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    In Latest Gambling Scandal, Some See Glimpse of Sports’ Future

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    The N.B.A. banned a player for life for betting on games, a practice some worry could become more prevalent with the rise of wagering on sports.Bill Bradley, the basketball Hall of Famer and former United States senator known as a staunch opponent of legalized sports betting, was speaking about the topic back in January. But he might as well have been predicting the future.“Well there hasn’t been a scandal, yet,” he said, discussing how professional sports have become ever more entwined with the gambling industry in recent years. “So the worst has been avoided, but all of the conditions are there for the untoward to occur.”On Wednesday, the National Basketball Association confirmed the untoward had occurred, issuing a lifetime ban to Jontay Porter, a seldom-used backup forward for the Toronto Raptors. The league said Mr. Porter wagered money on his own team to lose, pretended to be hurt for betting purposes and shared confidential information with gamblers.“There is nothing more important than protecting the integrity of N.B.A. competition for our fans, our teams and everyone associated with our sport,” Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, said in announcing Porter’s punishment.There are those who worry that Porter is just the tip of the iceberg across American sports, and that unless everyone — leagues, players, unions, politicians, betting companies — gets together to prevent further betting scandals, the very viability of professional sports is at risk. The Porter case was all the more unsettling because it came just weeks after baseball’s biggest star, Shohei Ohtani, was connected to a gambling scandal when his longtime interpreter was accused of stealing millions of dollars from him to pay an illegal bookmaker.“When sports lose the perception that they’re honest, their sport dies,” said Fay Vincent, the former Major League Baseball commissioner who played a key role in barring Pete Rose, the career hits leader, from the sport for life in the 1980s because he bet on his own team’s games. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After NBA Bans Jontay Porter for Gambling, Some See Glimpse of Sports’ Future

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      The N.B.A. banned a player for life for betting on games, a practice some worry could become more prevalent with the rise of wagering on sports.Bill Bradley, the basketball Hall of Famer and former United States senator known as a staunch opponent of legalized sports betting, was speaking about the topic back in January. But he might as well have been predicting the future.“Well there hasn’t been a scandal, yet,” he said, discussing how professional sports have become ever more entwined with the gambling industry in recent years. “So the worst has been avoided, but all of the conditions are there for the untoward to occur.”On Wednesday, the National Basketball Association confirmed the untoward had occurred, issuing a lifetime ban to Jontay Porter, a seldom-used backup forward for the Toronto Raptors. The league said Mr. Porter wagered money on his own team to lose, pretended to be hurt for betting purposes and shared confidential information with gamblers.“There is nothing more important than protecting the integrity of N.B.A. competition for our fans, our teams and everyone associated with our sport,” Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, said in announcing Porter’s punishment.There are those who worry that Porter is just the tip of the iceberg across American sports, and that unless everyone — leagues, players, unions, politicians, betting companies — gets together to prevent further betting scandals, the very viability of professional sports is at risk. The Porter case was all the more unsettling because it came just weeks after baseball’s biggest star, Shohei Ohtani, was connected to a gambling scandal when his longtime interpreter was accused of stealing millions of dollars from him to pay an illegal bookmaker.“When sports lose the perception that they’re honest, their sport dies,” said Fay Vincent, the former Major League Baseball commissioner who played a key role in barring Pete Rose, the career hits leader, from the sport for life in the 1980s because he bet on his own team’s games. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Herbert Kohl, Former Wisconsin Senator and Milwaukee Bucks Owner, Dies at 88

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      A member of the family that founded Kohl’s department stores, he guarded federal budgets as a U.S. senator while spending lavishly to revive the N.B.A. team he owned.Herbert H. Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat who kept watch over federal budgets in four terms as a United States senator, but as the die-hard owner of the National Basketball Association’s often mediocre Milwaukee Bucks spent lavishly to keep the team afloat in his hometown, died on Wednesday afternoon at his home in Milwaukee. He was 88. His death, after a brief illness, was announced by the Herb Kohl Foundation, his nonprofit organization.By his own account, Milwaukee meant everything to Mr. Kohl. His parents had immigrated to the city from Poland and Russia early in the 20th century, and his father, Maxwell Kohl, had opened a corner grocery store there in 1927. Herbert and his three siblings were born and raised in the city, scions of a family that in one generation had built an empire of Kohl’s stores across the Upper Midwest.In Wisconsin and surrounding states, the Kohl name became almost as familiar as Schlitz, which called itself “the beer that made Milwaukee famous.” By 1972, when the British American Tobacco Company bought a controlling interest in Kohl’s, the company, still managed by the Kohl family, had 50 grocery stores, six department stores and several networks of pharmacies and liquor stores.In 2012, under new owners, Kohl’s became the largest department store chain in the United States, surpassing J.C. Penney, its biggest competitor.Herbert