Gambling: We are Just Scratching the Surface
“A stingy person hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty will come upon it.”
On October 23, 2025, talented former basketball player and the present head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, Chauncey Billups, appeared in federal court on federal gambling charges. Shockingly, an NBA head coach is in cahoots with the four most prominent mafia families in this country. Worse, the FBI indicted other players on different federal gambling charges. The FBI announced that more indictments are on the way, related to sports gambling. If you are surprised, you shouldn’t be! I worry that the NFL and College Football are next.
How did this happen? It didn’t happen suddenly. Go all the way back to 2007, NBA referee Tim Donaghy was betting on games he officiated during the 2005-2007 seasons. The games Donaghy refereed were all called into question. In sports, if you cannot trust that games are played fairly, then we are not watching sports, but fictional reality television. There have always been gambling issues in sports. In the NFL’s 1963 season, Detroit’s Alex Karras and Green Bay’s Paul Hornung were suspended indefinitely for gambling. One year later, they were both reinstated and honored. In baseball, Pete Rose was involved in a gambling scandal, and influential media and political leaders continue lobbying to put Rose in the Hall of Fame, despite his gambling betrayal.
While gambling is a historic problem in sports, we shouldn’t be surprised by the latest revelations, because the NBA, NFL, and other sports leagues have been openly courting legal gambling in the last several years. Politicians opened the door to the flood of money that gambling provides, and I wonder who received under-the-table kickbacks. Leagues, stadiums, and teams are openly embracing gambling because it offers quick, substantial cash payouts with little effort. Yet, the short-term gain is already showing destructive consequences.
Christians have long spoken out against gambling. The response by the larger society has often been accusations of judgmentalism against the churches that dare to address the issue. Yet again, instead of keeping people from enjoying themselves, Christian values are wise recommendations that free people from long-term pain and loss. Gambling is treacherously set in favor of the house, and not the house of God. Pray for those who struggle with Gambling addiction because the addiction devastates families and demoralizes the individual. Gambling is designed to deceive the one who hands over their money, leading them to believe they have a fair chance. I pray it isn’t too late to save the NBA, NFL, and the other sports from rotting under gambling’s curse.
