Betting scandal rocks the National Basketball Association

Chauncey Billups is an NBA head coach and Hall of Fame member. Now he, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, and former Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones are implicated in a wide-ranging investigation into illegal sports betting and rigged poker games. A total of thirty-four people have been arrested.

Billups is among those accused of participating in poker games rigged by the mafia, serving as “face cards” to attract high rollers who became victims. Rozier is accused of sharing inside information, removing himself early from at least one game for the benefit of gamblers, and profiting from those bets.

The proliferation of legalized sports wagering makes the games more susceptible to cheating than ever before. You can bet not only on the outcomes of games, but on the points players will score and other factors within the contest. Consequently, a player can intentionally miss shots, fake injuries, and otherwise act in less obvious ways to benefit bettors.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said of the investigation, “I was deeply disturbed. There’s nothing more important to the league and its fans than the integrity of the competition.” He’s right. As sports commentator Jay Busbee noted, the future of the league is now in question:

The NBA isn’t going anywhere, but it doesn’t need to vanish to fade from prominence. Boxing and horse racing still exist, but thanks to pervasive questions about whether what we’re seeing is on the level, they’re wispy, all-but-irrelevant shadows of their former nationally celebrated selves.

His warning applies not just to the NBA but to every Christian. Here’s why.

Satan is a great economist

A counselor colleague once told me that Satan is a great economist: he likes to do the greatest damage in the most efficient manner possible. As my friend says, the devil throws a rock into the lake and hopes the ripples will touch every shore.

With sports, that “rock” is the integrity of the game. A basketball player can have a substance abuse problem, commit adultery, or mismanage his finances, and fans will forgive him. But if he cheats the game, the game is in peril. If we come to believe that games are rigged, we won’t watch. If we don’t watch, the business model on which the sport depends is imperiled.

For Christians, this “rock” is personal transformation. We claim that Jesus has changed us by giving us a “new birth” (John 3:3) and making us a “new creation” (1 Corinthians 5:17).

Consequently, while celebrities can cheat on their spouses and our secular culture will shrug its shoulders, if Christians do, skeptics will point to our failure as proof that our faith isn’t real. Physicians and lawyers can steal from their employers and face personal consequences without undermining the medical or legal professions, but if pastors do, skeptics will claim that the Church is fraudulent.

Why skeptics want us to fail

This Halloween week seems an appropriate time to discuss Satan and his strategies. Today, let’s consider Jesus’ warning that the devil “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). Regarding the reputation of Christians and the church, the first leads to the second and the third.

Of course, the enemy’s strategy is unfair to the Christian faith. The Bible nowhere claims that we become sinless the moment we trust in Christ (cf. 1 John 1:8, 10). As the bumper sticker says, “Christians aren’t perfect—just forgiven.”

But Satan’s strategy nonetheless works when Christians sin publicly, in large part because skeptics want us to fail so they can dismiss the relevance of our moral claims. They would rather “shoot the messenger” than consider the “message.”

This is why it is so urgent that we seek to be the best reflection of our Lord possible. In practical biblical terms:

• Begin every day by submitting to the Holy Spirit, asking him to empower you to live faithfully for Jesus (Ephesians 5:18).
• Take every temptation immediately to the Lord, asking him for the strength to refuse it (1 Corinthians 10:13).
• If you do fail, confess your sin immediately and seek God’s forgiving and cleansing grace (1 John 1:9).
• Make reparations whenever doing so benefits the other person (Matthew 5:23–24).
• Focus your mind throughout the day on biblical truth and that which is “worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8).

In addition, today’s discussion raises a practical question: What sin could you commit that would most damage your witness and bring disrepute to the Church? Expect to be tempted at that very place, and submit it each day to your Lord for his protection and help.

“It is not the critic who counts”

Satan has a counter to this conversation: If we fear we might act in public ways that harm the faith, he will tempt us to retreat from public faithfulness. Keep your faith private and personal, he tells us. Don’t let anyone know what you believe lest you fail. But this keeps our salt in the saltshaker and our light under a basket where they can do the world no good (Matthew 5:13–16).

Our better response is to engage the culture with the power of the Spirit, admit our failures when they arise, and use them to point to a Savior who forgives all we confess and redeems all who trust fully in him.

To this end, let’s close with a reflection from Theodore Roosevelt on the occasion of his birthday in 1858. I just read Bret Baier’s excellent new biography of the twenty-sixth president and learned much. I especially appreciated his recounting of what he calls Roosevelt’s “most forceful speech,” delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910. Titled “Citizenship in a Republic,” it included this memorable section:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

For what “worthy cause” will you “spend” yourself today?

Quote for the day:

“If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base, and sordid creature, no matter how successful.” —Theodore Roosevelt

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