Jontay Porter, the brother of Denver Nuggets standout forward Michael Porter Jr., is under investigation by the NBA for anomalies involving prop bets based on his statistics.
Jontay, a Toronto Raptors player, is a year younger than MPJ and is making his second NBA appearance this season after spending time in the G League. Jontay, a former Nuggets summer leaguer, could be at the center of the greatest sports betting scam since it became legal in recent years. If there is evidence that Porter placed bets and maybe tossed stats and/or games to cash in on bets, he would be the first to break that barrier since the most recent surge.
ESPN originally reported the news on Monday, stating that the NBA is looking into two games in which Porter withdrew early due to mysterious injuries while remaining under his prop totals—which resulted in DraftKings’ largest winner that day.
Porter has missed the past few Raptors games due to personal issues.
His brother played for the Nuggets on Wednesday and spoke with the media after the game for the first time since the ESPN story was published.
“Not necessarily anything I want to say, no,” he added. “I mean, I know what you all know. I know Jontay enjoys the game of basketball. He’s quite excited to play. He has been very enthusiastic to play with the Raptors. So, yeah, I know, just as you do, that I’ve known my brother my entire life. I know what kind of guy he is. And I know he’s very excited to play basketball. And I seriously doubt he’d do anything to jeopardize that.
Porter continued with his general thoughts on sports gambling.
“Especially the last few years you hear more you know people in the crowd saying what they need you to score tonight or you know what they don’t want you to score,” he said. “Every night you’re disappointing someone. You’re disappointed the people if you score too much because they made have bet on your under and you disappointed people if you didn’t score enough so it’s part of it’s part of the game now. I think that it’s obviously a dangerous habit. It’s a dangerous vice for people I think you know, the love of money is the root of all evil. So I think that even though it is a thing we as players just have to accept that I don’t think we should—We get we get paid a lot of money to play this game and I know the people these fans they want to make some money as well. So if they want to put their hard earnings on us we appreciate that you put your trust in us, I guess but it’s definitely something that is kind of taken over the sport’s world. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. So I mean that’s that’s probably my comments on it”
Porter is in his fifth season in the NBA, having just won a championship. The former #1 high school prospect in the country was picked in the first round by the Nuggets in 2018, and despite numerous ailments, he is now having a career season with the Western Conference’s top seed.
