It was only a matter of time. Sooner or later, some guilt-ridden white liberal would pen a think piece declaring the real victim of the Jontay Porter scandal to be … Jontay Porter. Never mind the defrauded sports bettors, the Toronto Raptors fans and general NBA fans who all had a reasonable expectation of seeing basketball games played on the square. No, it’s this game-tanking weasel who merits our pity, according to Chris Dell, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Dell wrings his hands over Porter being a “casualty” of the marriage between major-league sports and sports betting itself.
Wails Dell, “Porter is a victim in this case, even though he’s also guilty of breaking the rules.” Yup, it’s everybody else who’s at fault, especially The Man, as embodied by NBA Commissioner David Stern. [Corrrection: Adam Silver] And don’t forget DraftKings and FanDuel, how commit the outrage of—gasp!—turning profits off of sports betting … or, in the case of DraftKings, hoping to turn a profit someday. As an example of his flawed logic, Dell cites Ippei Mizuhara, who blew $41 million on illegal wagers. Yet we’re to believe Mizuhara is a classic example of a whale who’s showered with “complimentary courtside tickets, Las Vegas buffet vouchers and free resort stays to boot.” Of course you’d starve to death on all the buffet vouchers that Mizuhara scored.
Dell brands Mizhara “a dream customer for every legal sportsbook in the U.S.,” never mind that he didn’t play at any. Facts, schmacts. Indeed, the legal sports-betting infrastructure, we are lectured, is “a viciously corrupt system that preys on the weak.” That is Dell’s justification for Porter’s misdeeds. Also: “Porter’s lifetime NBA earnings might’ve totaled roughly $6 million over four years … but it’s a far cry from the five-year, borderline $180-million deal that his older brother Michael Porter Jr. signed last year with the Nuggets.” Ergo, it is implied, Porter the Younger was justified in re-tilting the economic scales in his own favor. To Dell, Jontay Porter is Robin Hood, stealing from the rich (Silver, the NBA, us) to help the poor (himself). That won’t wash.
When Dell writes, “Hypocrisy has hit all-time highs in sports and gambling, and the irony of it all has become comical in the process,” he might want to look in the mirror. To Dell’s warped imagination, it is somehow hypocritical of Silver to call for legal, regulated sports betting and yet punish Porter for wagering against his own team. There’s intellectual dishonesty at work here … but it’s not Silver’s. Dell will only allow that “Porter made mistakes and broke the rules,” the poor fellow, “but it doesn’t mean he’s not a victim in this for-profit system.” Yeah, The System forced him to place those bets. Uh-huh. And if you believe that swill, you’ll agree that Porter “was never found guilty of throwing a game or manipulating the final outcome of any contest.” Except that he was. Jontay Porter may have been a mediocre basketball player but Chris Dell is a superb practitioner of fake news and manufactured outrage.
That buzzing sound you hear is the Nevada Gaming Control Board‘s alarm clock belatedly ringing, alerting the sleepy NGCB that money laundering has been afoot up and down the Las Vegas Strip. Enterprising reporter Dana Gentry has again beaten the MSM to the story, as the NGCB slowly and creakily gets into motion about doing its job. For the past three years, the Control Board has been “monitoring” the situation, which is fancyspeak for not doing a damned thing.
Perhaps acting under orders from sugar daddy Gov. Joe Lombardo (R), Control Board doofus-in-residence George Assad infamously rushed out and declared that all allegations against then-Resorts World Las Vegas President Scott Sibella were “unsubstantiated.” So unsubstantiated were they that soon afterwards the feds got Sibella to plead out to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, and to get former Sibella employer MGM Resorts International to pony up $7.5 million in fines.
