You just had to figure that after the Arenas-Crittenton locker room gun scandal over a gambling debt from a game of poker, that there would be a ripple effect towards tighter league control on player gambling. The NBA has had an image issue for many years now. It’s no longer just the Portland Jail Blazers, it’s the image of the entire league that is giving Commissioner David Stern headaches.
So, naturally if the two players were gambling at the time of the gun incident, gambling must be the cause of the problem right? How about the NBA referee caught last season gambling on the games he was actually officiating?
Wrong. (Do violent video games, or lets say….rap music, cause violent behaviour too? LOL)
But it doesn’t matter. The NBA and specifically Stern has to be ‘seen to be doing something’ about the issue. Well before Stern has even had a chance to lay down the law with a league wide ban of gambling, it seems the New Jersey Nets have taken a proactive approach and banned gambling on Team Flights.
Here is what NBA Fanhouse reported on the Nets new rules:
As the Gilbert Arenas-Javaris Crittenton saga has become unpacked, a future of stricter NBA regulation on gambling began to present itself. Several pundits asserted that the league would build bans on gambling during any team function in the next round of collective bargaining in 2011. But the New York Times reports that one team didn’t wait for that, as the Nets organization has banned its players for participating in gambling games on all team flights.
Why would the Nets do this?
For one, they probably don’t want any of their mediocre star players getting involved in an altercation like the Gilbert Arenas-Javaris Crittenton kind.
Or another possibility is they may figure that by being proactive and only banning gambling on Team Flights they may pre-empt a league-wide ban imposed on them and their players saying they can’t gamble anywhere or anytime. This would certainly cause a player backlash and a lot of headaches with complaints from the Players Union, fines and penalties or even suspensions of players that didn’t follow the rules to a ‘T’, and of course more monitoring and babysitting of players.
What are your thoughts on NBA players and gambling? Dice, poker, gin, c-low…are all gambling games created equal?
