Monday, October 27, 2025

Part I

Gambling, Organized Crime, and the NBA: Federal Investigation Leads to Major Arrests in Illegal Gambling Scheme

The big headline we have to deal with today has to do with organized gambling and professional sports. In particular the NBA, the National Basketball Association. The big headline that came Friday had to do with the fact that on Thursday, federal officials arrested Portland Trail Blazers head coach, Chauncey Billups, and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier. They were charged that very day, as what The Wall Street Journal explains is, “Part of a sweeping investigation into illegal gambling, rigged poker games, and match fixing in the NBA.” 

So, let’s just step back for a moment. We’re talking about the NBA, we’re talking about professional sports and we’re talking about gambling. And this is a big part of what’s going on here. And you’ll notice the words are illegal gambling, rigged poker games, and match fixing in the NBA. But listen to the next paragraph from The Wall Street Journal, “Federal prosecutors unveiled an indictment against more than two dozen defendants that outlined a major scheme backed by organized crime families to run corrupt poker games and lure in victims by offering them a chance to play alongside figures, including Billups. Then a former player and former NBA player and assistant coach Demond James.”

Now, the journal editorializes just a little, and that’s important here, “The revelations instantly ranked among the most damaging in the league’s history, throwing into question the integrity of its product. Just six years after the NBA opened its doors to the lucrative legalized gambling industry, what had been U.S. sports’ ultimate taboo, quickly became part of the business model for the major leagues and put an endless menu of bets at the fingertips of most Americans.” 

All right. So, at the time, at the time there were many of us who warned that this cannot go well and has to go badly. And it is because there is simply no evidence whatsoever that gambling, whether legal or illegal, leads to anything other than just this scandal. And when you add sports to the mix, you are just basically creating a situation in which the incentives will be to break the rules rather than to keep them. And we’ll talk more about the moral background behind this, but first we need to see the fact that this is coming in such a way that arrests when it comes at this level, you’re talking about an NBA head coach, you’re talking about other major figures and then you have, heard me say it, the involvement of the major mafia families in New York City. This sounds like a movie script. 

We’ll be looking more the organized crime dimension in just a moment. But the first thing we need to note is something that is just basic to the Christian worldview. The Christian worldview, based in Scripture, it valorizes labor and the reward for labor, it valorizes, thrift, even investment. You can find all of this referenced in Scripture. What it does not valorize and does not authorize is this recklessness. And as a matter of fact, the Christian tradition in the main has been very, very clear about the fact that when you create an incentive for something to go wrong, you can hardly claim that you’re surprised when something goes wrong.

And in this case, when you’re talking about the intersection of vast sums of money, we’re not talking about hundreds of thousands. We’re not just talking about millions, we’re not even just talking about hundreds of millions, we’re not talking about billions of dollars. And you look at all of this, and you recognize, well, number one, you’re supposed to be talking about sport at least in terms of its essence. You’re supposed to be talking about something that is by the book, by the rules, and is supposed to be in its essence a demonstration of human behavior, human skill, human ability, teamwork, and all the rest.

But when you actually look at the specifics of the indictments that were released just last week, well, you’re looking at every lurid thing that some of us said would come with the adoption of legalized and organized betting and gambling when it comes to sports, and by the way, sports at every level. If this is filtered down to Little League games, then you’re going to find rigged Little League games, because that’s the way it works. And this again is explained by a biblical worldview, just given the reality of human sin. If you create something that comes with massive incentives to sin, don’t be surprised when you get sin.

And when that sin turns out to be incredibly well organized, premeditated, and frankly backed by several of the major mafia families in New York City, it’s not like we haven’t seen the movie, we know exactly how this works. Now, there’s some very interesting things in the background here. Number one, what about gambling? What about this activity in general? Well, it’s interesting that throughout most of American history, there were efforts to keep this gambling illegal and on the periphery of society. So, how in the world did it spread so quickly? And the answer is, it spread because of the possibilities.

And so, once you had organized gambling in a place like the State of Nevada, then you had other states that wanted to get on the same business because it is lucrative for the states. The states get a lot of money. And some of this was also already ground that was plowed with the development of state lotteries. And remember that’s gambling too. And not only did you have state lotteries, but the state lotteries were basically reinvented with games that would come back with bigger pots, and also that were more akin to organized gambling that would take place in a casino.

And so, you had that plowing some of the ground, but then you had something else. If you go back several decades, New Jersey gained the opportunity to have organized gambling and casinos and remember that didn’t go particularly well either. And so, one of the things you will hear is that just a few years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States legalized betting in all 50 states. That is not what took place. That is not the right way to describe the Supreme Court’s action. The Supreme Court was presented with the question as to whether it was legal for the federal government to allow two states to be involved in this activity rather than all 50 states.

