Former Toronto Raptors centre Jontay Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud after admitting to competitive manipulation in two NBA games.Rick Osentoski/Reuters

Declan Hill is an associate professor of investigations at the University of New Haven and lead of its Sports Integrity Center. He writes a Substack called CrimeWaves.

A silent plague is sweeping our athletes, from the very top leagues down to high-school students: gambling addiction.

Jontay Porter, the former Toronto Raptors player now banned for life from the National Basketball Association, is the poster child of this plague. He says he was entrapped by his addiction in an illegal poker game, accruing so much debt that would-be mobsters were able to force him to help them win proposition bets by underperforming in games and providing insider information. “If I don’t do a special with your terms. Then it’s up,” he told them on Telegram. “And you hate me and if I don’t get [$8,000] by Friday you’re coming to Toronto to beat me up.”

He is not alone. Buried within the judicial indictments that have again hit professional sports – a wide-ranging investigation into allegedly rigged poker games and illegal sports betting in the NBA that has ensnared a head coach and a starter, and an MLB scandal that has seen two major-leaguers suspended for allegedly providing insider information about pitches they threw – is apparent evidence of gambling addiction in the leagues themselves.

© The Globe and Mail