When the Dallas Mavericks made the franchise-altering decision to trade Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers, former majority team owner Mark Cuban tried to play things down the middle. When asked about the trade, Cuban initially admitted he would have tried to seek a better deal, but failed to say whether he would have made the trade if he were still in charge.
Mavericks fans may have finally received the answer to that question Wednesday, when Cuban made an appearance on the “Your Mom’s House” podcast with comedian Tom Segura. Cuban was asked about the deal around the 54-minute mark of the show.
After explaining he no longer has operating control within the franchise, Cuban revealed he received a text from team general manager Nico Harrison on the night Dončić was traded. Cuban initially thought Harrison was asking for the former owner’s opinion on the deal, but eventually realized the trade had already gone down. Cuban said he responded to the text by saying he “didn’t agree with” trading Dončić. Cuban added, “It wasn’t my decision to make.”
Cuban then agreed with Segura’s opinion that Dončić is a generational player. Cuban compared the situation to allowing Steve Nash to leave the Mavericks after the 2003-04 NBA season. Nash joined the Phoenix Suns and immediately won back-to-back MVPs with his new club. Cuban admitted the decision to let Nash walk would have looked a lot worse had the Suns beat the Mavericks in the 2005-06 Western Conference Finals. Dallas advanced to the Finals that season, but fell to the Miami Heat in six games.
Mark Cuban opens up on Luka Dončić trade
Roughly a month after Dončić was sent to the Lakers for Anthony Davis, Cuban made his first public comments on the trade. During an interview with WFAA, Cuban said he wished the Mavericks would have held out for a better deal for Dončić. When asked by WFAA whether he would have traded Dončić, Cuban declined to answer, saying, “I’m not going to go there. Doesn’t matter.”
Cuban’s comments on Segura’s podcast seemingly answered that question. That response should come as no surprise. Given how angrily Mavericks fans reacted to the Dončić deal, Cuban was wise to further distance himself from the deal during Wednesday’s interview.
When the Dallas Mavericks made the franchise-altering decision to trade Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers, former majority team owner Mark Cuban tried to play things down the middle. When asked about the trade, Cuban initially admitted he would have tried to seek a better deal, but failed to say whether he would have made the trade if he were still in charge.
Mavericks fans may have finally received the answer to that question Wednesday, when Cuban made an appearance on the “Your Mom’s House” podcast with comedian Tom Segura. Cuban was asked about the deal around the 54-minute mark of the show.
After explaining he no longer has operating control within the franchise, Cuban revealed he received a text from team general manager Nico Harrison on the night Dončić was traded. Cuban initially thought Harrison was asking for the former owner’s opinion on the deal, but eventually realized the trade had already gone down. Cuban said he responded to the text by saying he “didn’t agree with” trading Dončić. Cuban added, “It wasn’t my decision to make.”
Cuban then agreed with Segura’s opinion that Dončić is a generational player. Cuban compared the situation to allowing Steve Nash to leave the Mavericks after the 2003-04 NBA season. Nash joined the Phoenix Suns and immediately won back-to-back MVPs with his new club. Cuban admitted the decision to let Nash walk would have looked a lot worse had the Suns beat the Mavericks in the 2005-06 Western Conference Finals. Dallas advanced to the Finals that season, but fell to the Miami Heat in six games.
Mark Cuban opens up on Luka Dončić trade
Roughly a month after Dončić was sent to the Lakers for Anthony Davis, Cuban made his first public comments on the trade. During an interview with WFAA, Cuban said he wished the Mavericks would have held out for a better deal for Dončić. When asked by WFAA whether he would have traded Dončić, Cuban declined to answer, saying, “I’m not going to go there. Doesn’t matter.”
Cuban’s comments on Segura’s podcast seemingly answered that question. That response should come as no surprise. Given how angrily Mavericks fans reacted to the Dončić deal, Cuban was wise to further distance himself from the deal during Wednesday’s interview.
Cooper Flagg hasn’t worn an NBA uniform yet, but make no mistake about it, his presence is being felt all across the league.
The 18-year-old made his NCAA tournament debut Friday against Mount St. Mary’s, fighting through an ankle injury that knocked him out for most of the ACC tournament. You can be sure that the stands will be peppered with NBA scouts and executives getting a closer look at the loaded Duke Blue Devils, but they know what they’re getting with Flagg. The 6-foot-9 forward has long been considered the consensus No. 1 overall pick while leading the ACC and the entire NCAA field in just about every advanced metric.
We can take a guess at how NBA teams feel about Flagg because the league has launched multiple investigations into teams for purposely sitting good players on bad teams: i.e. tanking. This problem isn’t new as the NBA has wrestled with the black eye of tanking for decades.
It’s clear that tanking practices are alive and well. Last week, the NBA fined the Utah Jazz $100,000 for violating the league’s Player Participation Policy involving 2023 All-Star Lauri Markkanen, who sat against the Washington Wizards earlier in the month (league investigators determined that Markkanen was fit to play). The league has also reportedly launched an investigation into the Philadelphia 76ers, who have a top-6 protected first-round pick in the 2025 Draft, for sitting their stars Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George.
However, there are more subtle tanking practices that have taken hold across the NBA that seem to be, at the very least, tolerated by the league office. And it has created a problematic climate that staffers around the league worry could get dangerous quickly.
