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00:00And is it possible that we have another big sports betting scandal coming from the National
00:04Basketball Association?
00:06Not yet, but I guess it's possible.
00:08Really hard story to fathom, to be honest with you, but we will tell it to you and tell
00:13you the allegations.
00:14You can make your own judgments, and then naturally when they rule on this, we'll get
00:17a better idea.
00:18So you may remember Jonte Porter.
00:20He was the player on the Toronto Raptors who was basically accused and found the fact that
00:25he was using his own ideas as to how to play in games to avoid meeting certain proposition
00:32bets in the National Basketball Association, and he was found that he did it.
00:36But Porter was not a player that was making millions of dollars, and so by manipulating
00:40some of his personal statistics, he could stand to actually make some money.
00:44That is not the case for this player who is currently on the Miami Heat, but formerly
00:47on the Charlotte Hornets when this happened, allegedly.
00:49His name is Terry Rozier, if you're not familiar with him.
00:52And a game two years ago, there are an investigation going on currently right now by federal prosecutors,
00:59and it's the same probe that led to the lifetime ban of Porter.
01:02The Wall Street Journal reported the investigation noting that Rozier, who played for the Hornets,
01:07has not been charged with a crime and has not been charged with wrongdoing, but it stems
01:13from one specific game back on March 23rd, 2023, when Charlotte was playing New Orleans.
01:20Rozier played the first nine minutes of the game and then came out, finishing with five
01:26points, four rebounds, two assists, a good quarter, but very well below his output for
01:32the full game.
01:33In addition, Rozier didn't play the rest of that season.
01:37There was some bizarre betting activity on some of his player props.
01:41Needless to say, the NBA has released a statement on the investigation saying that back in March
01:4623rd of 23, the NBA was alerted to unusual betting activity related to Rozier's performance
01:52in the game and the league conducted investigation.
01:54They did not find any violation of NBA rules.
01:58The statement from the NBA also says that they're aware of an ongoing investigation
02:02by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, and they're cooperating.
02:05Needless to say, Rozier is a player that was making at the time $20, $30 million a season.
02:12Kind of hard to believe that this would be involved with props that you can't even bet.
02:16That kind of money on why this would happen, nobody really knows for sure.
02:20So one of those stories that we give you the data, we give you the information, certainly
02:23you're allowed to make your own judgment, but we won't until we find out exactly what
02:27the ruling is on this case.
02:29Meanwhile, another very disturbing story coming from the National Football League, and a surprising
02:33one as well, especially considering it surrounds one of the faces of the Baltimore Ravens franchise.
02:38Justin Tucker is being accused of inappropriate sexual behavior by six massage therapists
02:44in the Baltimore area, and this is according to an investigation by the Baltimore Banner.
02:50The allegations reportedly between 2012 and 2016, Tucker's first five seasons in the NBA.
02:57Needless to say, Tucker was aware of this story coming out and released a statement
03:03immediately after it did, saying, throughout my career as a professional athlete, I've
03:07always sought to conduct myself with the utmost professionalism.
03:10I've never been accused of misconduct of any kind, have never been accused of acting
03:16inappropriately in front of a massage therapist or during a massage therapy or other body
03:20work.
03:22A very strong denial, needless to say, by Tucker, and the NFL will investigate this,
03:27of course, as well.
03:28All right, let's get to the very latest on sports betting for the calendar year in 2024
03:33football.
03:34Football bettors actually won money this season.
03:36Is that possible?
03:37I don't think I've ever heard that happen.
03:39Football bettors in Nevada beat the sports books in December for $2.1 million.
03:45How about that?
03:46First time in 12 years.
03:47Why?
03:48Favorites covering.
03:49That's what it usually leads to.
03:50It's only the 13th losing month on football bets in the regular season in the history
03:55of the state of Nevada.
03:58Wow.
03:59Also, the NFL, in terms of reporting on concussions, just put this statement out.
04:03They had 182 for the season, which was down 17% from 2023.
04:09A lot of the players, as you see in those photos right there, they're attributing it
04:12to wearing the Guardian cap, which a lot of the players play with these days to avoid
04:17serious concussions.
04:18Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham, limited at practice on Thursday, although I'm sure
04:24no player who is limited is going to miss the Super Bowl coming up next Sunday.
04:29And Anthony Campanile has been hired as the Jaguars defensive coordinator.
04:34He comes over from the Green Bay Packers.
04:36Okay, so we're going to debate the all-star game here again for the NBA.
04:40No one watches the game.
04:41No one watches the dunk contest, but yet everybody wants to talk about who was a snub.
