An N.B.A. Player Got Hooked on Sports Betting. Soon, He Became the Bet

Résumé détaillé

The N.B.A. player Jontay Porter got deep into FanDuel, and in debt to the wrong people. The only way out, it seemed, was to gamble on himself.

When Jontay Porter was ten, his father woke him up most mornings before dawn. He and his siblings piled into the family’s Sprinter van and drove to an empty field house off the highway. Then, while their friends slept, they ran basketball drills with their father. “All I remember is it still being pitch-black outside, and the two dreaded double doors on the side of the building that would always be left open for us,” Jontay told me recently. In the bleary moments just before one of his siblings tugged the field-house doors open, Jontay always secretly wished that they’d be locked. And, one morning, they were. Jontay smiled as he climbed back into the van and drifted off to sleep.

Big state schools turn their best athletes into local celebrities, but the hype that followed Michael to Missouri’s campus on his recruiting visits was closer to Beatlemania. Fans asked for autographs and took selfies. Jontay, who came along, was seduced by the hysteria. “Frat houses are putting up posters, and he’s literally treated like a king,” he recalled. “I wanted to be a part of that circus.” He skipped his senior year of high school to join the team, too. The brothers were best friends. Still, it was sometimes hard to be one of the top players in the country but just the second best in his family. “He got all the attention,” Jontay said. “I was just kind of his biggest fan.”

For a time that first season, Michael was sidelined with a back injury, giving Jontay a turn in the spotlight. “He’s the best player I’ve ever been around,” Chris Hollender, then an assistant coach at Mizzou, told me. “I’ve always said I thought he was a more complete player than Mike.” At eighteen, Jontay led his team to the N.C.A.A. tournament. “For me to finally get a taste of stardom?” Jontay said. “I was the man. I controlled the narrative.”

Michael went to the N.B.A. draft that summer. Jontay planned to enter the following year.

Début de l'article, extrait de The New Yorker. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.