@NBA the @utahjazz are rigging the system, they are purposely losing games, sitting out Lauri Markkanen, a serious investigation it’s be conducted this is rigged
More recently, the NBA has installed three major guardrails in place to try to curb the integrity-threatening practice of tanking.
In 2019, the league office agreed to flatten the lottery odds for the worst teams, capping the chances of winning the No. 1 overall pick at 14 percent each for the bottom three teams. Until then, the league incentivized a race to the bottom by rewarding the biggest loser with a 25 percent chance at securing the top selection, much higher than the second-worst team at 19.9 percent and the third team at 15.6 percent.
Secondly, the NBA implemented a play-in tournament designed to encourage more teams to compete for a playoff spot and dissuade them from gunning for lottery balls. Instead of 30 teams fighting for 16 spots, there are now 20 spots to entice more losing teams to try to win.
Lastly, in 2023, the NBA established the Player Participation Policy which was aimed at every team, not just the basement-dwellers, to play its best players as much as possible. The league has used the PPP to open investigations into the Oklahoma City Thunder for sitting their starting five against the Portland Trail Blazers earlier this month. The PPP came on the heels of the Dallas Mavericks violating the league’s previous player resting policy and being fined $750,000 for tanking in 2023.
“The Mavericks’ actions,” NBA executive vice president Joe Dumars stated at the time, “failed our fans and our league.”
But even after six-figure fines, teams continue to exploit loopholes in ways that expose unintended consequences of the PPP.
The Cooper Flagg Sweepstakes has led to new ways to tank. (Photo by Lance King/Getty Images)
Lance King via Getty Images
Resting a key player … after a rest day
Fans hoping to watch Cam Johnson on Thursday were undoubtedly left disappointed. And utterly confused. The Nets starter, who is averaging a career-high 18.9 points and establishing himself as a serious front-facing talent on “The Young Man And The Three” podcast, isn’t injured or dealing with an illness. Nonetheless, the Nets announced he wouldn’t be suiting up in Thursday’s game against the Indiana Pacers. Instead, he’d be in street clothes due to what the team is designating as “rest.”
The curious thing is that the Nets were resting Johnson even though they did not play Wednesday. A look at the schedule reveals the Nets are not playing Friday either. This, it turns out, isn’t a back-to-back situation. There is no cross-country flight for their next game. Actually, the Nets aren’t even traveling between Thursday and Saturday’s game, playing a two-game set against the Pacers both in Indianapolis.
Alas, the Nets deemed that Johnson, who played in 19 straight games sandwiched around the All-Star break, needed to sit out the game for recovery purposes.
In related news, the Nets entered Thursday tied with the Philadelphia 76ers for fifth-best odds in the lottery sweepstakes, a team that’s already under investigation for removing multiple star players from the floor. Without their best shooter, the Nets shot 28 percent from downtown and lost in overtime against Indiana, giving them a better chance at more pingpong ball combos for lottery night.
The healthy scratch, also known as the DNP-Rest, used to be a button that teams pressed during back-to-back sets. In these scenarios, a team and its medical staff determined that a player wouldn’t be subjected to injury risk associated with playing two games in as many days.
But now it’s bled into games outside of back-to-back sets. It appears that there’s a contagious quality to this practice because more and more teams are adopting the strategy. This is the NBA. Once one team figures out a loophole, others will soon follow.
On the tanking scoreboard, the Nets seem to be merely keeping up with the Joneses. The Nets have assuredly seen the Toronto Raptors shamelessly pulling the same lever and skirting any league investigations. The Raptors, who were tied on Thursday in the loss column with Brooklyn, have led the NBA with nine DNP-Rests this month, topping the loss-leading Jazz, who have five listed DNP-Rests.
The Toronto cases seem to fit a rotational pattern. On March 20 against Golden State, RJ Barrett was a DNP-Rest with an off day on both sides. On March 14 against Utah, Jakob Poeltl was a DNP-Rest with an off day on both sides. On March 12 against Philadelphia, Immanuel Quickley was a DNP-Rest with an off day on both sides. On March 10 against Washington, Poeltl was a DNP-Rest … you get the idea. The Raptors have rested a key player — whether it’s Barrett, Quickley or Poeltl — for each of the last eight games. All scot-free from any league punishment.
So why are Jazz getting hammered for sitting Markkanen — a guy who’s averaging 19.0 points and 5.9 rebounds — while the Raptors can legally sit Barrett, who’s averaging 21.5 points per game and 6.5 rebounds?
It comes down to the letter of the law. The league deems Markkanen a “star player” because he has been named to an All-Star or All-NBA team during the previous three seasons, which is the designated criteria for “star player” status in the Player Participation Policy. The same goes for the Sixers’ star trio of Embiid, Maxey and George who are the subjects of the league’s investigation. It’s likely why the Raptors have not included Scottie Barnes, a 2024 All-Star, in those DNP-Rest games.
But a closer look at Barnes’ substitution patterns reveals a subtle tanking strategy that has caught the eye around the league. The Jazz have evidently taken notice because they’ve followed the same blueprint. If the Jazz and Raptors can’t sit their stars for the entire game, they’ve resorted to a half-measure: quiet-quitting in the middle of the game.
Dawg @Raptors benched their best player Scottie Barnes for the entire fourth quarter. In a close game …Wtf is going on @nba 😂😂😂
It was 2019 when the New Orleans Pelicans had a 7-foot problem on their hands. The face of their franchise, Anthony Davis, wanted out, but still wanted to play basketball. In order to protect Davis from injuring himself and ruining trade value, in addition to maximizing their upcoming first-round draft pick, the Pelicans sat Davis in games down the stretch.