04:44Who really cares?
04:45But here are the reserves in the Eastern Conference.
04:47Jalen Brown, Pascal Siakam, Darius Garland, Cade Cunningham, Evan Mobley, Damian Lillard,
04:53first-timer Tyler Hero of the Miami Heat in the West.
04:56It's Anthony Edwards, Anthony Davis, James Harden, Jaren Jackson Jr., Alperin Seguin,
05:02Jalen Williams, and Wemby.
05:04Of course, he made it too.
05:05All right, the ball keeps rolling, so to speak, for the Houston Rockets, but they finally
05:11lost a game.
05:12This one was to the Memphis Grizzlies, 120 to 119.
05:15It went all the way down to the end.
05:17Jaren Jackson Jr. made a go-ahead free throw with 8.6 seconds left.
05:21He had 21 points.
05:23The Grizzlies get the win, but as we talked about, five-point favorites.
05:25They did not cover the spread yesterday.
05:28Head coach of the Grizzlies, Taylor Jenkins, said this thing went right down to the wire.
05:33Full 48.
05:35First half, we weren't really executing our game plan, executing the personnel tendencies
05:43like we needed to.
05:44Came out, started the third quarter, got a little spark there, got a couple of stops
05:46and got a little run and got the game to be a little bit more manageable within striking
05:50distance.
05:51I thought we cleaned up.
05:52We started switching a little bit more.
05:53I thought our on-ball defense steadily improved as the game went on.
05:56We definitely still had our breakdowns, but they got a lot of dynamic players that put
05:59a lot of pressure on you one-on-one.
06:01At the rim, we did a good job on the boards in the first half, not so great in the second
06:04half.
06:05They had 30 second-chance points, but I think at the end of the day, it comes down to possessions.
06:09We didn't just give them 20 or 30 points off of our turnovers, I think, which is a huge
06:13credit to this group, just kind of figuring it out.
06:15We still scored 70 points in the paint.
06:17We didn't shoot the three ball well tonight, but our pace of play picked up in the second
06:20half.
06:21We got more quality possessions.
06:22When we missed a shot, it wasn't like a forced one or we weren't just giving the ball to
06:26the other team.
06:27That's what it came down to.
06:30Meanwhile, just how we drew it up in the NBA, Cleveland and Oklahoma City, two best teams
06:34in the league.
06:35Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, the Cavs beat the Hawks last night.
06:38Easy win, 137-115 the final there.
06:42LeBron James, the Lakers beat the Wizards like everybody else does.
06:45Washington now 6-41 on the season.
06:49Is that right?
06:50Six wins, 41 losses.
06:51J.J.
06:52Reddick talked about the intensity of his team leading to the win.
06:55A few things.
06:56First of all, I asked the guys to play with an edge.
06:59I thought they did that.
07:02We were the instigators.
07:05Did not intend for some of that edge to be taken out on the officials by a couple of
07:09our guys, but I liked that we were angry tonight.
07:13We played angry.
07:16Overall, just execution was great.
07:19And then, you know, it's a big deal when three of your top seven guys are out of the
07:29lineup and you can bring guys in that haven't necessarily been in the rotation and they
07:36make a big impact.
07:37I thought Shake in particular led that.
07:40Yeah, I mean, every opponent is different and I think our guys will be ready to go Saturday
07:47night against the Knicks in the Garden.
07:50Hopefully, you know, Doe is available.
07:53Hopefully, Gabe is available.
07:55But if they're not, next man up and continue to play the right way, which is what we did
08:03tonight.
08:04And one other final from the NBA, notable last night, Anthony Edwards, 36 points, Timberwolves
08:08138, Jazz 113.
08:10In Major League Baseball news yesterday, some of the final free agents are getting signed.
08:14Still some big ones out there, of course, as we head toward February.
08:17But Max Scherzer, his next destination is Toronto.
08:20One-year deal, $15.5 million, played with Texas the last couple of years.
08:24Austin Hayes signs a one-year deal, $5 million, will play the outfield for Cincinnati this
08:28coming season.
08:29And Jorge Polanco has decided the infielder to return to the Seattle Mariners on a one-year,
08:34$7 million contract.
08:35All right, welcome back to Newswire here on Sports Grave.
08:37We got Sam McQuillan in the house here from Legal Sports Report.
08:40We'll go over the very latest on Penn Entertainment and some other news as well.
08:44But the top story on sports betting today is this investigation into current Miami Heat
08:49player and former Charlotte Hornets player Terry Rozier.
08:53Very similar situation to Jontae Porter.
08:55It's over player props, individual player props.