There was no plausible explanation with a constitutional argument, the Supreme Court ruled for two states to be given an exception to rules that were binding on the other states. So, the Supreme Court was not ruling on the question as to whether or not there should be legalized gambling nationwide. It was presented with a question as to whether or not Congress could constitutionally allow two states to be involved in this activity rather than all 50. But you know what? One of the things we now see is that there were people ready to grab the opportunity and to run with it.

And you’ll recall that the New Testament describes this as sin seizing the opportunity. That’s the way it works. And in this case, it was demonstrable from the beginning. The people who are giving all the assurances, “Don’t worry, this isn’t going to happen. This isn’t going to be a big problem. The corruption is something that we can limit. We can monitor and regulate this so that it’s not a huge problem.” Well, you have to wonder what they’re saying now. And interestingly, when it comes to the NBA, the same man was making the argument back in the beginning, Adam Silver is still the commissioner of the NBA.

Ground was broken in the year 2014, when Adam Silver, then new as commissioner of the NBA, ran an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled, “Legalize and Regulate Sports Betting.” So, here’s the NBA commissioner back in 2014, really changing the rules and the procedures of the NBA, which had been consistently against legalized gambling, saying that it would pervert and destroy the sport. Adam Silver saw on the other hand, big money could be made. Here’s what he wrote, “Betting on professional sports is currently illegal in most of the United States outside of Nevada. I believe we need a different approach.”

Here’s what he said, quote, “For more than two decades, the National Basketball Association has opposed the expansion of legal sports betting, as have the other major professional sports leagues in the United States. In 1992, the league supported the passage by Congress of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act or PASPA, which generally prohibits states from authorizing sports betting. But despite legal restrictions, sports betting is widespread. It is a thriving underground business that operates free from regulation or oversight because there are few legal options available, those who wish to bet resort to illicit bookmaking operations and shady offshore websites.”

He concluded in this sentence, “There is no solid data on the volume of illegal sports betting activity in the United States, but some estimate that nearly $400 billion is illegally wagered on sports each year.” He then goes on and makes another argument, “Gambling has increasingly become a popular and accepted form of entertainment in the United States. Most states offer lotteries, over half of them have legal casinos. Three have approved some form of internet gambling, with others poised to follow.” 

I’m going to leave that 2014 article. The point is that Adam Silver came back and said, “I know, I know, I know all the heads of all the major sports leagues have been entirely against legalized gambling.” As a matter of fact, they had insistently and consistently made the argument that it would destroy the integrity of their sport until all of a sudden it became evident they could make billions of dollars in this activity. So, they said, “Then don’t ban it, regulate it.”

All right, couple of things I want us to note. Government has the responsibility given by God to act in a way. It’s one of the institutions that God created, and that when you’re thinking about it, you think about creation order. When you look at government, that’s an extension of what is given to humankind, it’s given to men and women to human beings. In Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2, particularly in Genesis chapter 1, taking dominion, one of the ways that happened is through the creation of government, and in the scripture that took different forms.

Most importantly, the Old Testament it came with the monarchy. But the point is, the government has the responsibility to uphold what is right. And Paul says in Romans chapter 13, to punish the evildoer. And so, that’s not just a convenient assignment to government given by the consent of the governed, it’s actually part of creation order, part of God’s intention from the beginning, and especially with sin coming in Genesis chapter 3, all this becomes far more important. But the important thing to recognize here is that government’s supposed to restrain sin, not profit by it.

So, that already raises the issue of state lotteries because that puts the states in the position of preying on their own people. And look, the data is all in. We know exactly what’s going on here. When you’re talking about organized gambling, you’re talking about the lotteries. The lotteries prey on the people least capable of betting and losing the money. That’s the bottom line. If you look at the distribution of where lottery tickets are sold, and you look at it versus income in a community, let’s just say it is clearly targeted. 

All right. But now you’re going far beyond that, and you’re talking about sports books and you’re talking about betting on professional sports. If you then ask the question, “What could go wrong?” The obvious answer is just about everything. Because when you bring this money in and you create all this incentive to break the rules, don’t be surprised when that’s what happens. But you’ll notice something else. The presence of the mafia in this story, who can possibly be surprised by this? Because the whole idea of organized crime is to take over illegitimate and legitimate business insofar as possible, and blend them together in such a way that you create this massive criminal enterprise. And that’s exactly what organized crime is all about. That’s why we call it organized crime.

And in this case, you’re not just talking about some loose accusation of organized crime according to this report, you’re talking about the involvement of some of the biggest names in the mafia in the United States, particularly in New York. You’re talking about the Gambino family, the Colombo family, the Bonanno family, the Lucchese family, the Genovese family as the main families we’re told that four out of five of those families are involved in this criminal enterprise. It is like The Godfather Part 8 is being written right now.