The league stepped in and reminded the Pelicans of the league’s competitive integrity rules that required a healthy Davis to play. The ensuing compromise created a mockery of the competition. Davis played, but the team would bench its best player in fourth quarters even when wins were within grasp.
Scottie Barnes is no Anthony Davis, but like Davis, he is today deemed a star by the NBA’s Player Participation Policy and the Raptors are quietly following the Davis blueprint by sitting Barnes and other key players in clutch situations. Against the Blazers on Sunday, Barnes checked out at the 8:40 mark in the fourth quarter with 16 points, six steals, six rebounds and six steals and never returned. Barnes and Poeltl watched crunchtime from the bench as the Raptors blew a six-point lead with 5:22 left remaining. The Raptors lost by three.
That was a mild tank-job attempt compared to the shenanigans that transpired two days earlier against the Jazz. In that game, the Raptors held an 11-point lead with 9:51 left in the fourth quarter. Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic signaled for Jamison Battle, Colin Castleton and Jamal Shead to check in for the team’s three best players Barrett, Quickley and Barnes. As the game began to tighten to a two-possession game, the Raptors’ trio never checked back in. The Raptors held on to win by eight.
Part of the reason why the Raptors didn’t feel compelled to play their best players down the stretch? The Jazz engaged in some shenanigans of their own, playing their star, Markkanen, for only 19 minutes in the game. Markkanen started the game but didn’t play in the entire second half. He joined his fellow backcourt mate Walker Kessler, who suited up, but coach Will Hardy never called him into the game. This was Utah’s response after the league fined them $100,000 for sitting Markkanen.
And one of the NBA’s closest partners is voicing their concern: the betting community.
The @Raptors not putting Scottie Barnes in with the game on the line is bogus…. Tanking for Cooper Flagg but ruining slips everywhere! CONGRATS sports books!
NBA players leaving games early for mysterious reasons might seem like harmless gamesmanship. Hey, we’re talking about a bunch of extra pingpong balls bouncing around a plastic container, what’s the big deal? But this is not all fun and games. A former NBA player, Jontay Porter — a Toronto Raptor no less — could face up to 20 years in federal prison for doing that very thing — leaving games early under dubious circumstances. Porter was charged with conspiring with a group of bettors to fix his over/under player props for financial gain. It’s the first NBA fixing scandal since 1954.
Here we are, less than a year later, watching key Raptors players mysteriously sit in the game’s biggest moments, raising all sorts of eyebrows in the betting community and beyond. The unfortunate residue of the Porter scandal casts a dark shadow on every late-game benching in the NBA. Was he really hurt? Did he just pull a Porter? What were his pregame props?
But the true danger goes beyond cynical hunches. Throughout the season, multiple staffers from NBA teams at various levels have reported to Yahoo Sports that sports bettors have increasingly made death threats in person and on social media channels, going as far as invoking family members and personal information, a leaguewide trend that The Athletic covered last month. And it’s only gotten worse with the tanking teams.
More recently, teams at the bottom of the standings have been trapped in the convoluted web of the NBA’s contradictory incentive structure. By giving the worst teams the best odds at landing a franchise-changing talent like Cooper Flagg in the draft, it incentivizes teams to lose games at the end of the season. On one hand, these teams acting in their own self-interest could choose to be transparent, sit their best players and play the long game of increasing their odds at winning the Flagg sweepstakes. But that, as we’ve seen with the Jazz and others, would incur fines from the league office.
The alternative strategy — quiet-quitting in the middle of games — hasn’t been the subject of any ongoing investigations, sources tell Yahoo Sports. But it already comes at a potentially grave cost: getting flooded with death threats.
Around the league, sources have said they’ve dealt with toxic messages in recent weeks that have become so commonplace that they’ve tried to become numb to it, shrugging it off as the unfortunate cost of doing business with sportsbooks.
Because of how much money players, coaches and executives are making these days, few are willing to speak openly about the growing undercurrent of gambling-related allegations that are difficult to discern what’s serious and what’s not. Some aren’t willing to be quiet about it. A year ago, Indiana Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton said, “To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings or whatever … I’m the prop.”
Last season, J.B. Bickerstaff, then coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers, revealed that he received gambling-related death threats from bettors in 2022-23 and reported it to the league office.
“They got my telephone number and were sending me crazy messages about where I live and my kids and all that stuff,” Bickerstaff said. “So it is a dangerous game and a fine line that we’re walking for sure.”
If it wasn’t for Bickerstaff speaking up, we might not have ever known about it. The story wasn’t reported until Bickerstaff shared it in a postgame press conference a year later. He said the gambler who made the threats was found. “I understand the business side of it and the nature of the business of it,” Bickerstaff said. “But I mean, it is something that I believe has gone too far.”
Making everything trickier and potentially more dangerous is that coaches, who are often the subject of these death threats, have inside information about player availability strategies on a specific game. If the Raptors know before a particular game that they’re going to sit Barnes, Quickley and Poeltl down the stretch, that strategic information would be particularly valuable to bettors and sportsbooks. By rule, teams have to disclose who’s on the injury report in the lead-up to tipoff, but not whether they’re going to play a full game — and thus have a better chance at hitting their player prop overs.