Kohl was president of the Kohl Corporation from 1970 to 1979, when British American Tobacco bought the remaining corporate interest. He then left management, a tycoon in search of new challenges. He found two: the Milwaukee Bucks, which he bought in 1985 for $18 million and owned for 29 years of mostly losing seasons; and a seat in the Senate, which he held from 1989 to 2013, and where he became a popular advocate of working families, small-business owners and the elderly.His political experience had been limited. He had been chairman of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party from 1975 to 1977, but he had never held office. The 1988 Democratic primary election to succeed a retiring William Proxmire, who had fought wasteful government spending for 32 years in the Senate, centered on two major issues: campaign expenditures and name recognition.Mr. Proxmire had boasted for years that his last re-election campaign, in 1982, had cost him just $145.10. Mr. Kohl acknowledged that he had spent more than $2 million in the 1988 primaries alone, mostly on television ads, but argued that it was nearly all of his own money and that, as a senator, he would not be beholden to special interests.Wisconsin voters knew the Kohl name from his family business and his Bucks’ ownership. But his primary opponents were well known, too: former Gov. Anthony Earl and Wisconsin’s secretary of state, Doug La Follette, a shirttail relative of Robert M. La Follette, the former governor, senator and presidential candidate. Mr. Kohl won the primary and easily beat a Republican in the general election.Kohl greeting soldiers before a Milwaukee Bucks game in 2012.Gary Dineen/NBAE, via Getty ImagesWith assets of $265 million, he was Milwaukee’s wealthiest resident and one of the Senate’s richest members. What colleagues found in Mr. Kohl, however, was a friendly, unassuming and modest man, something akin to what the country’s founders might have imagined in the Senate: a person of stature and accomplishment with a sense of obligation to the citizenry.He believed that government, like a family, ought to live within its means, and he supported a constitutional amendment to require Congress to pass balanced budgets. It was never adopted. But he tracked deficits that soared for most of his tenure, and voted consistently to restrain spending.Early in his Senate years, Mr. Kohl stopped taking money from special interest groups. “I think I was the only person in Washington that didn’t solicit money,” he told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2016. “I stopped taking money from people because it detracted from my ability to do my job well. We need a system that gets the ugly money out of it.”Senator Kohl strongly supported public education and educational savings accounts. On social issues, he favored abortion rights and affirmative action programs, and he voted to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. He also supported environmental protections.He opposed legislation to authorize the Persian Gulf war in 1990, but in 2002 he voted to endorse military force against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. He often joined more liberal Democrats in trying to cut military spending. At times, his voter-approval ratings were as high as 73 percent, and he won re-election campaigns in 1994, 2000 and 2006. All of them were largely financed with his own money.During his final term, Mr. Kohl supported President Barack Obama’s health care reforms, voted for the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and received high ratings from groups that sought universal health care. He voted to expand Medicare and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which became a federal program that provided matching funds to states.When Mr. Kohl announced that he would not seek a fifth term in 2012, President Obama said: “America’s children will grow up in a better place thanks to his advocacy of childhood nutrition programs, a strengthened food safety system, access to affordable health care and child care and juvenile crime prevention.”Herbert H. Kohl was born on Feb. 7, 1935, the third of four children of Maxwell and Mary (Hiken) Kohl. Herbert and his siblings, Sidney, Dolores and Allen, attended public schools in Milwaukee. At Washington High School, Herbert was an excellent student and played football, basketball and baseball.He and another a boy from the neighborhood, Allan Selig, who was known as Bud, became roommates and fraternity brothers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where Mr. Kohl earned a bachelor’s degree in 1956. They remained friends as Mr. Selig went on to become the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team and the commissioner of Major League Baseball.After receiving a master’s degree in business from Harvard in 1958, Mr. Kohl invested in real estate and the stock market for some years, and then created Kohl Investments to handle his assets. He and his brother also helped manage the Kohl Corporation in the 1970s until the completion of the company’s sale to British American Tobacco.Kohl talking to the media in 2005.Gary Dineen/NBAE, via Getty ImagesThe chance to rescue the Bucks arose in 1985 when it became known that Jim Fitzgerald, the team’s largest single shareholder, was ill and that he and other investors wanted to sell. The Bucks, which were created as an expansion team in 1968, had won an N.B.A. championship in 1971 and had been a regular playoff contender over the years, and yet they were playing in the smallest arena in the league.As fears spread that new, deep-pocketed owners might move the Bucks to another city, Mr. Kohl bought the team for $18 million in March 1985. He spent millions more on contracts for players, coaches and other personnel, as well as on team travel, promotions and arena maintenance. Still, in the 1990s, the Bucks were mired in mediocrity. Even reaching the conference finals in 2000 seemed only a temporary respite from the gloom. In 2013-14, the Bucks won only 15 games. It was the worst record in team history.In April 2014, Mr. Kohl sold the Bucks to two New York hedge-fund billionaires, Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens, for $550 million. At Mr. Kohl’s insistence, the team remained in Milwaukee. The new owners and Mr. Kohl put up a total of $200 million for a new arena, the Fiserv Forum, which was completed in 2018.Mr. Kohl also gave bonuses, totaling $10 million, to every member of the Bucks organization and every worker at the BMO Harris Bradley Center, the Bucks’ aging and soon-to-be-replaced arena. Ushers received $2,000 each, and some longtime Bucks employees got enough to pay off mortgages or buy new homes.