The NBA has banned Raptors forward Jontay Porter for life after a bombshell investigation found he manipulated his participation in a game to influence the outcome of a bet and also bet on NBA games.
The league found that Porter, 24, was “disclosing confidential information to sports bettors” and “limiting his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes.”
Porter, who split time between the Raptors and their G-League affiliate, also placed at least 13 bets on NBA games from January through March of this year; none of those bets included games in which he played, but he did bet a parlay that included a wager on the Raptors losing.
Before the Raptors’ March 20 home game against the Kings, which Toronto lost 123-89, Porter informed someone he knew to be an NBA bettor about his health status, and another person associated with Porter put $80,000 on a parlay prop on “unders” for Porter in that game to win $1.1 million.
Porter “limited his own game participation to influence the outcome of one or more bets on his performance in at least one Raptors game,” according to the NBA.
The big man, whose older brother is Nuggets star Michael Porter Jr., played just three minutes in that March 20 game, claiming he felt ill.
He finished the game with zero points and two rebounds, missing his lone field-goal attempt.
The $80,000 bet was frozen and not paid out due to the suspicious activity, the league said.
“You don’t want this for the kid, you don’t want this for our team and we don’t want this for our league, that’s for sure,” Raptors President Masai Ujiri said Wednesday in Toronto, speaking shortly before the NBA announced Porter’s ban. “My first reaction is obviously surprise, because none of us, I don’t think anybody, saw this coming.”
Later, after the NBA revealed the ban, the Raptors said they were “fully supportive of the league’s decision to ban Jontay Porter from the NBA and are grateful for the swift resolution to this investigation. We will continue to cooperate with all ongoing inquiries.”
Porter was found to have bet on NBA games through an associate’s online betting account, ranging from $15 to $22,000. He bet a total of $54,094 across the 13 bets, getting paid out $76,059 for a net profit of $21,965.
Porter is the second person to be banned by Commissioner Adam Silver for violating league rules.
The other was now-former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling in 2014, shortly after Silver took office.
“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,” Silver said in a statement. “While legal sports betting creates transparency that helps identify suspicious or abnormal activity, this matter also raises important issues about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players. Working closely with all relevant stakeholders across the industry, we will continue to work diligently to safeguard our league and game.”
The NBA said its investigation into Porter remains open.
Porter, a native of Columbia, Mo., went undrafted out of the University of Missouri in 2019 but signed with the Grizzlies in 2020.
He appeared in 11 games for Memphis during the 2020-21 season and was waived that offseason.
Porter bounced around the G-League before signing a two-way contract with the Raptors in December, appearing in 26 NBA games for Toronto.
— with AP