We’ll see if the quiet-quitting continues during March Madness, and which team wins the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes in May. In 2018-19, after weeks of shenanigans with Davis, the Pelicans ended up shutting down their star for the final two weeks of the season and, for their efforts, landed with the seventh-best odds at No. 1.
One month later, the Pelicans won the draft lottery, earning the right to draft Zion Williamson, a Duke big man who was considered the best prospect in years.
Cooper Flagg hasn’t worn an NBA uniform yet, but make no mistake about it, his presence is being felt all across the league.
The 18-year-old made his NCAA tournament debut Friday against Mount St. Mary’s, fighting through an ankle injury that knocked him out for most of the ACC tournament. You can be sure that the stands will be peppered with NBA scouts and executives getting a closer look at the loaded Duke Blue Devils, but they know what they’re getting with Flagg. The 6-foot-9 forward has long been considered the consensus No. 1 overall pick while leading the ACC and the entire NCAA field in just about every advanced metric.
We can take a guess at how NBA teams feel about Flagg because the league has launched multiple investigations into teams for purposely sitting good players on bad teams: i.e. tanking. This problem isn’t new as the NBA has wrestled with the black eye of tanking for decades.
It’s clear that tanking practices are alive and well. Last week, the NBA fined the Utah Jazz $100,000 for violating the league’s Player Participation Policy involving 2023 All-Star Lauri Markkanen, who sat against the Washington Wizards earlier in the month (league investigators determined that Markkanen was fit to play). The league has also reportedly launched an investigation into the Philadelphia 76ers, who have a top-6 protected first-round pick in the 2025 Draft, for sitting their stars Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George.
However, there are more subtle tanking practices that have taken hold across the NBA that seem to be, at the very least, tolerated by the league office. And it has created a problematic climate that staffers around the league worry could get dangerous quickly.
@NBA the @utahjazz are rigging the system, they are purposely losing games, sitting out Lauri Markkanen, a serious investigation it’s be conducted this is rigged
More recently, the NBA has installed three major guardrails in place to try to curb the integrity-threatening practice of tanking.
In 2019, the league office agreed to flatten the lottery odds for the worst teams, capping the chances of winning the No. 1 overall pick at 14 percent each for the bottom three teams. Until then, the league incentivized a race to the bottom by rewarding the biggest loser with a 25 percent chance at securing the top selection, much higher than the second-worst team at 19.9 percent and the third team at 15.6 percent.
Secondly, the NBA implemented a play-in tournament designed to encourage more teams to compete for a playoff spot and dissuade them from gunning for lottery balls. Instead of 30 teams fighting for 16 spots, there are now 20 spots to entice more losing teams to try to win.
Lastly, in 2023, the NBA established the Player Participation Policy which was aimed at every team, not just the basement-dwellers, to play its best players as much as possible. The league has used the PPP to open investigations into the Oklahoma City Thunder for sitting their starting five against the Portland Trail Blazers earlier this month. The PPP came on the heels of the Dallas Mavericks violating the league’s previous player resting policy and being fined $750,000 for tanking in 2023.
“The Mavericks’ actions,” NBA executive vice president Joe Dumars stated at the time, “failed our fans and our league.”
But even after six-figure fines, teams continue to exploit loopholes in ways that expose unintended consequences of the PPP.
The Cooper Flagg Sweepstakes has led to new ways to tank. (Photo by Lance King/Getty Images)
Lance King via Getty Images
Resting a key player … after a rest day
Fans hoping to watch Cam Johnson on Thursday were undoubtedly left disappointed. And utterly confused. The Nets starter, who is averaging a career-high 18.9 points and establishing himself as a serious front-facing talent on “The Young Man And The Three” podcast, isn’t injured or dealing with an illness. Nonetheless, the Nets announced he wouldn’t be suiting up in Thursday’s game against the Indiana Pacers. Instead, he’d be in street clothes due to what the team is designating as “rest.”
The curious thing is that the Nets were resting Johnson even though they did not play Wednesday. A look at the schedule reveals the Nets are not playing Friday either. This, it turns out, isn’t a back-to-back situation. There is no cross-country flight for their next game. Actually, the Nets aren’t even traveling between Thursday and Saturday’s game, playing a two-game set against the Pacers both in Indianapolis.
Alas, the Nets deemed that Johnson, who played in 19 straight games sandwiched around the All-Star break, needed to sit out the game for recovery purposes.
In related news, the Nets entered Thursday tied with the Philadelphia 76ers for fifth-best odds in the lottery sweepstakes, a team that’s already under investigation for removing multiple star players from the floor. Without their best shooter, the Nets shot 28 percent from downtown and lost in overtime against Indiana, giving them a better chance at more pingpong ball combos for lottery night.
The healthy scratch, also known as the DNP-Rest, used to be a button that teams pressed during back-to-back sets. In these scenarios, a team and its medical staff determined that a player wouldn’t be subjected to injury risk associated with playing two games in as many days.
But now it’s bled into games outside of back-to-back sets. It appears that there’s a contagious quality to this practice because more and more teams are adopting the strategy. This is the NBA. Once one team figures out a loophole, others will soon follow.
On the tanking scoreboard, the Nets seem to be merely keeping up with the Joneses. The Nets have assuredly seen the Toronto Raptors shamelessly pulling the same lever and skirting any league investigations. The Raptors, who were tied on Thursday in the loss column with Brooklyn, have led the NBA with nine DNP-Rests this month, topping the loss-leading Jazz, who have five listed DNP-Rests.
