From Jack Molinas to Jontay Porter: 70 Years of Gambling Bans in the NBA

The NBA was dealing with player gambling decades before online sportsbooks and player props became part of the sport. Jack Molinas was banned in 1954 after the league learned that he had bet on Fort Wayne Pistons games. Jontay Porter’s case arrived 70 years later, in an era of online accounts, player props and automated betting monitoring.

Jack Molinas: From Top Pick to NBA Ban

Jack Molinas came out of Columbia with real hype around him. Fort Wayne grabbed him with the third pick in the 1953 NBA draft, and for a while, the bet looked pretty good. He played 32 games, made the All-Star team as a rookie — and then, before he could even suit up for the game, his NBA career went off the rails.

In January 1954, NBA president Maurice Podoloff suspended Molinas after the league found out he had been betting on Pistons games. Molinas had an answer: yes, he bet, but only on Fort Wayne to win. Didn’t matter. For the NBA, betting on games involving your own team was already over the line. The suspension became a lifetime ban.

And Molinas wasn’t done making headlines. Seven years later, his name popped up in a much bigger mess — the college basketball point-shaving scandal. Prosecutors said he helped run a scheme that paid college players to keep scores within certain margins for betting purposes. The fallout spread well beyond the people actually accused of fixing games. Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown were both shut out of the NBA for years because of their connections to people caught up in the investigation, even though their own involvement was never established. Hawkins eventually made it to the NBA. Brown took a different route and became one of the ABA’s stars.

From Bookmakers to Online Player Props

The gambling market around basketball has changed sharply since the 1950s. Molinas operated in an era of bookmakers, personal contacts and cash wagers. Today, sports betting is digital, and markets can cover not only the final score but also a player’s points, rebounds, minutes or other individual statistics.

Basketball betting now sits alongside broader gambling products on platforms such as lizaro. This creates a different integrity problem for leagues: a player does not need to influence the result of an entire game to affect a wager. A small change in minutes played or individual performance can matter to a prop bet.

Modern betting also leaves a clearer trail. Operators and monitoring companies can flag unusual activity, large wagers or suspicious market changes. That difference became central to the Jontay Porter case.

Jontay Porter and the 2024 Lifetime Ban

In April 2024, the NBA banned Toronto Raptors two-way player Jontay Porter for life after an investigation into his betting activity.

The league found that Porter disclosed confidential information about his health to a person he knew to be an NBA bettor. It also concluded that he limited his participation in at least one game for betting purposes and had placed NBA wagers through another person’s account.

One episode involved Toronto’s March 20 game. Before the game, information about Porter’s health was passed to a bettor who placed an $80,000 parlay on Porter-related player props. The bet could have returned $1.1 million. Porter played only three minutes before leaving. The wager was frozen and not paid after it was identified as suspicious.

The NBA also found that Porter had placed at least 13 bets on league games between January and March 2024. He did not bet on games in which he played, but three parlays included a wager on the Raptors to lose.

What Changed Between 1954 and 2024?

Online bets create records, and unusual activity can be detected far more quickly than it could in Molinas’ era. A bet placed through lizaro or another modern platform leaves a digital record, something investigators in the 1950s simply did not have. In Porter’s case, licensed betting operators and a market-monitoring company helped bring the suspicious wagers to the NBA’s attention.

The Rule Has Stayed Simple

The NBA has changed greatly since Molinas played for Fort Wayne, but its position on player betting remains strict.

Molinas bet on games involving his team. Porter’s case involved inside information, player props and bets placed through another account. In both situations, the NBA concluded that gambling had crossed the line from a player’s private conduct into the integrity of its games.

That is why two cases from 1954 and 2024 belong in the same chapter of NBA history.