“I was happy to do it, and they were deeply appreciative,” he told The Journal Sentinel. “It doesn’t change my life, but it changes theirs.”Mr. Kohl, a lifelong Milwaukee resident who kept a horse ranch in Jackson, Wyo., never married and had no children. He is survived by his older brother Sidney, his older sister Dolores and his younger brother Allen.He gave $25 million to the University of Wisconsin for construction of the Kohl Center, a 15,000-seat basketball and hockey field house built on the university’s Madison campus in 1998. He also founded an educational foundation that each year provides grants to graduating seniors and teachers in Wisconsin high schools.Mr. Kohl’s net worth was never disclosed, although in 2016 Forbes estimated that it was between $630 million and $1.5 billion. He remained a loyal Bucks fan, with season tickets at the Fiserv Forum, a few rows up from courtside.As if vindicating Mr. Kohl’s faith in the team, the Bucks ended decades of drought by winning the N.B.A. championship in 2021, defeating the Phoenix Suns in seven games. Mr. Kohl was presented with a championship ring for his efforts to keep the team in Milwaukee, and he rode in the lead car in the championship parade, proclaiming: “This is one of the big days of my life.”Orlando Mayorquin More

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      Bought as an N.B.A. Team, the Mavericks Are Being Sold as Much More

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      Pro sports franchises are increasingly providing much of their value as anchors for larger business enterprises, including entertainment complexes.The sales of most professional sports teams are fairly predictable.They happen because owners die or cannot figure out how to pass the team on to their families. They run out of money, are more focused on other pursuits or are pushed out because of misconduct.Once the decision to sell is made, the process plays out in a relatively public way. Bankers are hired, potential purchasers register interest, an auction occurs, and weeks or months of reports in the news media follow.So it was a complete surprise last month when, with no warning, the families that control the Las Vegas Sands casino empire announced that they had reached a binding agreement to buy a controlling interest in the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks from Mark Cuban. The only thing that made sense was that the situation involved Mr. Cuban, who has long run the Mavericks in an unconventional manner.Still, more than two weeks later, the basic question surrounding the sale — Why did Mr. Cuban do it? — remains mostly unanswered. The reliably loquacious Mr. Cuban, who always seemed to be having more fun than any other owner, declined to speak on the record for this article. The Adelson and Dumont families, wary of getting ahead of an N.B.A. approval process that includes due diligence and a vote on the sale by other team owners, declined to comment beyond a statement expressing their excitement.But what is clear is that the sale represents a window into the rapidly changing nature of the business of sports.When Mr. Cuban bought the Mavericks in 2000, flush with cash from selling Broadcast.com just before the dot-come bubble popped, professional sports teams were still mainly just teams.Now they are anchors for larger business enterprises. Anchor tenants for arenas that are the beating heart of vast entertainment complexes, as in Sacramento. Anchor content for regional sports networks or other media conglomerates, as in Washington, D.C. Anchor brands for millions of fans newly allowed to bet on sports, as in Phoenix.Mr. Cuban is also many things — a dot-com billionaire, an owner of a company trying to reduce the price of prescription drugs and, for one more season, one of the main investors in the reality show “Shark Tank” — but what he is not is a real estate mogul, providing a possible motivation for the sale.The Dallas Mavericks partly own the American Airlines Center, where they play their games in the Victory Park development just north of downtown. But while the owners of their co-tenant, the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars, have invested in land near the arena, Mr. Cuban has mostly expressed annoyance that it takes away from fan parking. Now he is changing his tune.“Cuban probably wants to imitate what has worked, have the ownership control he doesn’t have in Victory Park, and push it to a new level with casino and resort integration,” said Robert Sroka, a professor of sport administration at Georgia State University and a sport venue development consultant.Mr. Cuban has publicly said he wants to build a resort destination in Dallas with Sands.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesLast year Mr. Cuban told The Dallas Morning News of his intention to team up with Sands on just that, a new arena and casino complex.