NBA Bans Raptors’ Jontay Porter for Gambling on Games

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The NBA has banned Toronto Raptors’ Jontay Porter for violating the league’s gambling policy and limiting his own gameplay to influence bet outcomes.

An investigation was launched in late March after officials noticed strange patterns of proposition bets on Porter. A proposition bet doesn’t take into account the game’s final outcome but rather individual statistics, such as how a given player performs.

Porter was determined to have shared information about his health status – which is considered to be confidential information – to “an individual he knew to be an NBA bettor” ahead of the March 20 game. That individual then placed an $80,000 USD parlay with an online sportsbook that Porter would underperform and not mean certain statistics.

Porter ended up sitting out the game, claiming he felt ill. The $1.1 million USD payout for the bet was frozen before being paid out due to the “unusual” pattern. Online sports betting operators and an organization that monitors contacted the NBA with their suspicions on the March 20 bets.

The league found that Porter “limited his own game participation to influence the outcome” of the game. He was also determined to have gambled a cumulative $54,094 USD across 13 bets on NBA games using another person’s account. The NBA said that none of Porter’s bets were on games he played in but that three bets were multi-game parlays that each included one Raptors game.