"I'm not pro sports gambling. I'm just a realist."
— -- This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Feb. 16 Gambling Issue. Subscribe today!
THE NBA'S DARKEST hour can actually be marked by a single moment, concentrated down to the uttering of a sentence. "I can tell you that this is the most serious situation and worst situation that I have ever experienced either as a fan of the NBA, a lawyer for the NBA or a commissioner of the NBA." That was the lament of then-commissioner David Stern during a July 24, 2007, news conference announcing that referee Tim Donaghy was under federal investigation for betting on games.
The Donaghy revelation became the ugliest gambling scandal to hit an American professional sport since at least Pete Rose's banishment from baseball in 1989 and perhaps since the Black Sox threw the 1919 World Series. In that dark moment, the NBA could very well have hunkered down and waited for the dawn. It could have continued to treat sports betting as the enemy that for as long as anyone could remember had threatened the very fabric of the game. And publicly, it did. A 2007 letter signed by all general counsels of the major sports leagues and the NCAA, including NBA vice president Rick Buchanan, stated, "The harms caused by government endorsement of sports betting far exceed the alleged benefits."
Privately, though, the league was watching -- closely -- as the Vegas market and legal daily fantasy sites were growing exponentially. It saw how all that interest, as well as action from illegal offshore betting sites, fueled NBA fandom, and it realized it needed to have a seat at the table -- the better to monitor and monetize those burgeoning passions. It studied and researched and planned behind closed doors before it made its move. And when it did, it was not subtle.
The NBA's pivot point on legalized gambling appeared in a Nov. 13, 2014, editorial in The New York Times, penned by new commissioner Adam Silver: I believe that sports betting should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.
Related Stories
ABC News Live