“Partnering with the Sands Corporation, literally there’s no reason we can’t build a huge resort destination in the city proper of Dallas,” he said.A piece of a destination like that would mean a lot more money for Mr. Cuban than the sums generated by game tickets and arena concessions. The plan, however, faces a significant hurdle — besides acquiring land, obtaining financing when interest rates are high and receiving construction approvals. Almost all forms of gambling are illegal in Texas, and there is no clear sign of that changing.A bill that would legalize sports betting passed the Texas House this year, but Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, refused to bring it up for discussion in the Senate. Even if such a bill passed the Senate, Texas residents would still need to vote on it.A bill allowing casinos faced even fiercer opposition, particularly from influential conservative religious leaders, and never made it out of the House. And while sports betting, if it is legalized in Texas, can be lucrative for teams, it is really a casino bill that needs to pass if Mr. Cuban’s vision of a sports and gambling destination is to be realized. The Sands, which has a number of casinos in Macau and Singapore but currently none in the United States, has hired dozens of lobbyists to get one passed in recent years.Mr. Cuban owns about three-quarters of the Mavericks, with the rest held by a handful of minority owners. After the sale he will own about a quarter, and the Adelson and Dumont families nearly three-quarters, with the rest spread among some minority owners, according to two people familiar with the terms, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose them publicly.Some people believe the reported $3.5 billion valuation that Mr. Cuban is selling at is less than he could have received if the Mavericks had gone on the open market. Just last week, for instance, a small share of the Indiana Pacers was bought at a reported valuation of $3.47 billion. Indianapolis is a much smaller market than Dallas, and minority stakes are typically discounted. So, the thinking goes, the sale of a majority stake in the Mavericks should’ve been for much higher.But the sale to the Adelson and Dumont families includes an unusual stipulation: Mr. Cuban will continue to run the basketball operations of the team.Officially, Patrick Dumont, the son-in-law of Miriam Adelson and the late Sheldon Adelson, will be what the N.B.A. calls the team’s governor and vote on leaguewide matters. But Mr. Cuban will run its basketball operations. The bet, then, seems to be this: Mr. Cuban will earn billions from a team he paid $285 million for two decades ago; he will continue to participate in the part of team ownership he likes the most; and if the Adelsons and Las Vegas Sands can muscle through a new arena and casino complex, one day his quarter of the team might be worth as much as the three-quarters he used to own.This could also help make up for money Mr. Cuban expects to lose on the team’s local media rights agreement. The holder of those rights, Diamond Sports Groups, is going through bankruptcy.“I think a new arena, real estate area and hopefully a future resort casino can replace what we lose in media, and fund current and future Mavs,” Mr. Cuban said in an email to a local television station last month.Over a thousand miles west of Dallas, the sale has thrown the race to own an N.B.A. franchise in Las Vegas wide open, since the Adelson family was widely presumed to be a front-runner if the city got a team.Officially, there is no guarantee there will ever be an N.B.A. team in Las Vegas, but the league is widely expected to soon expand to 32 teams from 30. This summer, Adam Silver, its commissioner, said the league would turn to the issue of expansion after it completed new media agreements, sometime in 2024. He said it was not certain the league would expand, but named Las Vegas and Seattle as cities that would be considered.“A lot is happening behind the scenes,” said Steve Sisolak, a former governor of Nevada. “A lot of groups that have interest. It remains to be seen who is a front-runner.”Currently, the only arena in Las Vegas that has close to the required facilities for an N.B.A. team is the T-Mobile Center, which is co-owned by the arena developer AEG and MGM Resorts International, with Bill Foley, the owner of the N.H.L.’s Las Vegas Golden Knights, holding a minority share.But Oak View Group, another arena developer and operator, has announced plans for a $10 billion resort south of the Strip that would include an arena an N.B.A. team could play in. Intriguingly, the land that arena would be built on is owned by Scott Goldstein, the son of Rob Goldstein, the chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands. Sands is not currently involved in that project.Susan Beachy More

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      Team’s Sale Reflects Growing Links Between Pro Sports and Gambling

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      The proposed purchase of the N.B.A.’s Dallas Mavericks by a casino operator is the latest sign of how fully leagues have embraced the gaming world.For years, professional sports organizations like the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball prohibited liquor companies from buying advertising in locations in stadiums and arenas that could be seen on television, in deference to efforts to curb drunken driving.But in 2009, during the depths of the worst recession since the Great Depression, those same leagues found themselves scrambling for cash as their biggest sponsors — automakers, banks and others — cut back on marketing. Suddenly, they began signing multimillion-dollar deals with companies that made rum, tequila, vodka and other hard liquor, and the advertising was displayed for all to see.It was a sign of how justifications can change seemingly overnight, especially when money is involved. The sports world was reminded of that last week when Miriam Adelson and her trust sold $2 billion worth of shares in the Sands Corporation, a casino operator, to buy a professional sports team, which turned out to be the Dallas Mavericks. (The purchase still needs to be approved by the league’s board of governors before becoming official.)