Alleged Text Messages, Another Arrest - The Jontay Porter Betting Scandal Is Somehow Dumber Than We Originally Thought

Chris Schwegler. Getty Images.

We know Jontay Porter is banned for life from the NBA thanks to the gambling scandal from earlier this season. 

But now it gets even dumber, thanks to the arrest of 'Bruce'. Look, it's a dumb situation to begin with. I don't know how else to explain this. You're a professional athlete, you know the rules of the league when it comes to things like this. We saw it yesterday in the baseball world: 

Basketball has dealt with this before thanks to Tim Donaghy. Now you have a whatever player in Jontay Porter doing this and you immediately get the fear that there are more players out there. If there are, just stop. We can't have this cloud a sport. But specific to this Porter situation, perhaps the dumbest thing he did was send a text message: 

[Post] - The disgraced NBA player allegedly communicated with the group of co-conspirators through the Telegram group chat app when he notified them before another game — this time on March 20 against the Sacramento Kings — claiming that going to say he was sick to leave a game early.

Later, on April 4, the same day that Porter was banned for life from basketball for betting on games, he allegedly texted the group chat and told them that they “might just get hit w a rico” — referring to a racketeering charge — before asking them if they “delete[d] all the stuff” from their personal cell phones.

Anyone with the tiniest bit of information in their brain knows you can't just 'delete' stuff from a phone. That shit lives forever. In one way, Porter deserves the lifetime ban even more for all of this. The fact that he was 'throwing' moments of the game, since he had to hit his unders. It doesn't matter how good he is or not, if you're in a betting scandal for personal unders, it's the dumbest thing you can do. 

Then there's this Bruce guy.

Long Phi Pham, 38, also known as “Bruce,” was nabbed Monday while trying to board a flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Australia on a one-way ticket, according to a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court.

 First off, if you're buying a one-way ticket out of the country, what are you waiting for? You're begging to get caught here. Then there's the money in hand, seems like a no-brainer he's going to get charged and the other guys who are still at-large will be soon too. This sounds straight out of a movie, or at least parts of Uncut Gems. I started Clipped last night, the Sterling scandal on FX, feels like we're a couple years away from this being the next show. Can't be this dumb.