Wednesday sure started with a bang. The NBA just announced a lifetime ban on Jontay Porter following his gambling and betting allegations. The Toronto Raptors’ two-way star violated the league’s rules surrounding the same.

The NBA came out with an announcement stating that their investigations found Porter guilty of disclosing confidential information about himself, and his health to another individual who was an NBA bettor, before the March 20th game against the Kings. Porter even tried to limit his participation in the games, just for gambling purposes and betting on other games. Another person that he knew to be a bettor played a parlay worth $80,000 with an online sports book, later winning $1.1 mn, all under the wager that Porter would underperform in that game.

NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver gave out the following statement during the announcement of Porter’s lifetime ban: “There is nothing more important than protecting the integrity of NBA competition for our fans, our teams and everyone associated with our sport, which is why Jontay Porter’s blatant violations of our gaming rules are being met with the most severe punishment”.

The Raptors’ president, Masai Ujiri, was surprised to hear that such an investigation was going on in the first place. In a press conference, before this ban was announced, he said, “You don’t want this for the kid, you don’t want this for the team, and we don’t want this for the league. The first reaction was surprise. … Definitely didn’t see this coming. We act in accordance with the NBA and move forward.”

Apparently, as per Ujiri, they did all their due diligence surrounding the situation. “We did all due diligence, and from all the reports and everything we had, this was nothing we could know about, and all of that is on the NBA’s investigation.” Raptors analyst, Blake Murphy, believes either the team did not know about the situation or couldn’t have known what was about to hit Porter.

Jontay Porter spent millions of dollars in gambling scandal

Jontay Porter joined the Toronto Raptors this season on a two-way contract. He played 26 games with the team, with being part of the starting-line up in five of them. The 6’11 center was averaging 4.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists this season. The game in question because of which the investigation started was on March 20, where he just played for 3 minutes against the Sacramento Kings. Later, he left, claiming he was feeling ill, with none of his stats meeting the total sets of that of the parlay. The suspicion started when a licensed sports betting operator brought the entire fiasco to the league’s attention. His unusual activities and actions further prompted the bet to be frozen, and unpaid.

In the final weeks, Porter did not play for the Raptors, of course, since an investigation was underway. The investigations found Porter to have placed 13 bets from January through March of this year, on different NBA games through an associate account. All his bets ranged from $15 to $22,000. The overall total came out to be $54,904, with the overall payout being $76,059 with a net winning amount of $21,965. In his bets, there was no game where Porter was playing. In fact, three of his bets were actually multi-game parlays, including a game for the Raptors, where he bet that his team would lose. He lost all three bets, as per the NBA.

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The league further stated that the investigation is still open, and can result in more findings, which they will diligently share with the federal prosecutors as well.

Sportsbooks also came out stating that they found a spike in betting interest on many of Porter’s stats before the January 26 game against the Clippers. He played for just 4 minutes that day, leaving because of an eye injury he suffered earlier against Memphis. He scored 0 points that day, with 3 rebounds and an assist, all of which were under the lines that the sportsbook had set earlier as his stats.