The N.B.A. wants to make it harder for gamblers to profit from inside information about players’ health.
Starting Monday, teams will be required to submit an injury report between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on the day of games, a move designed to catch any changes made after a team’s morning shootaround, according to three people familiar with the league’s plan, which it has not yet publicly announced. Previously, in most cases, the final public injury report was due the evening before at 5..
The rule change is a concrete step to maintain the integrity of the league in the wake of recent sports betting indictments involving notable figures in basketball.
Although teams were expected to update their reports with any changes to athletes’ playing status, last-minute injury information was often known only to people with direct access to players.
All injury reports will be made public at official.nba.com within 15 minutes of being submitted, because the site will now update every 15 minutes instead of once an hour.
League medical and player health staff presented the new procedure to the N.B.A.’s Board of Governors on Friday. Teams were also informed that penalties for violating rules on injury reporting would become steeper.
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Injury status featured prominently in the federal sports betting indictment that the Eastern District of New York announced in October. Federal prosecutors said Damon Jones, a former coach and friend of LeBron James, gave bettors nonpublic information about the playing status of “Player 3,” whose description matched that of Mr. James.
The indictment said Mr. Jones sent a text message to a co-conspirator the morning of a game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks that said, “Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out! [Player 3] is out tonight.” The indictment noted that “Player 3” was not ruled out on the N.B.A.’s injury report but did not play in the game.
The indictment also accused Terry Rozier, an active N.B.A. player, of defrauding betting companies through a scheme that included telling bettors he would take himself out of a game early so they could win certain bets. The league placed Mr. Rozier on leave.
During a news conference in Las Vegas, just before the championship game of the N.B.A. Cup, the league’s in-season tournament, Commissioner Adam Silver said the league had been considering a number of potential adjustments in response to the scandal.
“Are there better ways to educate the participants? Are there changes we should make in how injuries are reported, dealing with the so-called inside information issue to ensure there’s a level playing field, to the extent people are betting on the sport?” Mr. Silver said on Tuesday.
Mr. Silver said the league had lobbied regulators about the types of bets that can be easily manipulated — unders, bets that a specific statistic will be less than a certain number, and prop bets, or those on specific events or individual performances in a game.
“We don’t control the bets that are placed on our own sport right now,” Mr. Silver said. “We’re left to lobby regulators or try to convince the legal sports betting companies that that’s bad for them, as well, because in terms of their business, if their consumers don’t think that there’s integrity in the product, why would they be willing to place bets?”
He wondered aloud if the league could use artificial intelligence to “scrape the internet” for conversation about the game and examine not just legal betting markets but illegal markets and prediction markets, to better spot suspicious betting.
“Even since the beginning of the season, sports betting is increasing, not decreasing,” Mr. Silver said. “So it just means that we’re going to have to do whatever is necessary to protect our integrity.”
Tania Ganguli writes about money, power and influence in sports and how it impacts the broader culture.
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