NEW YORK – In the wake of the NBA’s gambling investigation, Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said he believes the league has not done an adequate job preparing players for the new landscape brought on by legalized sports betting.
Brown, an National Basketball Players Association vice president, said the NBA has not done enough to help players deal with the side effects of the gambling world.
“I think a lot more could have been done to help players and prepare players,” Brown said. “But even in the aftermath, I (think) little care or attention to detail goes into it. They’re like, ‘You make X amount of money or X, Y and Z; you should be able to deal with all the extra negativity, the people approaching you, the parlays.’ It creates a negative discourse around the game and players when people have money involved. Obviously, it’s a part of it, but definitely some of the experiences, the fan engagement, the fan interactions that we’ve had over the years where fans feel like they can come on the court and touch players and things like that, it’s leading to situations that we can avoid if more conversations were had right now.”
With the issues presented by sports gambling now under the spotlight, Brown said the NBA needs to be more open to holding conversations with players about the new environment.
“I don’t think, from my conversations with the union, that the NBA has been like, ‘How can we protect players more with the environment?’” Brown said. “There’s been little to no conversation around that. It’s all about, a lot of times, ‘How can we increase business and increase revenue?’ And I’m not sure if we’re having enough conversations (about), ‘What is the aftermath of the consequences some of that stuff has?’”
Brown added, “Me personally, that whole world was introduced a couple years ago, and I don’t think they took players into consideration, especially with the energy and the behavior that goes around gambling and how that directly correlates to players. We don’t benefit from any of the profits or anything like that, but we’ve got to deal with a lot of the extra negativity and scrutiny behind all the gambling stuff. And then on top of that, it creates more integrity issues, etc. So I’m not sure what the answer is going forward, but definitely something that people have got to spend more time having conversations about.”
Brown’s former teammate, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, was arrested Thursday as part of an FBI investigation that also led to the arrest of Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and former NBA player Damon Jones. Brown said the players union has a crisis management team and an investigative team to determine the facts in such situations.
“Obviously, if those guys are innocent, it’s not a great look for them publicly and media-wise, so we’ve got to make sure if they are, if they’re exonerated, then their images are cleaned up,” Brown said. “But I think right now, just kind of getting all the information and getting to the bottom of it is the most important thing.”
