Malik Beasley had a career year with the Detroit Pistons this past season, during which he became one of the best high-volume three-point shooters in the league. That fabulous campaign, in which he made 319 threes and scored 16 points per game, came at a great time for Beasley's finances, as he is set to enter free agency tomorrow. Unfortunately, his career might now be over.
That grim possibility is brought to us by ESPN's Shams Charania, who reports that Beasley is currently the subject of a federal investigation into allegations of gambling on NBA games and prop bets. According to Charania, the investigation is focused on bets that were made during the 2023–24 NBA season, when Beasley was a member of the Milwaukee Bucks. According to ESPN's David Purdum, at least one U.S. sports book detected unusual betting interest on Beasley's statistics in January 2024.
Beasley joins Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier on the list of NBA players who have been investigated over suspicious gambling activity in the last 18 months. Porter's transgressions were bad enough to earn him a lifetime ban from the NBA, but Rozier's case remains unresolved. Even if Beasley is ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing, his free agency prospects are all fucked up now. Charania reports that Beasley and the Pistons were on the verge of agreeing to a three-year, $42 million contract, but those discussions have now been paused.
As much as Adam Silver would love for fans to believe that end-of-the-bench scrubs like Porter are the only vector by which legalized sports gambling can infect the integrity of the game, Beasley and Rozier popping up in these sorts of investigations shows how flimsy that belief is. You can convince yourself that gambling is no big deal if all it leads to is an 11th man who plays a five-minute stint here and there manipulating some prop bets, but Beasley is a different story. If the allegations against him turn out to be true, then the league will have to confront the meaning of a nine-year veteran who played a key role on Eastern Conference playoff teams over the past two seasons manipulating games. It's hard to imagine the integrity of the NBA being more compromised than that.
