Earlier this week the FBI made arrests & then held a press conference on an alleged fixed-betting & gambling ring tied to the Bonanno, Genovese & Gambino organized crime syndicates. More than 30 individuals have been indicted, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, and former player and assistant coach Damon Jones.
“Face cards” are sports celebrities which the mafia uses to lure high-stakes betters into their rigged poker games. They use rigged card shufflers, x-ray tables and other high-tech devices to fleece the “fish.” It’s also alleged by the FBI that insider information on injuries to key players, etc, was also passed on to these mafia associates. ESPN online today reads, “NBA commissioner Adam Silver ‘deeply disturbed’ by indictments.” It’s their first official comment on the matter, and it’s entirely an attempt to distance the league from an issue it has tried to ignore & downplay for a long time.
For historical context, the NBA did everything it could to cover up their gambling issue when crooked NBA official Tim Donaghy went public in 2007 after being arrested by the FBI. Tim Donaghy convincingly explained that the NBA under commissioner David Stern had been rigging outcomes for years to favor the LA Lakers and other preferred teams. Tim Donaghy was threatened & assaulted while in prison for 11 months, and last I heard he was an online betting handicapper.
The 2002 Lakers-Kings conference Finals is the one that forever stands out most clearly in the minds of basketball fans. That series was clearly rigged by the refs for the Lakers. Players & observant fans knew it, and it’s been a different game since. Instead of the best team winning, it’s now about enabling “superstars” like Shaq to the title, so the league can make more money. It’s all about tie-ins to sponsors and who is most marketable.
Because of this, I’m much less passionate about all sports as far as the outcomes go anymore, which is healthy. As a healthy adult you can’t allow yourself to be used by the game you love. It’s crucial to understand how to use the game for your benefit, as I have done in my writings on sports. You don’t need to be a professional athlete to master sports, but you do need to be passionate & serious about them on all levels. A lot of professional athletes don’t understand the bigger picture and this is how they get used by the game.
For all the couch potatoes & wanna-be’s, being an obsessed fan makes you an overweight obedient zombie that can be easily manipulated by a sports addiction. The point of these games today are twofold: 1) they’re contests for the viewers to make wagers on, and 2) the endless series of commercials telling us what & how to think. That’s the root problem with sports, but no one can say it, as rule #1 is don’t antagonize the sponsors because they’re paying for this. What corporate America is actually paying for is league (ownership) partnership so they can attach themselves to the glory of the game. This serves to distract attention from how they are destroying society & corrupting the sports they are bringing us.
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