The Toronto cases seem to fit a rotational pattern. On March 20 against Golden State, RJ Barrett was a DNP-Rest with an off day on both sides. On March 14 against Utah, Jakob Poeltl was a DNP-Rest with an off day on both sides. On March 12 against Philadelphia, Immanuel Quickley was a DNP-Rest with an off day on both sides. On March 10 against Washington, Poeltl was a DNP-Rest … you get the idea. The Raptors have rested a key player — whether it’s Barrett, Quickley or Poeltl — for each of the last eight games. All scot-free from any league punishment.
So why are Jazz getting hammered for sitting Markkanen — a guy who’s averaging 19.0 points and 5.9 rebounds — while the Raptors can legally sit Barrett, who’s averaging 21.5 points per game and 6.5 rebounds?
It comes down to the letter of the law. The league deems Markkanen a “star player” because he has been named to an All-Star or All-NBA team during the previous three seasons, which is the designated criteria for “star player” status in the Player Participation Policy. The same goes for the Sixers’ star trio of Embiid, Maxey and George who are the subjects of the league’s investigation. It’s likely why the Raptors have not included Scottie Barnes, a 2024 All-Star, in those DNP-Rest games.
But a closer look at Barnes’ substitution patterns reveals a subtle tanking strategy that has caught the eye around the league. The Jazz have evidently taken notice because they’ve followed the same blueprint. If the Jazz and Raptors can’t sit their stars for the entire game, they’ve resorted to a half-measure: quiet-quitting in the middle of the game.
Dawg @Raptors benched their best player Scottie Barnes for the entire fourth quarter. In a close game …Wtf is going on @nba 😂😂😂
It was 2019 when the New Orleans Pelicans had a 7-foot problem on their hands. The face of their franchise, Anthony Davis, wanted out, but still wanted to play basketball. In order to protect Davis from injuring himself and ruining trade value, in addition to maximizing their upcoming first-round draft pick, the Pelicans sat Davis in games down the stretch.
The league stepped in and reminded the Pelicans of the league’s competitive integrity rules that required a healthy Davis to play. The ensuing compromise created a mockery of the competition. Davis played, but the team would bench its best player in fourth quarters even when wins were within grasp.
Scottie Barnes is no Anthony Davis, but like Davis, he is today deemed a star by the NBA’s Player Participation Policy and the Raptors are quietly following the Davis blueprint by sitting Barnes and other key players in clutch situations. Against the Blazers on Sunday, Barnes checked out at the 8:40 mark in the fourth quarter with 16 points, six steals, six rebounds and six steals and never returned. Barnes and Poeltl watched crunchtime from the bench as the Raptors blew a six-point lead with 5:22 left remaining. The Raptors lost by three.
That was a mild tank-job attempt compared to the shenanigans that transpired two days earlier against the Jazz. In that game, the Raptors held an 11-point lead with 9:51 left in the fourth quarter. Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic signaled for Jamison Battle, Colin Castleton and Jamal Shead to check in for the team’s three best players Barrett, Quickley and Barnes. As the game began to tighten to a two-possession game, the Raptors’ trio never checked back in. The Raptors held on to win by eight.
Part of the reason why the Raptors didn’t feel compelled to play their best players down the stretch? The Jazz engaged in some shenanigans of their own, playing their star, Markkanen, for only 19 minutes in the game. Markkanen started the game but didn’t play in the entire second half. He joined his fellow backcourt mate Walker Kessler, who suited up, but coach Will Hardy never called him into the game. This was Utah’s response after the league fined them $100,000 for sitting Markkanen.
And one of the NBA’s closest partners is voicing their concern: the betting community.
The @Raptors not putting Scottie Barnes in with the game on the line is bogus…. Tanking for Cooper Flagg but ruining slips everywhere! CONGRATS sports books!
NBA players leaving games early for mysterious reasons might seem like harmless gamesmanship. Hey, we’re talking about a bunch of extra pingpong balls bouncing around a plastic container, what’s the big deal? But this is not all fun and games. A former NBA player, Jontay Porter — a Toronto Raptor no less — could face up to 20 years in federal prison for doing that very thing — leaving games early under dubious circumstances. Porter was charged with conspiring with a group of bettors to fix his over/under player props for financial gain. It’s the first NBA fixing scandal since 1954.
Here we are, less than a year later, watching key Raptors players mysteriously sit in the game’s biggest moments, raising all sorts of eyebrows in the betting community and beyond. The unfortunate residue of the Porter scandal casts a dark shadow on every late-game benching in the NBA. Was he really hurt? Did he just pull a Porter? What were his pregame props?
But the true danger goes beyond cynical hunches. Throughout the season, multiple staffers from NBA teams at various levels have reported to Yahoo Sports that sports bettors have increasingly made death threats in person and on social media channels, going as far as invoking family members and personal information, a leaguewide trend that The Athletic covered last month. And it’s only gotten worse with the tanking teams.
More recently, teams at the bottom of the standings have been trapped in the convoluted web of the NBA’s contradictory incentive structure. By giving the worst teams the best odds at landing a franchise-changing talent like Cooper Flagg in the draft, it incentivizes teams to lose games at the end of the season. On one hand, these teams acting in their own self-interest could choose to be transparent, sit their best players and play the long game of increasing their odds at winning the Flagg sweepstakes. But that, as we’ve seen with the Jazz and others, would incur fines from the league office.