And you look at this, and you say, “You know, if you’re going to ask the question, can’t we just legislate this? Can’t we organize it? Can’t we regulate it?” Well, the obvious answer is no. And I want to tell you, you look at the substance of the charges coming here, and it comes down to the fact that, number one, some of the people who are involved in this, some of the names I’ve already mentioned, they’re specifically being charged with luring people into mob activity.

So, the fact is they have big names, but there are other dimensions to this that really have an organization like the NBA and frankly other professional sporting leagues, very, very concerned. And by the way, let’s just say professional, but right now, when it comes to colleges and all the rest, the incentives are increasingly there in college sports as well. Pretty soon again, it will be down to Little League. But when you look at this, the people who were charged in this indictment were charged with luring people into another gambling context, card games in particular, and it turns out they were rigged. It turns out that they were using all kinds of technology and old-fashioned human signals.

But this tells you that, number one, there’s a market for this. There are people who will spend millions upon millions of dollars for the thrill of being in this gaming industry. And frankly, the legalized gambling is apparently not enough for them. I’ll concede right up front, this is outside my normal territory, but I have found it very, very interesting to see how much everyone knew at the time some of these things were likely to happen. And you also have long experience, we already know that baseball had major scandals related to gambling activity, and that supposedly led to a complete new writing of the rules in order to protect baseball from this activity.

Now, it’s all just thrown into this giant enterprise of sports that is increasingly contaminated by gambling. The other thing to note right now is that almost no one is asking the question, “Hey, maybe we should rethink this. Maybe we should unthink the relationship between sports, whether it’s professional sports or collegiate sports or anything else. Maybe we should rethink allowing organized gambling.” And the fact is, you’re going to hear that from virtually no one. And the reason is simple, once you have this much money involved, it’s almost impossible to back out of it. It’s almost impossible to say, “We’re going to let that go.” And you’re going to be seeing all kinds of being made.

A lot of them are going to be defensive arguments. They’re going to be rather legally constrained arguments. You’re going to hear people say, “You know, we still have to keep this regulated. We just need to be better at regulation. We need to keep this protected. We’re just going to have to be better at protection.” But when you look at some of the things that are involved with all the different ways that sporting is coming down now, and with the automation of much of this with high technology, it is simply astounding to know how many opportunities there are for misbehavior.

And it reminds us of something else the Christian worldview keeps before us, and that is that sin is more ingenious than those trying to limit it, which is to say that’s why the mafia families are still being talked about in this article long after some people said the mafia is no more. It turns out there in the headlines again, just in the last several days. And it is because it is simply too lucrative for a lot of people to say, “We’re going to stay away from this.”

There’s a huge lesson here. We’re going to be tracking this story, but right now it’s the NBA that’s on the front line, all the other big leagues, all the other sports, at virtually every level, they’re concerned they could be the next on the front page.

Part II

The Drama of Crime in America: Why Does Organized Crime Exist, and Why Are We So Interested In It?

Well, all right, let’s talk about the mafia for a bit. It has been the subject of so much interest, major blockbuster movies, big-time novels, and all the rest. I think it’s important for us to recognize there once was a time, even in my lifetime, when federal law enforcement officials denied the very existence of the mafia.

And this goes back to the FBI in its early days, and all the rest, it comes into the 1960s. It was only in the 1960s that federal authorities began to acknowledge there even was the existence of these massive, organized crime families or organizations in the United States. Now, part of the reason why the federal government didn’t want to acknowledge it, is because the federal government had claimed to have prevented it. Now, you can’t claim to prevent it and then declare it to be a big problem without acknowledging you’re part of the problem. And so, it is interesting, you look at the 1960s and the 1970s, huge headlines where you had prosecutions of the major mafia figures.

And of course, you also had the emergence in the 1970s of the Godfather franchise, and thus you had these big movies. And of course, the danger in that is that this is a very interesting story. It’s very easy to romanticize the story. Americans love crime dramas, always have. They’re big in book form, they’re big in television form. It’s just a huge fascination. And I think as Christians, we need to step back for a moment and ask two questions, why would organized crime exist? Number one, and number two, why would we find it so interesting?

All right, question number one, why would it exist? And the interesting part of organized crime is not the crime part, it’s the organized part. And here’s where you understand that there’s a basic principle if you look at history, and that is that criminal activity, nefarious evil activity requires a system. Because if you’re going to do something illegally, you have to do it even more carefully than if you’re doing it legally.

And so, that’s something to watch, if you’re going to do it illegally, you have to not only be accomplished at what you’re trying to do, let’s just say rum running during a prohibition, but you’ve got to be smarter than the people who are trying to detect you and find you and arrest you. And it goes back to an old adage in crime, which is the police only have to get it right once. You have to get it right every time if you’re the criminal. So, that’s the organized part. It requires organization. If you’re going to have graft on a massive level, then you’ve got to have a multi-level organization. And that’s exactly what the mafia is.