“The Adelson and Dumont families are honored to have the opportunity to be stewards of this great franchise,” they said in a statement.For decades, most major professional leagues largely kept the gaming world at arm’s length. They barred players, referees and owners from gambling on sports, to insulate game results from any hint of impropriety, a stance that dated back at least a century to the famed Black Sox scandal of 1919.Some leagues likewise forbid owners from holding stakes in casinos. In one instance, Dan Rooney, the principal owner of the National Football League’s Pittsburgh Steelers, had to buy out his brothers’ stake in the team because the brothers owned racetracks in New York and Florida. The N.B.A. had no such rule and has had owners with ties to casinos, including Tilman Fertitta, the current owner of the Houston Rockets.The N.F.L. commissioner, Roger Goodell, long opposed the broad legalization of sports gambling.Adam Hunger/Associated Press“If gambling is permitted freely on sporting events, normal incidents of the game such as bad snaps, dropped passes, turnovers, penalties and play calling inevitably will fuel speculation, distrust and accusations of point-shaving or game fixing,” the N.F.L. commissioner, Roger Goodell, said in 2012.Yet at a time when sports gambling — once done only in casino meccas like Las Vegas or through bookies — has been legalized in dozens of states, the leagues’ former approach seems quaint. While restrictions remain on players, referees and owners wagering on their own sports, gambling has otherwise been embraced by the mainstream sports establishment.They have removed restrictions on casinos and sports books advertising in stadiums and on television. Some stadiums, like FedEx Field in Landover, Md., the home of the N.F.L.’s Washington Commanders, have sports books inside. Sports wagering companies now plaster their names on sign boards in stadiums and buy TV commercials during games, including the Super Bowl, with all manner of promotions to woo new customers.The leagues have also done an about-face on operating in the home of sports wagering, Las Vegas, which was for years off limits. Now the National Hockey League, the Women’s National Basketball Association and the N.F.L. have teams in the city. Last month, Major League Baseball’s owners unanimously approved allowing the A’s to leave Oakland and head to Las Vegas. The N.B.A., which has held All-Star games, summer leagues and a new in-season tournament in Las Vegas, could add an expansion team in the city in the coming years, which would give every major pro sport a team in a locale the leagues once shunned.“The leagues are constantly re-evaluating their business as laws change, social mores change and different companies and categories become bigger,” said Marc Ganis, a consultant to numerous teams and leagues. “That includes look at ownership rules, sponsorships and advertising.”The N.F.L.’s embrace of Las Vegas has perhaps been most surprising, given the league’s conservative reputation. The Raiders won approval to move to the city in 2017. The league has held the Pro Bowl and college draft on The Strip. And in February, the league’s marquee event — the Super Bowl — will be played in Las Vegas, removing perhaps the last vestige of any distance between it and the city.The Super Bowl in February will be held at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.Kirby Lee/Usa Today Sports Via Reuters ConThe leagues’ reassessment has been both practical and strategic. The biggest break came in 2018 after the Supreme Court ruled that a law that prohibited sports gambling in most of the country was unconstitutional. Dozens of states quickly approved legalizing sports wagering, dwarfing the amount spent in Las Vegas. The N.F.L. now allows owners to hold stakes in casinos that have no sports betting, though it restricts owners from having more than a 5 percent stake in casinos that allow sports betting.“Las Vegas is acceptable not so much because of us but because gambling is almost everywhere now,” said Michael Green, a historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “The Strip is as legit as any large business.”At the same time, Las Vegas’s image as a desert oasis with casinos and nightclubs under the thumb of the mob changed dramatically in the 1990s, when The Strip was turned into an urban theme park where parents could bring their children. Many visitors come now as much to see shows like U2 at the Sphere or the latest extravaganza by Cirque du Soleil as they do to visit the casinos.And while Las Vegas is relatively small, with a population of about 2.5 million in the region, it has been able to support teams like the Raiders and the Golden Knights of the N.H.L. because the city is a year-round destination, drawing roughly 40 million tourists annually.“There’s a whole new demographic being exposed to sports gambling by visiting Las Vegas,” said Jay Kornegay, the vice president of the Race and Sports Book Operations at Westgate Resorts.Mr. Green noted that the Smith Center for the Performing Arts and the Mob Museum, which both opened in 2012, also gave the city a glean of sophistication it had lacked. He recalled how just 20 years ago, the N.F.L. blocked Las Vegas from buying ads during the Super Bowl, a decision that now seems antiquated.“Remind me,” he said, “where’s the next Super Bowl?”Kevin Draper More

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      Johnny Green, Jumpin’ Knicks All-Star, Dies at 89

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      An All-Star forward — and an all-American at Michigan State — he was known as Jumpin’ Johnny, able to soar over taller opponents for 14 seasons in the N.B.A.Johnny Green, an All-Star forward for the Knicks in the 1960s who gained acclaim for his leaping ability and rebounding prowess through 14 National Basketball Association seasons, died on Thursday in Huntington, N.Y. He was 89.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his son Johnny Jr., who said his father had had heart and kidney problems for about a year.Jumpin’ Johnny, as he came to be known, was 6-foot-5 and about 200 pounds, but he often bested taller and huskier frontline opponents, snaring rebounds, blocking shots and hitting short-range baskets.He was durable as well; he avoided serious injuries and had some of his best seasons late in his career. He played in the N.B.A. until he was 39, retiring after the 1972-73 season.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Seeks to Nullify His Purchase of Toronto House