The alternative strategy — quiet-quitting in the middle of games — hasn’t been the subject of any ongoing investigations, sources tell Yahoo Sports. But it already comes at a potentially grave cost: getting flooded with death threats.
Around the league, sources have said they’ve dealt with toxic messages in recent weeks that have become so commonplace that they’ve tried to become numb to it, shrugging it off as the unfortunate cost of doing business with sportsbooks.
Because of how much money players, coaches and executives are making these days, few are willing to speak openly about the growing undercurrent of gambling-related allegations that are difficult to discern what’s serious and what’s not. Some aren’t willing to be quiet about it. A year ago, Indiana Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton said, “To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings or whatever … I’m the prop.”
Last season, J.B. Bickerstaff, then coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers, revealed that he received gambling-related death threats from bettors in 2022-23 and reported it to the league office.
“They got my telephone number and were sending me crazy messages about where I live and my kids and all that stuff,” Bickerstaff said. “So it is a dangerous game and a fine line that we’re walking for sure.”
If it wasn’t for Bickerstaff speaking up, we might not have ever known about it. The story wasn’t reported until Bickerstaff shared it in a postgame press conference a year later. He said the gambler who made the threats was found. “I understand the business side of it and the nature of the business of it,” Bickerstaff said. “But I mean, it is something that I believe has gone too far.”
Making everything trickier and potentially more dangerous is that coaches, who are often the subject of these death threats, have inside information about player availability strategies on a specific game. If the Raptors know before a particular game that they’re going to sit Barnes, Quickley and Poeltl down the stretch, that strategic information would be particularly valuable to bettors and sportsbooks. By rule, teams have to disclose who’s on the injury report in the lead-up to tipoff, but not whether they’re going to play a full game — and thus have a better chance at hitting their player prop overs.
We’ll see if the quiet-quitting continues during March Madness, and which team wins the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes in May. In 2018-19, after weeks of shenanigans with Davis, the Pelicans ended up shutting down their star for the final two weeks of the season and, for their efforts, landed with the seventh-best odds at No. 1.
One month later, the Pelicans won the draft lottery, earning the right to draft Zion Williamson, a Duke big man who was considered the best prospect in years.
Julio Urías pitching for the Dodgers in the 2021 NLDS against the Giants. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Former Dodgers pitcher Julio Urías was suspended through the All-Star break for a second violation of MLB’s policy against domestic violence and sexual assault.
Under the discipline, announced Friday by commissioner Rob Manfred, Urías will be reinstated July 17 and be eligible to sign with any team.
Urías is the first player suspended twice under the policy, which was adopted in 2015. Urías was suspended for 20 games in 2019.
The latest suspension does not cover a particular number of games, as teams do not play a uniform number of games before the break. The Dodgers, for instance, are scheduled to play 95 games before the break.
Bauer is the only player who has contested such a suspension.
The 28-year-old Urías, a native of Mexico, is a free agent and would be eligible to sign with a team in the Mexican League, even as he remains on the restricted list in MLB.
Players suspended under the policy often issue a statement through the players union. Urias chose not to do so.
MLB said Urías agreed to evaluation by a policy board overseen by the league and the union and to comply with any recommended treatment plan. MLB also said it would “continue to make support services available to Urías and his family.”
Said Manfred in the statement: “The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball has completed its investigation into allegations that free agent pitcher Julio Urías violated Major League Baseball’s Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy. Having reviewed all of the available evidence, I have concluded that Mr. Urías violated our Policy and that discipline is appropriate.”
Urías was arrested outside BMO Stadium on Sept. 3, 2023, following an LAFC game. Eight months later he pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor count of domestic battery. Witness video provided to the California Highway Patrol and obtained by The Times last September shows Urías charging after his wife, pulling her aside and shoving her against a fence. After the two were separated, the video shows Urías swinging at her with his left hand.
The MLB investigation was delayed in part because, while the existence of the video was reported shortly after the incident, league officials had not seen it until The Times published it.
Urías was arrested on suspicion of felony domestic violence, but the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office determined that “neither the victim’s injuries nor the defendant’s criminal history justify a felony filing.” The city attorney’s office subsequently filed five misdemeanor charges against Urías. He pleaded no contest to one, the other four were dropped, and he agreed to enter a yearlong domestic violence treatment program.
He also agreed to complete a similar program in 2019, when he was arrested after an incident in the Beverly Center parking lot. Witnesses said he pushed his fiancee, she said she fell, and no charges were filed.
The league subsequently suspended him. Under its policy the league can suspend a player even if no charges are filed.
At that time Urías issued a statement that read in part: “Although the authorities determined no charges of any kind were warranted, I accept full responsibility for what I believe was my inappropriate conduct during the incident.
“Even in this instance where there was no injury or history of violence, I understand and agree that Major League players should be held to a higher standard. I hold myself to a higher standard as well.”
Urías was placed on administrative leave for the final month of the 2023 season, after which his contract with the Dodgers expired and he became a free agent.
He has not pitched since then.
Bauer, a Cy Young Award winner, has been a free agent since January 2023, following the arbitrator’s ruling. No major league team has signed him. He pitched in Japan in 2023 and in Mexico in 2024 and signed to return to Japan this year.