08:59And Sam, this one, got to tell you, hard to believe.
09:02I know that's been sort of investigated already.
09:06They'll be looking at it some more, but boy, I mean, a player of this magnitude in terms
09:12of financially, Sam, and I want to underline that, financially speaking, it's not that
09:16Rozier is, you know, going to go on the Hall of Fame or anything like that, but when you're
09:21making $20, $30 million and it's on a single game prop where, I mean, I'm guessing six
09:28figures was in play for several people, maybe.
09:31I mean, that's a heck of a favor.
09:33Why not just give those people the money, man?
09:35Like, I don't know.
09:36To me, this one doesn't add up.
09:38I'm going to hope, by the way, that this one is completely false.
09:42Yeah, it's definitely a head scratcher, Craig, when you talk about a guy like Terry Rozier,
09:47who at the time I think was the Charlotte Hornets' highest paid player in history.
09:53So this was a guy making, was a year into his four-year $96 million extension.
09:59Wall Street Journal broke the news this week that he's been named or is currently being
10:03investigated, rather, by federal agents as part of a larger sports betting conspiracy
10:08scheme, a network of gamblers and bettors across the country that they're looking into
10:14allegedly manipulating these outcomes of games across not only the NBA but also college sports
10:20as well.
10:21We've talked recently on this show about the Eastern Michigan college basketball games
10:25that have been under scrutiny as well.
10:28That is potentially part of this investigation.
10:31So it could kind of all be connected.
10:33This was the same investigation, of course, last year that led to Jonte Porter, the former
10:39Toronto Raptors swingman who, as you point out, was not a guy like Rozier making $25
10:45million a year.
10:46This was a guy on a veteran minimum contract who had kind of been fighting his way to stay
10:51in the league, had been on five teams, who was in significant gambling debt and would
10:56text these gamblers who'd been named in this criminal investigation, hey, I know I'm not
11:01going to play tonight much or I'm going to fake an injury, bet on my unders, that sort
11:06of thing.
11:07And that set off red flags because you've got a guy named Jonte Porter who nobody really
11:11knows who that is.
11:12All of a sudden, he's the most bet player at all these sports books.
11:15So that was pretty easy for investigators to catch.
11:18It's a little different with Rozier.
11:20He's not a LeBron James by any means, but there are going to be nights when because
11:24of the matchup or something like that, people are going to bet a lot on Rozier.
11:29So it was really interesting to see them kind of catch this one game in question is when
11:34he was a member of the Charlotte Hornets in March 2023 against the game, a game against
11:41the Pelicans in which he only played nine minutes.
11:45There was some weird social media kind of discourse at the time.
11:47A lot of people wondering, hey, it's like a minute to game time.
11:50Why have Rozier's markets been pulled?
11:52This wasn't a guy who had been injured recently.
11:55There was no questionability.
11:56So anytime a guy gets pulled before game time, it's usually because, you know, some last
12:00minute injury reporting.
12:02But there was no reporting surrounding that.
12:04So a lot of people were wondering why.
12:06A lot of people actually posted on social media that I don't know whether it was a joke
12:09or whether there's some truth to this, that they had inside info that he wasn't going
12:12to play much.
12:13Right.
12:14Of course, you know, what does that really mean?
12:16Does that mean, oh, I just have been following the NBA closely.
12:19I have a buddy who works for the team.
12:20I know Rozier.
12:21I don't know all these things yet.
12:23So we're kind of still figuring out exactly what is going on.
12:26All we really know is that this one game where he went from playing 30 minutes all season
12:30to just nine saw a sizable amount of action on all of his unders specifically.
12:35So his lawyer has come out and denied pretty much any wrongdoing, saying, you know, there's
12:40no way he was involved in anything bad.
12:42We'll let the investigation play out.
12:43I would be frankly shocked if it comes out that he was purposely throwing the game.
12:49You have to wonder what the incentive here would be.
12:52But of course, there are a lot of dumb people in the world and athletes can be some of them.
12:58You know, we saw we've seen the NFL guys blatantly breaking the rules by, you know, they have
13:03the team policy on the door.
13:04Don't gamble in the facility guys doing it anyway, saying they didn't know.
13:07Of course, that's different than actually manipulating an outcome of a game.
13:10So it'll be really interesting to see what comes out of this.
13:12And I don't think it's you know, this could just be the tip of the iceberg.
13:15Again, this is a larger investigation that caught Porter and allegedly involves college
13:20basketball as well.
13:21So possibly other names could come out of this.
13:23We'll see what happens.
13:24Yeah.
