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Stunning NBA charges reveal the sports gambling reckoning is already here

<i>Getty Images via CNN Newsource</i><br/>

By CNN Newsource

Published October 23, 2025 6:23 pm

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

(CNN) — Deep in the weeds of the 23-page federal indictment alleging game fixing in the NBA, prosecutors cite a text from former NBA journeyman Damon Jones to his co-conspirators.

“Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out! (Player 3) is out tonight. Bet enough so Djones can eat to (sic) now!”

Player 3, it turns out, was LeBron James, whose absence in the Los Angeles Lakers game could understandably affect the outcome. James did not, in fact, play that night which Jones knew because – though he wasn’t an official part of the Lakers staff – he worked with the NBA star during pre-game workouts.

Access equals information, which is, essentially, how the sausage is made in point-shaving.

Much like insider trading on the stock market, inside information on teams – either from peripheral personnel such as Jones, or in the form of a direct link, a la Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier – can be worth a lot of money. And for the co-conspirators it was, including two people indicted in the case involving Rozier.

Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley are career criminals with serious charges on their lengthy rap sheets. Hennen spent 30 months in prison for intent to distribute cocaine and was separately arrested for assault after stabbing someone. Fairley was accused in 2018 of murdering a man in witness protection. The judge, however, cited a “number of matters involving the defendant, state and others,’’ and he was given a 15-year suspended sentence with no time served.

Now set that aside temporarily and consider all of this under the backdrop of the NCAA’s Wednesday decision to allow student-athletes to gamble on professional sports.

Cursed by undeniable bad timing, the national body announced just 24 hours before the indictments that it was reversing its long-standing rule prohibiting college athletes from betting on sports in which an NCAA championship is wagered. Though they still cannot wager on college sports, as of November 1 student-athletes are free to gamble on professionals.

The NCAA’s argument for its about-face is that the world has changed significantly, and it has. At the 2009 Final Four in Detroit, North Carolina guard Ty Lawson decided to take advantage of his head coach’s lenient 1:30 a.m. curfew. He took a quick walk from the team hotel to the nearby casino in the city’s famous Greektown and promptly won $250 at the craps table. He shared the news the next day at a media session when asked if he had any luck at the casinos.

Knickers were twisted and pearls clutched. The NCAA at the time had an uncomfortable relationship with the very concept of gambling, with the organization’s then-president, Myles Brand, going so far as to say that while he couldn’t stop athletes from playing church bingo, he wasn’t going to encourage it, either.

Which now seems so quaint to be almost silly.

Sports gambling is now permissible in some 30 states and online gambling, for better or worse, is everywhere on college campuses. In reversing its stance, the NCAA argued that limiting the betting rules would allow college athletes to “better align with their campus peers.’’

But while a sophomore physics major might have the scoop on what his or her former pal who graduated last year is doing in the lab, no one is terribly interested in shaking them down for that information. But a junior who played in the backcourt alongside a first-round draft pick a year earlier? A different story.

Even without intent, a college athlete, student manager or staff member could innocently be handed a tip that could turn profitable – an innocuous text about a turned ankle or a chat during an Xbox game about an All-Star teammate who just cinched his back might mean thousands to someone.

Rather than trying to legislate ethics, the NCAA is standing on law. Sharing such information is already illegal so, without sounding flippant, it is taking the same approach some have taken toward preventing teen pregnancy. Recognizing that abstinence is improbable, they’ve turned toward education.

The NCAA has blanketed campuses with educational programs via in-person workshops and seminars and created several online resources. It’s partnered with outside groups to monitor online abuse and threats, and it’s pushed states to eliminate prop bets involving college games. To date four (Ohio, Vermont, Maryland and Louisiana) have banned them and two others (New Jersey and North Carolina) have initiated legislation to eliminate them.

It is nearly impossible to eliminate sports gambling, especially with the proliferation and easy availability of apps, and rather than seek punitive damages for making mistakes, the NCAA hopes it can teach its athletes what not to do.

Still, that asks a lot of college kids, especially when the mixed messages are everywhere. Consider that longtime broadcaster Brent Musburger got summoned to the ESPN offices for referring to an over/under during a college football game, and now game breaks are littered with ads from FanDuel and DraftKings, and the network has its own sportsbook, ESPNBet.

Less than 20 years after Lawson made legal bets at the Detroit casino, 18 teams will convene over Thanksgiving week for the Players Era Tournament. The games will be played at MGM Grand Garden Arena, in the MGM Resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

And if NBA players who make millions can be lured – Rozier is in the last year of a more than $90-million contract – imagine the susceptibility of college students. They are easy marks, equal parts naive and eager for cash.

Just last month, the NCAA announced it, too, was knee deep in a game-fixing investigation. NCAA enforcement officials were looking at 13 college basketball players from six different schools for betting on or against their own teams.

Conspirators, it would seem, wisely targeted low-major schools – Eastern Michigan, New Orleans, North Carolina A&T and Mississippi Valley State are among them – where athletes don’t have profitable name, image and likeness deals at their disposal, nor do athletic departments have a surplus of funds to provide the staffing to continually monitor and educate their athletes.

While the details of those investigations have not yet been released, according to a Sports Illustrated report, among the outsiders alleged to be involved in the game fixing: Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley.

This is not six degrees of separation.

The foxes are already in the henhouse.