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      Irate investors looking for a bankrupt “crypto king” were regular visitors to the new Toronto-area home of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder.The six bedroom, 10,000 square-foot house on Lake Ontario that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a star player with the Oklahoma City Thunder, bought for just over 8.4 million Canadian dollars, or $6.1 million, should have been a dream home.But in May, two days after Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander, 25, moved into the house, near Toronto, with his partner, it became a nightmare, according to a lawsuit seeking to nullify the sale. A menacing visitor appeared looking for a previous occupant. The couple left the next day and haven’t returned.The young N.B.A. player’s house, described in the real estate listing as an “elegant, resort-like estate,” had been the home of Aiden Pleterski, a self-styled “crypto king” who declared bankruptcy in 2022, while owing 26.8 million Canadian dollars to more than 150 investment clients.Court records show that the home received a steady stream of angry visitors seeking to talk to Mr. Pleterski while he was living there and after he moved out.Last December, court documents show, Mr. Pleterski was kidnapped by one of his aggrieved investors and four other men, then beaten and tortured over three days.Testimony in the bankruptcy case reveals that Mr. Pleterski had a security guard to ward off angry investors and was eventually moved out of the house for his own safety. Another resident also fled, fearing for his safety after angry visitors continued to turn up every day.A holding company owned by Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander is now asking a court to reverse the purchase of the Burlington, Ontario, house because the seller did not disclose its link to Mr. Pleterski and the home’s potential security threat.Aiden Pleterski was beaten by his kidnappers, according to court records.CBC NewsCiting the kidnapping, the holding company, in its filing, said the people who had been showing up at the upscale home “were not making idle threats.”The property’s former owner, the head of a Toronto real estate company with holdings that include apartments, retirement homes and hotels, hid the information about alarming visitors from potential buyers because “any purchaser who could afford to spend in excess of $8 million on a luxury home would value privacy and would also in any case want no part of a property that had a history of threatening visits to the past two occupants.”Through his lawyer, Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander declined to comment.The Halton Regional Police, which has authority over Burlington, declined to provide any more information and a spokesman refused to say if Mr. Pleterski was the target of a criminal investigation.A banking analysis by a bankruptcy trustee shows that Mr. Pleterski was not the investment prodigy many of his investors believed him to be.It found that of the 41.6 million Canadian dollars he took in, just 1.6 percent of the money was actually invested. He used about 38 percent of the money to repay redemptions — supposed investment gains — to some clients and spent about the same percentage on private jet travel, a fleet of luxury cars, watches, including one costing more than $300,000, and a lease on the Burlington house.The trustee concluded that “the extravagant lifestyle that Pleterski lived, which was funded by his investors,” had “ultimately led to his bankruptcy.”During a sworn 2022 interview with lawyers for the trustee, Mr. Pleterski said he first became interested in cryptocurrency after using it to make purchases for video games and began trading it when he was still in high school.He started out with money from his family and his earnings as a part-time baseball umpire. His knowledge of trading and financial markets, he said, came from “YouTube videos, Google, quick Google searches.”The business, Mr. Pleterski said, operated through his personal bank accounts until December 2021, when he set up his company at the suggestion of a former landlord.His only record keeping, he said, consisted of his texts and WhatsApp messages with customers. While Mr. Pleterski did create spreadsheets for a handful of customers who demanded them, he acknowledged that the investment return they showed was just “a general ballpark figure” he came up with after looking at his bank accounts.The home that Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander bought was located between Toronto, where he was born, and Hamilton, Ontario, where he was raised. It came fully furnished and included a gym, three car garage and a home theater. The bedrooms, reached by an elevator, offered sweeping lake views, including the property’s private dock.In his lawsuit, Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander said that two days after he moved in a man appeared demanding to see someone he had never heard of — Mr. Pleterski. Rather than leave when told that no one by that name was there, the uninvited visitor looked around the property and then sat in his car in the driveway.Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander’s partner, Hailey Summers, called the nonemergency number for the police and was told that the agency “had received several reports about threats to the property, including that there was a threat to burn the home down,” the lawsuit said.In the spring of 2021, Mr. Pleterski agreed to lease-to-own the Burlington house from a company controlled by Ray Gupta, who also controls the Sunray Group real estate holding company in Toronto. But when Mr. Pleterski’s trading business began collapsing, he stopped making his monthly 45,000 Canadian dollar rent payments and moved to a hotel owned by Sunray, where he wasn’t charged rent.In a response to Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander’s complaint, Mr. Gupta’s company downplayed the frequency and potential danger brought by the uninvited visitors and argued that it had no obligation to disclose the persistence of the unwelcome guests.“Notwithstanding the fact that Aiden was abducted, any visit to the Property by an individual inquiring about its former occupant would be viewed as an entirely normal occurrence,” it said.But during a sworn interview for Mr. Pleterski’s bankruptcy case, Sandeep Gupta, Ray’s son, who handled all the dealings with Mr. Pleterski, painted a different picture.“People were coming up to the house every single day, looking for Aiden,” Mr. Gupta said.He said the unwanted visits continued when a Sunray employee moved in to keep the furnished home occupied and the employee asked for a security guard. “His wife refused to stay there,” Mr. Gupta said. “It was a very bad situation.” More