Urías recorded the final out of the Dodgers’ World Series championship in 2020. He led the National League in victories (20) in 2021 and earned-run average (2.16) in 2022.
Garmin watches like my beloved Forerunner 265S have so many features buried in their menus that you may not have discovered some of the best ones. Here are some of the best underrated features of Garmin watches (available on Forerunners and other models), as well as convenient shortcuts you’ll find yourself using all the time.
Shortcuts for getting around your Garmin watch
Left is the flashlight (it’s brighter in the dark, I promise). Right is what you get when you long press on the sunset time complication. Credit: Beth Skwarecki
Quickly get back to the home screen
This works on all the touchscreen watches: Wherever you are, no matter how many menus deep, just cover the screen with your palm. The screen will go dark, and when you activate it again (by tapping the touchscreen, flicking your wrist, or hitting the top left “light” button), it will be back at the home screen.
Pull up a flashlight
Double press the light button (top left). Even if your watch isn’t equipped with an LED flashlight, this will turn on the flashlight app that displays bright white pixels to provide a soft light. It’s handy for going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, or getting out of your kid’s room at bedtime without stepping on a LEGO. Oh—and you can quickly turn it off by putting your palm over the screen.
Long press your watch face complications
Unlike on an Apple Watch, you can’t tap a complication to get more information about it. I assumed that meant the complications weren’t interactive. But no—you need to long press the complication, and then you get the info. My sunrise/sunset complication pulls up a circular chart with sunrise, sunset, dusk, and dawn times (and an option to look at different dates or locations). You can also use this to get more information on complications that were on by default and you never quite figured out what they are.
Garmin Share
The watch on the left is sending a workout to the watch on the right. Credit: Beth Skwarecki
If you run with others, or like to discuss workouts with a friend who also uses Garmin, you’ll love the Garmin Share feature, which allows you to beam a workout (or course map) to another person’s watch. “What’s a Norwegian 4×4?” my husband might say. “Here, I’ll send it to you,” I can answer, and he’ll have it in his on-watch workout library in seconds.
How to send items with Garmin Share:
Hit the Start button as if you were going to start an activity.
Scroll down until you see Garmin Share as an option. Select it.
You’ll see a screen that says Ready to Receive. Scroll down to see all your shareable items (workouts, courses, etc) and choose one.
Your watch will say “Looking for devices.” If your friend has opened up the receiving screen, their watch model and their name will become available to select.
How to receive a workout with Garmin Share:
As above, go to the Start button, scroll down, and select Garmin Share.
You’ll see a screen that says Ready to Receive.
When they share the file, you’ll get an option to say yes or no to downloading it.
You can also share a workout by finding it on your watch (as if you were going to do the workout) and then selecting Share instead of Do Workout.
Sunset alerts
You can set all kinds of alerts on your watch. One day I was poking around the menus, just curious about what was in there, when I noticed a “sunset” option.
I have this habit of going out for an evening trail run without checking how much time I’ve got until the sun goes down. It’s a recipe for regret: Either I’ll wish I brought a flashlight, or I’ll wish I had just started my run a little earlier in the day.
But now, that’s a problem of the past. I went into Settings > Notifications and Alerts > System Alerts > Til Sunset, and set the time to one hour (1:00:00). Now, I get a little buzz on my wrist when I have an hour before the sun sets. If I’m dressed for a run but have been dawdling on getting out the door, that’s my cue. And if I realize I’m not going to make it back before dark, I grab a flashlight on my way out.
Set hot keys for features that would otherwise be buried in a menu
A hot key is a shortcut—something like, long press the START button (top right) to turn sleep mode on or off.
To set up hot keys, go into settings > System > Hot Keys. There are seven you can use: holding the start, back, or down buttons, or pressing two buttons at once (start and down, start and up, back and light, or back and up).
Some of the handy features you can map to a hot key include:
Lock the device (great if you have a toddler who likes to play with your watch)
Broadcast heart rate (so that you can see your HR on gym equipment)
Change sport (if you’re running on the track, but want to switch to a regular run when kids storm the field for soccer practice)
Turn the touchscreen on or off
Bring up a stopwatch or timer
Find my phone
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
This is a standard smartwatch feature these days, but I keep seeing people discover it for the first time, so here’s your public service announcement: Hold the LIGHT button (top left) to get that wheel of little shortcut things. Select Find My Phone, and it will.
If your child has their own Android device, you no longer need to worry about loaning them your credit card or keeping cash on hand for purchases when you’re not present. Kids can now use Google Wallet for tap-to-pay—with some parental oversight, of course, so they can’t get into too much financial trouble without you knowing.
Google teased this feature last fall and in February announced its inclusion in an anticipated update to Google Family Link. Google Wallet and tap-to-pay for kids is now live and available to families in the United State, United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, and Poland.
How Google Wallet works for kids
Kids can use tap to pay when checking out in stores that accept Google Pay or contactless payments. They must have a supervised Google Account and an NFC-enabled Android device (or a tethered Wear OS watch) with the Google Wallet app and screen lock enabled.
Importantly, kids cannot use Google Wallet for online or in-app purchases or for Google services, such as Play and YouTube. While there are no additional spending controls, you’ll get an email every time there’s a successful transaction, so you can keep an eye on payments. Transaction history is also available in the Family Link app.
Kids can also store passes, such as loyalty cards, gift cards, boarding passes, and event tickets, in Google Wallet. These can be added without parental approval, and you won’t be notified if and when they are used.
