NBA Awards Voters Prohibited from Placing Bets on the Event

Integrity has been a byword for NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s stint at the helm of the organization. Having presided over the association’s expansion into the sports betting space, Silver has also vowed to decouple the organization from attendant corruption surrounding the betting vertical.

League Rules Now Strictly Prohibited Betting on NBA Awards

To ensure that the NBA Awards retain their integrity, Silver has said that the association will not tolerate any betting by voters on the event. Many commercial sportsbooks, and offshore websites, are running bets on who would win what distinction during the ceremony.

In the 2023-24 NBA season, the awards included Coach of the Year, Most Valuable Player, Defensive Player of the Year, and so on. The distinctions are awarded based on the votes from a 99-person panel, all of whom will now be explicitly prohibited from betting.

The news was not reported by Silver himself, but rather by NBA on TNT reported Jared Greenberg who broke the news late last week, and caused a flurry on X, the social media platform he picked to impart the missive.

Many commentators were surprised that there was no firm prohibition on the panel that clearly states that they cannot bet on the same market they help select the winners for. However, the good news is that this is not a reactive but a proactive decision by the NBA.

In other words, there has been no incident concerning betting on the Awards that has prompted the NBA to suddenly rethink its strategy and seek the need to prohibit betting explicitly. Rather, the NBA is simply taking precautionary measures to avoid future misunderstandings.

This new rule comes only a few months after Toronto Raptors’ forward Jontay Porter was permanently banned from the association and its events, and is facing sentencing towards the end of the year. This was essentially the league’s first high-level scandal involving a player who has brazenly flouted the organization’s rules for personal gain.

Porter has pled guilty, but he has privately maintained his innocence, and he insists that he has not tried to purposefully alter the outcome of games he has been involved with to help his alleged co-conspirators realize big profits on proposition bets.

Closing Loopholes in the Way the League Functions in the Betting Era

The league has been working to actively restrict the overlap between gambling and the sport to keep a look of decency and enhance transparency and accountability. Players are not allowed to own stakes in betting and gambling companies, and owners of gambling establishments and casinos who also own NBA clubs are generally looked askance at.

Regardless, the NBA’s track record for integrity remains impeccable, with the latest rule clarification on Awards betting just a precaution rather than a response to an underlying nefarious trend. Recently, though, NBA star Jimmy Butler was banned from entry at the Hustler Casino over his rude behavior.