Jontay Porter is unlikely to ever take the court for an NBA team again.
Still, this player with a career average of 11.2 minutes per game is a central figure in one of the league’s biggest storylines of the new season.
A number of national sportsbooks such as BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings, ESPN Bet and FanDuel won’t be posting NBA player prop unders for those on 10-day or two-way contracts. The rationale? These players have less financial security than those under contract for the season. Because of that they could be enticed to purposely tank their performances.
Call this the Jontay Porter effect.
Porter did exactly this – exiting games early due to supposed injury or illness, ensuring under bets on his props would win – a season ago as a member of the Toronto Raptors. This scheme led him to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was also banned for life from the NBA.
Inconsequential? Not so fast
While NBA props for fringe players may seem inconsequential in terms of the books’ massive handle, their publicly announced move demonstrates an effort to prevent another Porter-like situation.
Certainly any act to increase integrity is going to be applauded by bettors. Still, this new policy raises some concerns – namely the possible removal of additional wagering options by legal sportsbooks.
To better understand how this move may impact bettors, we talked to a number of handicappers to get their perspective.
Banning bets ultimately hurts bettors
As a senior NBA analyst for VSiN, Jonathan Von Tobel believes the elimination of unders for certain player props shouldn’t go unnoticed.
“It’s a big deal,” said Von Tobel, who then wondered aloud if this could lead the books to make other changes in the not-too-distant future: “What is stopping a book from expanding this rule to minimum contracts across every sport? Or what about taking every under away on player props in a league like the WNBA, in which the average salary was $150K last season? It is a slippery slope which only hurts the bettors. There are systems in place already to catch this sort of behaviour.”
The system to which Von Tobel is referring: In a regulated market, sportsbooks are able to flag suspicious wagers and start an investigation.
Read the full story here.
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