Maverick Carter admitted during a 2021 interview with federal agents he bet thousands of dollars on NBA games through an illegal bookie, the Washington Post reported Thursday, citing federal law enforcement records.
Carter, the manager, business partner and childhood friend of LeBron James, was interviewed as part of an investigation into former minor league baseball player Wayne Nix, who pleaded guilty in April 2022 to charges for his role in an illegal gambling operation.
Carter was not the target of the investigation and he was never charged, a spokesman for Carter and James said. But his close ties to the game’s biggest star obviously raise some ethical questions about what went down, so FTW is here to lay out everything we know.
So, Maverick Carter bet on NBA games. What's the big deal?
Naturally, with sports betting being legal in so many places across the U.S. now, the first question to come to many people’s minds about Carter betting on the NBA may be, so what? And to a certain degree, I understand why. Carter wouldn’t be the first person with close ties to an athlete to bet on games, and he won’t be the last.
However, where Carter’s admission is a bit troubling is that he didn’t go through one of the legal avenues to place his bets. He did it through an illegal bookie, which makes you wonder what exactly he was trying to hide.
NBA policy bans players, team and league officials from betting on NBA games, and the NBPA bars agents from betting, but there aren’t rules prohibiting managers from betting. So unless Carter was attempting to place bets from a state where betting isn’t legal yet, which is entirely possible, he didn’t have to do this through Nix, unless…
Was he betting on Los Angeles Lakers games?
Now that, we don’t know. Carter told agents during the interview he “could not remember placing any bets on the Lakers,” according to the Post. And an indictment in the Nix case states that in November 2019, during the Lakers’ latest championship season, a partner of Nix told a “business manager for a professional basketball player” via text he could increase his NBA wagers up to $25,000. However, Carter wasn’t connected to any bets on the Lakers.
To be clear, even if Carter had bet on the Lakers, that in and of itself isn’t illegal — as long as it was done through a licensed sportsbook, which these bets obviously were not. But if Carter were betting on Lakers games, and wanted to protect a certain face of the NBA from dealing with any potential scrutiny for what his friend was doing, this would be one way of going about it.
It would draw ethical questions because Carter is privy to information most fans are not when it comes to James and the Lakers. Integrity monitors of legal sports betting operators would likely detect any advantages he tried to use.
So what did Carter bet on, and how much was he betting?
Carter and his attorneys told investigators he placed approximately 20 bets on football and basketball games over the course of a year.
The bets ranged from $5,000 to $10,000.
What was LeBron James' involvement?
None, as far as we know.
There haven’t been any reports of James being interviewed in connection to the gambling ring. In regards to James, the spokesperson for the two said Carter’s wagering “has nothing to do with him.”
Were any other athletes involved?
Absolutely. In fact, former MLB player Yasiel Puig pleaded guilty last November for lying to federal agents who were investigating this very case.
As part of a plea agreement, Puig admitted to placing bets with a representative of an illegal gambling business and accumulating up to $282,900 in losses by June of that same year.
Puig was the only athlete client to be charged in connection to the case, but NBA Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen was also mentioned in the Post report as having admitted to placing at least one bet with Nix.
Nix had a client list full of former athletes and others in sports, according to the Post. He even golfed in a member’s only tournament at Michael Jordan’s exclusive Florida golf club, though his relationship with Jordan is unknown.