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      Walter Davis, Basketball Star With a Velvet Touch, Dies at 69

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      “Walter is a good shooter until the fourth period,” one coach said of Davis, a standout in both college and the N.B.A. “Then he becomes a great shooter.”Walter Davis of the University of North Carolina in action against Duke in 1976. He averaged 15.7 points a game over four seasons there.Harold Valentine/Associated PressWalter Davis, whose smooth shooting propelled him to basketball stardom with the University of North Carolina and the Phoenix Suns, but who late in his career struggled with drug addiction, died on Thursday while visiting family in Charlotte, N.C. He was 69.The university announced his death but did not specify a cause.Davis, a 6-foot-6 forward, played at North Carolina from 1973 to 1977 for Dean Smith, one of the most successful coaches in college history. He averaged 15.7 points a game over four seasons on Tar Heels teams that also included Bobby Jones, Phil Ford and Mitch Kupchak.In one of Davis’s signature games, in March 1974, North Carolina was losing to Duke, 86-78, with 17 seconds left. After North Carolina closed the deficit to two points with time expiring, Davis tied it with a shot from a distance estimated at between 30 and 35 feet. (The basket would have counted for three points and won the game today, but the three-point shot was not officially introduced by the N.C.A.A. until 1986.) North Carolina went on to win in overtime, 96-92.“I wasn’t trying to bank it in,” Davis, then a freshman, said afterward. “It wasn’t a desperation shot. I was just trying to do my part, that’s all. I didn’t allow myself to think about anything. I just told myself it could only do two things, go in or come back out.”In 1976 he was a member of the United States team, also coached by Dean Smith, that won a gold medal at the Olympics in Montreal. A year later, he led North Carolina with 20 points — and 10 of his team’s last 12 — when it lost to Marquette, 67-59, in the final game of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament.He was twice selected for all-Atlantic Coast Conference teams.His nephew Hubert is currently the North Carolina coach.Walter Davis was born on Sept. 9, 1954, in Pineville, N.C. His high school in Charlotte won three state titles in basketball before he left to attend prep school in Delaware. He arrived at North Carolina in 1973.In 1977, Davis had surgery on a broken finger after North Carolina won the A.C.C. tournament in his senior year. “Before they put me out, I remember looking up and Coach Smith was right there,” he told Ken Rosenthal for his book “Dean Smith: A Tribute” (2001). “I remember seeing him and having the screws drilled into my finger.”Davis was drafted by the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the 1977 N.B.A. draft. After averaging 24.2 points a game — the highest average of any season in his career — he was voted the league’s Rookie of the Year. He remained a steady performer throughout his 11 seasons with Phoenix, averaging 20.5 points a game as a small forward and shooting guard.Davis was a steady performer in his 11 seasons with the Phoenix Suns, averaging 20.5 points a game as a small forward and shooting guard.Focus on Sport/Getty ImagesDuring a game in 1983, he set a league record by scoring 34 points (on 15 field goals and four free throws) against Seattle before missing a shot.“I don’t remember a sweeter shot,” Alvan Adams, one of his teammates, told NBA.com in 2015. “He was a feared shooter. The other team knew it, too.”Chuck Daly, then the Detroit Pistons’ coach, told The New York Times in 1987: “Walter is a good shooter until the fourth period. Then he becomes a great shooter.”Davis had two nicknames: Sweet D and Greyhound.In his later years in Phoenix, Davis dealt with drug problems. In 1986, he spent a month in a drug rehabilitation center to treat cocaine and alcohol dependency. Early the next year he told The Times, “The scariest part is knowing that it is a disease that I will have to work on for the rest of my life.”When he relapsed in 1987, Davis was suspended by the league and once again entered a drug rehabilitation facility. He also received immunity from prosecution when he agreed to testify against several current and former Suns teammates, who were indicted on drug charges.In his testimony, The Arizona Republic reported, Davis said that he had first used cocaine in his second season in the league after being introduced to it by a teammate, Gar Heard. When asked by a prosecutor who else was there, he said, “Pretty much the whole team.”Later that year, Davis said that prosecutors had forced him to testify against his teammates.“I had no choice,” he told Sports Illustrated. “The last thing I wanted to do was get my teammates and friends indicted. If I’d known I was going to do that, I’d have probably gone to jail instead.”Davis left the Suns in 1988 to sign as a free agent with the Denver Nuggets. He was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers in 1991 and then re-signed with Denver, where he played in the 1991-92 season before retiring.Davis was honored by the Suns and the Black Chamber of Arizona during a Black History Month celebration in Phoenix in 2016. Barry Gossage/NBAE, via Getty ImagesDavis averaged 18.9 points a game for his career and played in six All-Star Games.After his retirement, he worked as an announcer and community ambassador for the Nuggets and a scout for the Washington Wizards.Information on survivors was not immediately available. More

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      Need a Restaurant Recommendation? Ask an N.B.A. Player.