The innovation in the mafia, by the way, was not an ethnic criminal organization, that’s very old. And La Cosa Nostra, or whatever you want to call it, going all the way back to Sicily, that’s very old. And frankly, it’s not just Sicilian, it is found all over the world in different forms. But when you bring that into the modern age, you’ve got to bring in the modern business structure to the old-fashioned business of organized crime. And the family organization that was an import in terms of the mafia. But even the mafia these days is less concentrated on families than organized crime units or organizations that still have the old historic family name.

But when you ask the question, why organized crime? It is because if you’re going to do it on a big scale, you’ve got to have a lot of organization. And that’s also what makes it very interesting because you have to have a culture that binds persons together. It’s the old question, how do criminals trust one another? And it’s a fascinating story. It’s one of the oldest stories in humanity. The second question in terms of the mafia is why we find them so interesting, why we find crime so interesting? And this gets back to something just basic human nature as well. It is twofold. We are fascinated with crime. Let’s face it. We are fascinated with crime.

I’ll admit, I find the old crimes shows on television, I found them very interesting as a kid. I’m still attracted to the genre today. And it is because, as Christians we understand there is a distinction between right and wrong. And for one thing, evil has a certain fascination. And even as you are championing the good guys, getting the bad guys, it’s more interesting if they’re really, really good, good guys, catching really, really smart, bad guys. That’s a far more interesting plot. But the other aspect of that is that crime is interesting, evil is interesting, there’s an allure to it.

And here’s where Christians have to say, we have to be very careful not to give ourselves too much to that allure. We can’t be too interested in the mafia. We can’t be too interested in organized crime, lest we basically find ourselves fascinated by that which is evil rather than fulfilled by that, which is good. The attractiveness of evil is something we need to watch and take theological note of. All right, so we’ll be following this story. Undoubtedly, there are headlines yet to come.

Part III

The Heist at the Louvre: This is a Huge Embarrassment for France

While we’re talking about organized crime, another big headline over the weekend, French authorities have arrested two suspects in the massive jewel heist at the Louvre just days ago, as you know, this has embarrassed France massively. You are talking about some of the crown jewels. France doesn’t have a monarchy anymore, but it still had some of the trappings of monarchy in the Louvre. It turns out it did not have a very good security system.

Now, it’s also true that on Sunday, French officials said out loud, what just about everyone else suspected. And that is that there had to be something of an inside collusion here. It was something of an inside job. No big surprise there. Most things like this turn out to be something very similar. But you know what? There has been some fascinating background and background noise to this story. For instance, been major American newspapers who have gone to convicted jewel criminals in order to ask them what they think about the crime. And this is what’s really, really interesting.

Some of these very experienced and in some cases rather famous jewel thieves, they have a certain respect for one another. And there are people who are looking at this saying, “You know, here’s what had to have happened.” And when you look at the lift that was used and how the access was gained and the fact that they were in the Louvre, and they were in this area for such a short amount of time, this was something that involved incredible planning, premeditation, it involved an awful lot of knowledge.

There’s another interesting aspect of this that came out over the weekend, and that is that it is apparent that the group, and by the way, the very fact that they dropped one of the most valuable, the artifacts, one of the crowns, the very fact that they got away leads a lot of other criminals to say, “You know, they had to have multiple plans.” And it appears that they were surprised only at the very last minute. And so, it is really interesting that they had all these scenarios. The other jewel thieves are saying it’s almost certain that they had all kinds of different scenarios.

They were going to take this first and that second, if they had to leave, they were going to get out this way and the other. And it looks like they were surprised only at the end. Once again, you do have the reality that when you look at a situation and it is already conjectured, that many of these pieces may have been taken apart, their historic value basically destroyed. Much like years ago, a Blenheim Palace, a solid gold toilet was stolen.

Now I know that’s a strange category, but they had a solid gold toilet, and it was taken, my favorite statement came from Scotland Yard the next day who said, “It almost surely is no longer a toilet.” In other words, if you’re taking all that gold, you’re going to melt it down in order to dispose of it. And that’s what probably happened to these crowns. Why did they hit the Louvre? Well, you have to remember that old statement by American famed or infamous bank robber, Willie Sutton, who has asked why he robbed banks, and he said quite simply, “That’s where the money is.”

Well, if you want to go to the jewels and you want to take the jewels, you want the crown jewels of France, guess what? You have to hit the Louvre. This is a huge embarrassment for France. And so, you can bet French law enforcement officials are going to try to round this up and get those jewels back if at all possible. But you also know something else is happening. There are people all over the world seeing that the Louvre had such inadequate security, and they’re wondering if the museum with the jewels down the street may have the same problem, which means the same opportunity, which means brace yourselves for further headlines.

Those who understand these things from a biblical worldview should not be surprised.