Sports gambling is again in an unflattering spotlight thanks to ESPN’s Shams Charania reporting Sunday that Detroit Pistons’ guard Malik Beasley is facing a unspecified federal investigation around allegations of prop bet fixing. Charania cited sources saying that this investigation pertains to Beasley’s 2023-24 NBA season with the Milwaukee Bucks:
BREAKING: The U.S. District Attorney’s office is investigating Detroit Pistons guard Malik Beasley on allegations of gambling related to NBA games and prop bets, sources told ESPN. Serious development surrounding one of the top NBA free agents. pic.twitter.com/U0W1QONYva
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) June 29, 2025
ESPN betting writer David Payne Purdum then advanced Charania’s story with a report that at least one sportsbook was previously concerned around betting patterns here:
At least one prominent US sportsbook noticed unusual betting patterns on Malik Beasley prop bets beginning in January 2024.
— David Payne Purdum (@DavidPurdum) June 29, 2025
A lot of social media discussion spun up around gambling overall and prop bets in particular in the wake of this. And Purdum (who has covered sports betting since 2008, and joined ESPN in 2014) had a particularly interesting comment there Sunday evening. That came in response to a X post noting that there have always been sports betting scandals:
I agree with this, but fear that modern betting menus, with countless prop bets, potentially incentivize attempts at corruption. https://t.co/7JWPc3lQny
— David Payne Purdum (@DavidPurdum) June 29, 2025
There’s a notable point there. First, yes, there have always been betting scandals (and that point has been advanced before), but not all gambling scandals or stories are the same. And the current betting environment has some significant differences from previous times. One is that some of the most infamous past scandals, such as the 1919 Black Sox, relied on players trying to throw an entire World Series (and to what degree which particular players did or didn’t try to do that is still hotly debated), which is seemingly much easier to detect than just not hitting a prop bet total.
Of course, there have also been some past scandals around elements not involving games’ full outcomes, especially around “point shaving.” One instance there, the Boston College men’s basketball scandal in 1978-79, even involved Goodfellas subject Henry Hill (and it wound up seeing an innocent player added to the scandal for five years thanks to a Wikipedia edit). But even point shaving stands out from the current prop bet environment, as it’s about team-wide totals, and thus, is harder to pull off by getting to just one player.
Individual prop bet totals are much easier for a particular player to manipulate. We saw that with former Toronto Raptor Jontay Porter (who was reportedly granted a FanDuel VIP account during his rookie season) did with a series of early exits from games a few years back. (He received a lifetime ban from the NBA last year, pled guilty to wire fraud conspiracy after that, and faces sentencing this December.) And that’s what seems to be under question with Beasley, although the one specific instance of unusual prop movement on him cited by a gambling industry source in Charania’s story, betting on the under on Beasley’s rebounds in a Jan. 31, 2024 game, did not pay off. Throwing a prop bet seems much easier for a player like Porter (3.8 career points per game in the NBA) or Beasley (11.7 career PPG) than even throwing a team over-under, much less a game result.
As Beasley’s attorney, Steve Haney, told Charania, “An investigation is not a charge.” And we’re not yet at a point of league discipline or criminal charges against Beasley. But the discussion around this saga, including with Purdum’s comment, is notable for putting player prop bets in general back under a spotlight.
A wide variety of reporting on gambling over the years has suggested that the easiest possible corruption comes around individual player outcomes, especially around those involving more-fringe players. And the current environment deserves some scrutiny there for making betting on those players’ individual game outcomes much easier.
Having access to national (or, at least, many states) and international markets let big sportsbooks offer betting on a wide variety of small-scale player outcomes a previous individual bookie probably wouldn’t offer. And expanded betting legalization makes it much simpler to place the bets in question (although they can be tracked, flagged, and passed to authorities much more easily than they would have under an illegal gambling system). But there’s a debate to be had on how worthwhile it really is to offer props on fringe players in particular, and that debate may get some new fuel around this Beasley investigation.