How to set your child up with tap-to-pay
To add a payment card to your child’s Google Wallet, open the Wallet app on their phone and tap Add to Wallet > New credit or debit card, then hit More > Next after reading the prompt. You’ll need sign into your Google account, after which you can snap a photo of the card or enter the information manually. You’ll also need to accept both Google’s and the card issuer’s terms to proceed, and you may be prompted to verify the payment method with a code sent via email or text or by calling or logging into your bank app.
Parents can also remove cards from Google Wallet, either from a specific device or via Family Link. Open Family Link, select your child’s account, and go to Controls > Wallet > Payment methods and transactions. Then select the card and tap Remove > Remove. You cannot remove other types of passes from your child’s wallet unless you block access to passes entirely in your Family Link settings.
Note that your child must be the cardholder or an authorized user for cards added to Google Wallet.
Stephen Curry suffered a pelvic contusion, but an MRI showed no structural damage from a nasty fall Thursday night against the Raptors, the Golden State Warriors announced Friday. Curry is not traveling with the team to Atlanta for a game against the Hawks on Saturday, and he will be re-evaluated on Monday.
Stephen Curry, who exited last night’s game against the Raptors with 3:24 remaining in the third quarter after falling to the floor, underwent an MRI last night.
The MRI indicated that Curry suffered a pelvic contusion, but no structural damage. He will not travel with the team… pic.twitter.com/BdPYFwkhPH
The Warriors are on the road for their next six games and after Atlanta will face Miami on Tuesday — it’s difficult to imagine Curry being cleared Monday and making a cross-country flight to play Tuesday — then the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday.
The injury occurred in the third quarter against Toronto when Curry drove the lane and was hit as he made a pass from under the basket, causing the All-NBA guard to land flat on his back.
The Warriors can’t afford to be without Curry for long. Golden State sits sixth in the West — currently avoiding the play-in — but two hot teams in the Timberwolves and Clippers are tied just 1.5 games back with a dozen games to play.
Curry is averaging 24.2 points and 6 assists a game this season — up to 28.1 points and a game for the 18 games prior to Thursday. On the season, the Warriors are outscoring opponents by 1 point per 100 possessions (almost even) when Curry is on the court, and if he misses time it will put more pressure on Jimmy Butler and Jonathan Kuminga (just back from injury himself) to carry the offensive load.
There was a time when we all had dedicated alarm clocks on our nightstands to wake us up in the morning. Now, I’d wager a smartphone does the job for most of us (whether we like it or not).
The thing about alarms, though: They kind of need to work every time they’re scheduled to go off. There’s no acceptable percentage of failure, as, presumably, you’re setting that alarm at a specific time for a good reason. You might have work, an interview, an appointment, any number of other important obligations, and not all of them are going to tolerate “my alarm didn’t go off” as an excuse. So, alarms need to work, and right now, alarms set on a Google Pixel can’t be trusted.
Alarms aren’t reliable on Pixel at the moment
Something screwy is going on with Pixel alarms, as evidenced by this Reddit thread on r/GooglePixel. One user shared that their alarm on their Pixel 9 did not go off that morning, which caused them to be late to work. This wasn’t a one-off alarm, either (not that it would make the situation any better if it was); rather, this was the user’s prescheduled Monday-through-Friday alarm that had been working for years, according to the poster.
Scrolling through the thread, you’ll find posts from other users experiencing similar alarm issues. Some actually received notifications from Android saying the alarm failed to sound, which is at least a bit helpful. (You don’t have to spending the day wondering if it was your phone that messed up, or if you turned off the alarm in your sleep.) However, not all affected users were so lucky: Another user claims they have five alarms set each morning and none of them went off, with zero notification about a failure on Android’s end. Curiously, one user says they woke up late, but their Pixel said there was an upcoming alarm for a time that was already in the past—as if the phone thought it was currently earlier than it actually was.
It’s possible this isn’t just affecting Pixel phones, either. One commenter believes this is an issue with the alarms in Google’s Clock app on Android 15, which the user experienced on their OnePlus device. All that said, Android Authority hasn’t been able to replicate the issue on their end, so it’s possible this isn’t an issue affecting all Pixel phones or all Google Clock users. Still, there are enough reports to warrant some concern.
Before any Apple fans get too smug, the same complications are present over on iOS. Last year, Apple confirmed there were issues with its iPhone’s alarms, as users reported their alarms weren’t going off. Some even say issues are still occurring.
The short answer is there’s likely a bug that’s causing Pixel or Google Clock to not sound the alarms you set. Google hasn’t publicly commented on this issue as of this writing, but the Reddit poster did say Google Support has reached out to them. If this is a bug, hopefully Google patches it fast.
How to get around a broken Pixel alarm
While we wait for a potential fix from Google, it seems safe to say the Google Clock app isn’t the best option at the moment for anyone who wants to be sure they’ll wake up on time. Luckily, there are a surprising number of alarm clock apps out there for you to switch to if you don’t trust Google’s built-in solution. Give one a shot, at least until we get some more clarity from Google about the situation.
Alternatively, you could rely on a different device entirely for your morning alarms. If you don’t have a true alarm clock these days, you might have another piece of tech that isn’t running Google Clock to rely on, like, say, a smart speaker. It’s definitely a pain though, seeing as setting alarms are a basic feature you expect a smartphone to be able to handle.
