In light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision, sports betting has become a hot topic. Former NBA player Metta World Peace (AKA, Ron Artest), weighed in on the matter, as well, sharing a story about being approached by a gambler while at St. John’s.
In a conversation with Yahoo! Sports, the former Artest shared a story of a gambler offering him a significant sum of money to throw a game.
“I got approached a couple times to throw games,” he said, per Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo Sports. “The one interesting time, they come to me in my neighborhood and said, ‘Hey, I got $35,000 for you.’ I’m like, ‘All right, that’s cool, I’ll take $35,000.’ They said, ‘We need you to throw a game.’ That’s when I’m like, ‘You [expletive].’ But it crossed my mind — $35,000 to throw a game? Not bad.”
If that story is accurate, Artest actually needs to be commended. That’s a huge sum of money for the average college kid. While obviously illegal, throwing one college basketball game for $35,000 is, as he said, not a bad deal, at all.
Artest then went on to denounce gamblers, in general, noting that another kid in his situation could have had his NBA dreams shattered.
“But that’s the problem. They find these kids that don’t have any money, and they attack them. What if I was some kid that was a little scared, like, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ That’s the problem I have with betting, because these guys who are betting, they’re bullies. Some of them are bullies. They’ll force a kid into a situation, and then when the kid’s trying to go to the NBA, they hold it against the kid.”
It’s worth noting, of course, that most of what Artest is talking about occured at a time when betting on sports was illegal. It would be naïve to say that this will go away with legalized sports betting in more states. Still, it’s fair to say that, if nothing else, it can be at least slightly better regulated.
As far as what’s been done in the past, we can only hope that stories like Artest’s are rare. It certainly would be easy to understand why a college kid in that situation would take the money. Still, if players are throwing games, the credibility of the sport essentially goes out the window.