If you’ve managed to avoid the world of sports betting and the constant feed of wagering information and content being pumped your way, you might be wondering what exactly Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter is being investigated for.
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Porter wasn’t in the Raptors lineup on Monday following reports that the NBA was looking into irregularities in prop bets related to the 24-year-old player.
Prop bets, or proposition bets, are wagers not tied to the game’s final score or outcome and can be centred around either the team or an individual, or even a coin toss or national anthem.
A team prop bet would be something like: Which team will reach 30 points first? An individual prop bet could be: Will player X score more or less than 15.5 points?
In Porter’s case, the league reportedly is investigating individual prop bets tied to his performance.
As a fringe player (Porter is on a two-way contract with the Raptors and set to earn $415,000 this season), the prop bet lines for Porter on any given night are quite low, for instance: Will Porter score more or less than 5.5 points? And one would imagine the total number of bets made by gamblers on Porter would also be very low.
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For these reasons, it likely caught the eye of the NBA when prop bets on a fairly anonymous player reportedly started to spike in recent months.
ESPN reports that the games in question all took place between Jan. 26 and March 20.
In a Jan. 26 game versus the L.A. Clippers, one prop bet on Porter was: Will he make more or less than 0.5 three-pointers. That night, Porter left the game after playing just four minutes, aggravating an eye injury suffered earlier in the week. He didn’t attempt a three-point shot.
The next day DraftKings Sportsbook’s daily press release stated that bets on Porter hitting under 0.5 three-pointers were the day’s biggest moneymakers for bettors.
Last week in a game against the Sacramento Kings, Porter played just three minutes before leaving with an illness. The next day DraftKings’ report showed that, again, under wagers on Porter were the day’s top earner for gamblers.
As of now, nothing has been proven, Porter is sitting out, and the league reportedly is investigating.
But for those of you not familiar with sports betting, this is why the NBA is looking into a Toronto Raptor bench player.
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