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      The best basketball players on the planet travel regularly, embrace local cultures and have deep pockets — making them very credible reviewers of restaurants across the country.Pick a city, any city, on the National Basketball Association’s 30-team circuit, and Kelly Olynyk, a forward for the Utah Jazz, has deep knowledge of the local restaurant scene.If you are searching for top-tier sushi in Boston, where he spent his first four N.B.A. seasons, he recommends Fuji at Ink Block in the South End. In Charlotte, N.C., he will most likely suggest the smoked wings at Rooster’s Wood-Fired Kitchen. Whether you are craving the best Italian in San Francisco or in pursuit of tasty treats in Indianapolis — Mr. Olynyk knows a place. He is a 6-foot-11 human version of Yelp.“You have spots in each city that you love and know you can count on,” said Mr. Olynyk, 32, after eating at thousands of restaurants over the 10 years he has played professionally on five N.B.A. teams. “But part of having an interest in different cultures and cuisines and restaurants is trying new ones.”In a league that consists of 28 cities, roughly 450 players and 1,230 regular season games each year, N.B.A. business travel is frequent and first-class. Teams fly private and stay in five-star hotel chains like the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton. But they also eat, a lot, and by embracing local culture and institutions with their deep pockets, they have become very credible restaurant authorities.Karl-Anthony Towns, of the Timberwolves, at Fratelli’s Pizza & Cafe in his hometown, Piscataway, N.J. Mr. Towns grew up eating Fratelli’s pizza. When they started dating, he told his girlfriend: “‘All you need is a cheese slice and I promise you it will change your life.”via Karl-Anthony TownsN.B.A. players are larger-than-normal humans (average height is 6-foot-6) with equally large salaries (average annual pay is $8.32 million), a combination that results in voracious appetites and often in reservations at the country’s most renowned restaurants. Each player also receives a $133 food per diem for days on the road.“Sometimes, if we’re only in a city one night, I’ll go to two dinners,” admitted Mr. Olynyk.The 2023-24 N.B.A. season just tipped off on Oct. 24, and in a typical season, each team plays 41 games on the road, visiting each opposing market (that includes 27 U.S. cities and Toronto) at least once. There are additional preseason and playoff games also to consider. The Golden State Warriors, for example, traveled to Los Angeles — home of the Lakers and Clippers — seven times last season. That means many meals and time to bond.“We travel so much around the country that going out to restaurants has always been the greatest way to bring everyone together,” said Karl-Anthony Towns, a three-time N.B.A. All-Star center with the Minnesota Timberwolves.Regardless of which teammates or coaches they choose to dine with, players take notice of the food, service and settings: Word-of-mouth recommendations between players are a major part of N.B.A. restaurant culture.“We’re a brotherhood, so you’re going to definitely have some honest reviews from your 449 brothers,” said Mr. Towns, 27.Rudy Gobert, a Timberwolves teammate, frequent gives Mr. Towns tips on lesser-known eateries with little fanfare on Yelp, Tripadvisor or other recommendation websites. Mr. Olynyk, of the Jazz, enjoys introducing his younger teammates to top restaurants in different cities (and picking up the bill), much as his former teammate Rajon Rondo did for him, treating Mr. Olynyk to Strega Italiano in Boston when Mr. Olynyk was a rookie with the Celtics.“It’s kind of like a rite of passage,” Mr. Olynyk, a native of Toronto, said.Kevin Love, a veteran forward for the Miami Heat, grew up in Portland, Ore., a city known for its creative dining scene. As his basketball career — one that has included five All-Star selections and a championship ring with the Cleveland Cavaliers — has advanced, his food knowledge has improved and his network of fellow food lovers has expanded (The Times documented his passion for travel in 2019).“Having a love for food, as well as wine, has brought me into a number of circles where I’ve made really good friends with restaurateurs, chefs and people who have similar interests,” said Mr. Love, 35, who is a partner (along with his former teammate Channing Frye) in Chosen Family Wines, a wine brand based out of Willamette Valley, Ore. “That’s a fun world to be in.”He has leveraged connections in the restaurant industry to organize team dinners, key to building team camaraderie. Before the Heat visit New York City, Mr. Love will call area restaurants and design unique dining experiences for his teammates.“I’m going to take these guys out and show them great food and introduce them to maybe a different cuisine,” Mr. Love said.He still considers Portland one of his top food destinations, naming Kann and RingSide Steakhouse (he strongly suggests the onion rings) as his hometown favorites. In New York City, where he lived in the off-season before recently moving to Long Island, Mr. Love lists as favorites Carbone, Sadelle’s, Hometown Bar-B-Que, Fini Pizza and Misi (Sean Feeney, the restaurateur, is a good friend of his), and Eleven Madison Park (Daniel Humm, the chef and owner, is also a friend).Kevin Love, a veteran forward for the Miami Heat, has leveraged his connections in the restaurant industry to organize team dinners.Michael Dwyer/Associated Press“It’s one of the most unbelievably beautiful kitchens I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Love said of Eleven Madison Park.For many N.B.A. players, supporting minority-owned businesses can be as important as finding establishments with Michelin stars. Mr. Towns, of the Timberwolves, will also approach local residents to seek restaurant recommendations.“I’ve always been intrigued by people and cultures,” said Mr. Towns, who has Dominican and African American roots. “And the best way to learn about people and cultures is to sit down and enjoy their food.”In Minneapolis, Mr. Towns recommends Soul Bowl, a soul food and Caribbean-inspired restaurant in the city’s North Loop. But it was Fratelli’s Pizza Cafe, in his hometown, Piscataway, N.J., where he took his girlfriend when they first started dating.“‘I got to take you home to a pizzeria that I grew up on,’” Mr. Towns recalled saying. “I said, ‘All you need is a cheese slice and I promise you it will change your life.’”“She agrees with me,” he said with a laugh.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023. More