The principles that defined Antonio Davis’s NBA career—effort and respect for competition—are under strain because of legalized sports betting and tanking, he says.
Davis, a one-time All Star who played 13 seasons in the NBA for the Pacers, Raptors, Bulls, and Knicks, is now CEO of Legends of Basketball, a nonprofit that supports retired players in life after basketball. He understands the pressures pro athletes face. But he is still flabbergasted by the issues the league has run into in the modern era: sports betting and tanking, both of which create situations where players or teams sometimes don’t try their hardest.
“To think there’s a situation where any player was accused of not going out and doing everything he can to win, it just blows my mind,” Davis said on a panel at the Next.io summit on sports betting and prediction markets. “It just blows my mind. I couldn’t fathom that.”
Sports Betting
The NBA has faced multiple betting controversies in recent years. In April 2024, fringe player Jontay Porter was banned for life after an investigation determined he bet on NBA games and manipulated his performance for gamblers while on the Raptors. Although Porter recently made his debut for another league, he is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison.
Following the Porter revelation, federal prosecutors in October announced charges against Heat guard Terry Rozier and former player Damon Jones. The indictment accused Rozier of telling a friend he would prematurely take himself out of a game “for the purpose of enabling” the friend to make money off of that information, and Jones of sharing inside information about injuries before they appeared on scouting reports.
“We’re all human beings,” Davis said during the panel, noting he’s “sure” that players in his era considered the idea of doing something on purpose to win money. But out of respect for competition, teammates, and fans, he “couldn’t imagine it happening” when he was playing.
The betting issue is not unique to the NBA: Both MLB and MLS players have run afoul of betting regulations recently. And leagues are trying to keep sports betting problems in check, including through work with integrity monitors like IC360.
Tanking
Davis was careful not to say the word “tanking” during the panel, but some of his comments could easily have been about either betting or tanking. Speaking to Front Office Sports after the panel, he acknowledged it’s a problem—although not an easily solvable one.
“What do you do when you’re Dallas and everybody’s hurt?” he said. “Are you gonna keep playing Cooper Flagg and risk him getting hurt?”
The NBA is making it a priority to solve the tanking problem, which commissioner Adam Silver has described as “worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory.”
Among the measures under consideration are granting every lottery team the same odds for a No. 1 draft pick, allowing draft-pick protections on only top-four positions, and adjusting lottery odds to be based on a two-year span.
Silver is putting his money where his mouth is, fining multiple teams in recent months for moves perceived as helping with a tank. Last month, he fined the Jazz $500,000 for sitting forwards Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. in the fourth quarter of a game against the Magic. Before that, he fined the Pacers $100,000 for sitting Pascal Siakam during a game in which the league determined he could have played.
One NBA owner recently told FOS that dealing with the injury aspect is particularly challenging, noting that sometimes, close to tip-off, a player will inform the team they can’t play, either due to illness or injury, even if the injury is not something major. “Then you get in trouble for not disclosing it early enough,” the owner said.
But they acknowledged “it’s not fair to the fans,” and said owners “see we need to do something to protect the integrity of the game.”
