This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Nov 4, 2025.
For those of you who have actual lives and don’t concern yourself with mundane details of frivolous news stories, let me tell you about something that you probably have not heard about. The NBA is in serious trouble. If you are anything like me, the last NBA game you sat and watched had Micheal Jordan in the starting lineup. You have to admit, Micheal Jordan and those Chicago Bulls teams of the 1990s were a thing of beauty to watch and I do not think I have watched a single game since.
But there is a controversy that might drive the final nail in the coffin of the NBA. The reason the NBA is in trouble is because of sports betting. That is all professional sports are anymore. They are an outlet for legal betting for people with gambling addictions. The NBA is the first league to get nailed by it. Professional sports no longer have fans, they have people who bet on them.
The problem is that you can bet on literally anything now. You can bet on how long it will take to sing the National Anthem, you can bet on who wins the opening tip off, you can bet on a wide variety of meaningless details of a game. The specific detail that you can bet on that has gotten the NBA into trouble is better the over under of how many minutes a specific player will play during a game.
The way this works is a specific number of minutes is assigned to a player and the betting is whether or not a player will play more or less than that number of minutes. This is a very easy statistic to manipulate. It is obvious how this could be exploited. What would happen is a player would inform someone that they would take themselves out of the game before reaching the threshold of minutes. The third party would then bet the under and collect an incredible payday.
This is obviously illegal and people are going to be prosecuted for this. But what I want to complain about is bigger than this. If you think that basketball is the only sport to be exploiting gambling in every possible way, then you have a rude awakening coming. Football and baseball are a little harder to manipulate because these sports are not quite as stat heavy as Basketball, so it is going to take a little longer to identify the cheaters. I find it impossible to believe that billions of dollars of gambling money is not affecting these sports in many negative ways.
I have said this before, but it bears repeating. I hate gambling. I would never even consider doing it. I can find plenty of other things to waste my money on. I also know that for me, gambling would be a slippery slope that would ruin my life. If gambling is a thing you enjoy, I am happy for you. I am not saying it is evil, nor am I condemning people who enjoy betting on sports. It is just not for me, and that is a personal choice.
But all of that money is ruining sports and greed is coming for the college game too. Now that the College level allows for players to be paid for Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), it won’t take long for college level sports to be destroyed too.
This is yet another example in the very long line of examples that 1 Timothy 6:12 is true. That verse says: “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.”
The NBA is the first to experience the sorrow of the love of money and if I was a betting man, I would bet this league would not be the only one who will experience this sorrow.