good player but he just doesn’t like the players around him. He’s kind of an individualist.”

When he was healthy, Arenas was a 28-point scorer and comparable to Kobe Bryant when in comes to late-game heroics. But after two injury-plagued seasons that limited him to just 15 games from 2007-09, Arenas’ scoring average has dipped to 22.7 and the multiple surgeries have robbed him of his explosiveness off the dribble.

Now with this latest gun incident, Arenas may have robbed himself of his freedom.

“The problem for Gilbert in dealing with the commissioner is he’s not the first NBA player to have issues with guns,” Rose said. “You saw it with Stephen Jackson and now you see it in the news with former Net Jayson Williams. Gilbert may unfortunately be the example, and you don’t want to be the example like Michael Vick was.”

This article also appears on Covers.com.

In the past two seasons, Arenas has appeared in just 15 games, two in 2008-09 and 13 in 2007-08, all because of chronic knee pain that stems from the day he tore the lateral meniscus of his left knee. His once shining star has been diffused by a devastating knee injury that has not only stymied his growth as a first-team All-NBA performance but it has altered the present and future of the Wizards.

Without Arenas, the Wizards became a lottery team and popular coach Eddie Jordan was let go. Flip Saunders was hired to rebuild the Wizards, and so far his presence has been a welcomed sight.

“[Flip] just brings a certain energy and it’s been fun for us because he keeps it moving,” said Mike Miller, who was acquired by the Wizards, along with guard Randy Foye, in an offseason trade with Minnesota. “It’s been a lot of fun picking up his offense, and we’re looking forward to winning some games.”

Saunders loves to teach offense and is one of the best play-callers in the NBA. As much as Arenas loved to play for Jordan, he will enjoy running Saunders’ free-flowing offense.

Gilbert Arenas has played in only 15 games the past two seasons. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

To prepare for the this season, Arenas hired Tim Grover, the former personal trainer for Michael Jordan.

“He saved my career,” Arenas said of Grover, who was responsible for rebuilding Dwyane Wade’s body last season.

Wade was in the same predicament two seasons ago and, when he graduated from Grover’s training academy, he returned to being an All-NBA performer and won his first scoring title.

“We require three things from our guys: we ask them to show up, we ask them to work hard and we ask them to listen,” Grover said. “It they give us those three things, we basically almost guarantee them success.

“Gil wanted to come in and do so much we actually had to teach him how to work out smarter instead of working out harder. The results have been fantastic. We’re just showing him the way; he’s doing all the work.”

Grover’s training methods appears to be working as Arenas came into camp 20 pounds lighter and looks to be in incredible shape.

“Before, I used to work out everyday so I never got out of shape. Now, instead of just working out I focused on something; focus on my knee and make sure I don’t have any relapses. I was one of those kids who never really lifted [weights]. When I got hurt, I never really built my knee back,” said Arenas, who appears to be ahead of schedule and should return to his rightful place as one of the top guards in the league.

“He looks like Agent Zero again,” Miller said of Arenas. “In the playoffs, everyone knows that you gotta have that one guy who can win it for you single-handedly, and we have that guy in [Gilbert]. He looks really healthy, really good, and he’s taking a good pace too. When you miss a year and half, it takes some time mentally and physically.”