The NGCB’s undoubtedly reluctant investigation of pals like Sibella seems to have been been prompted both by the SIn City tendrils of the Shohei Itani scandal and, more importantly, the widening stain of the Wayne Nix imbroglio. Nix, a former Oakland Athletics minor leaguer turned bookie, has evidently been singing like a canary to the Justice Department, as more and more casinos come under federal scrutiny. (If the A’s ever make it to Las Vegas, will they host a “Wayne Nix Night”?) Ippei Mizuhara‘s bookie, Mathew Bowyer, was a Nix crony who liked to play—read: launder money—at MGM Grand and The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
In addition to those casinos, Aria, The Venetian and Resorts World are coming under tardy Control Board inspection. Venelazzo had trouble keeping its nose clean when Sheldon Adelson ran the place and may not being any better under Apollo Management‘s, uh, management: When two Cosmo hosts did Nix’s bidding, they eventually lost their jobs for it, only to be snapped up by The Venetian. Its CEO, Patrick Nichols, dodged Gentry’s questions, always a good optic for a casino exec in the hot seat. (Not.)
Irony alert: “The GCB was created in 1955 to regulate Nevada’s fledgling gambling industry and keep the federal government at bay.” How’s that working out? There’s little evidence of regulation nowadays and the feds are on Big Gaming’s doorstep, bearing warrants. Whatever credibility the Control Board had, the Lombardos and Assads of the world have pretty much trashed it.
Jottings: Another scofflaw operator hails from Down Under and its misconduct may be the most brazen in all the globe. Star Entertainment‘s top executives were not only spying on their third-party monitor, they were contemplating suing him and generally scheming to have him kicked out. When not misbehaving in that fashion, failure to monitor excessive gambling (as mandated by law) and other lacks of internal controls were the order of the day. License revocation would appear to be in order … MGM Resorts International is suing the Federal Trade Commission to thwart investigation of last September’s cyber-debacle. The company is definitely acting like it has something to hide. It is litigating using the dog-ate-my-homework excuse that because top FTC brass were at MGM Grand when the shit hit the cyber-fan they should be precluding from passing judgment on the company. There’s a dog that won’t hunt … Richmond is officially Out as a casino-eligible city, the Virginia Lege having voted to instead give Petersburg a chance. Already five operators are jostling for the right to develop there. One of them, Cordish Cos., is proposing a $1.4 billion megaresort, which hardly seems like it would pencil out in Petersburg … Going from retail-only to online sports betting would seem a no-brainer, right? The Mississippi Lege has never been confused with Mensa, however. The state Senate voted in favor of a sports betting bill—only after stripping it off all sports betting language. Makes perfect sense, right? Dumb crackers.
Speaking of sports betting, it appears likely to die for the umpteenth time in the Minnesota Lege. Even so, Running Aces racino is upping the ante by teeing off on three tribes for allegedly offering illegal card games, charging them with racketeering … iGaming expansion in the U.S. is stalled for at least another year, Maine‘s Lege having failed to legalize Internet casinos in that state. Evidently the expansion of tribal gaming in Maine was more than lawmakers could stomach … The soon-to-be Caesars New Orleans has seen a relaunch date. However, qualified employees are proving hard to come by … If you want to gamble in Texas, you have to do it on a tribal reservation. Now the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas is stealing a march on the private sector with plans for a new, still-undesigned casino. Good luck to them … Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli projects that iGaming in New Jersey will pass the $2 billion/year mark this November. However, investment could be cooled if a 100% tax increase is passed … Labor unions are looking to Las Vegas for precedents toward upcoming labor talks. But management is planning to make fewer and stingier concessions than Big Gaming did.
For accuracy’s sake, I’ll point out that David Stern is not the Commissioner (read: the TV networks’ incredibly highly-paid toady) of the NBA. In fact, “Little Caesar” Stern, blatant fixer of drafts and championships, died in 2020. The current Commissioner is Adam “Skeletor” Silver, who is far less obvious about who he wants to see winning and who occasionally allows a smaller-market team to succeed.
Raymond (and all readers), I apologize. My brain went into autopilot for a moment there. I “saw” Adam Silver but typed “David Stern,” stupidly. This proves that writers are the worst people to proof their own copy. God only knows what else I did. I promise to do better next time.