13:25I think Sam just gave us the best line he's ever had here on the show.
13:29There are a lot of dumb people in the world.
13:32Very well said.
13:33Not that he is.
13:34We don't know that this is even real.
13:35But but again, there are enough that I cannot argue with that.
13:39Okay, so this is not an argument of dumb, although I do feel dumb trying to read and
13:43understand the story.
13:44I gotta be honest with you.
13:45I read it several times here in Legal Sports Report.
13:47It seems to me that there's this battle over the amount of money that they spent in terms
13:51of advertising with Penn Entertainment and this whole debacle, how it turned into ESPN
13:55bet.
13:56So I'm going to ask you, you know, Sam to sort of summarize this for everyone watching
14:00out there, because I think you're going to have to read this thing on no offense going
14:02to have to read a couple times to understand it.
14:05Yeah, shout out to all the other reporters at Legal Sports Report who do the hard work
14:10of digging through the 10Ks, the other SEC filings to kind of make sense of what's going
14:15on.
14:16And to your point, Craig, even when you do all that, it can kind of seem pretty complicated
14:19what's going on.
14:20At the end of the day, you have Penn Entertainment, which is a major gambling company, major company
14:26traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
14:29They've been trying to compete in online sports betting for a while now.
14:33And online sports betting is sort of a sum of a lot of investment up front.
14:38And hopefully we see the returns later.
14:40And now we're at the point where FanDuel DraftKings, they're starting to see some of that return
14:44on investment.
14:45And then you have the investors at Penn Entertainment, which had famously bought Barstool Sports
14:50to run Barstool Sportsbook.
14:52That was a disaster.
14:53They sold it back to the founder for $1 after paying billions of dollars for it.
14:58Then they moved over to give ESPN a ton of money as well, just to use their name.
15:03That so far has not been working out great for the company, although they say they're
15:06improving their metrics.
15:08There's been a group of investors at Penn that owns a sizable amount of shares and has
15:13gotten really frustrated with that and does not like the direction the company is going.
15:17This week, they filed with the SEC in a major move, nominating three directors to the board,
15:23essentially trying to take over more seats and control away from the leadership that
15:28runs Penn right now.
15:29So what we're talking about is basically a proxy battle that Penn has on its hands.
15:34This group, HGVOR, has criticized Penn harshly, mainly around online betting.
15:38Remember, Penn is a company that owns a ton of casinos, a ton of resorts, other assets
15:43across the country.
15:44They've pretty much said, hey, we've wasted all this money on online gaming, about $4
15:48billion to be exact, and we really don't have anything to show for it.
15:52And we're still just kind of being told, wait for the results, wait for the results.
15:55They call the strategy overpriced, poorly negotiated.
15:58And they've really taken issue that leadership hasn't really, to this point, faced any repercussions
16:03for kind of their failures.
16:05So what they want is instead to kind of, as I understand it, sell off the remaining online
16:11tech assets that they have, kind of get out of the game, and then just really double down
16:15on what has made them a good business in general, is their casinos.
16:18So this is definitely not the last we'll hear of this story.
16:21It's going to develop.
16:22But if I'm Penn right now and I'm struggling to stay alive with online betting, this is
16:26the last thing I want in my hands.
16:27Yeah, agreed.
16:28All right, Sam, we've got about a minute left.
16:30Let's close it out.
16:31For people unfamiliar with this sports betting operator out of the UK, BetKris, B-E-T-C-R-I-S.
16:37Very popular a long time ago, haven't even heard their name in a long time, but now resurfacing
16:42here in the States.
16:43Tell us more.
16:44Yeah, BetKris is a brand that existed in the U.S. sports betting landscape before states
16:49were allowed to legalize sports betting.
16:51This was predating the days of the unlawful Gaming Enforcement Act, which forced all these
16:56kind of operators to get out.
16:58But now they're returning to the U.S. this time with a legal license.
17:01So they'll be in Arizona.
17:02I believe they went live this week with hopes to expand to other states in the future.
17:07But a brand you used to know coming back to the U.S.
17:10Previously was an offshore brand.
17:12Now is legal.
17:13We'll see what kind of strategy they can execute here when you have, you know, this at this
17:16stage in the game and legal betting with all the other big players at hand.
17:20So welcome back, but it's going to be a tough road ahead.
17:23Yeah, jumping in late.
17:25Not optimal, especially in a state that has had legal sports betting for a long time.
17:29We'll see how they perform.
17:30Sam, thanks again.
17:31We'll catch up with you next week here on Newswire.
17:34Sounds good.
17:35Thanks, Greg.