The NBA’s banned bet list reads like a charge sheet
The NBA has told its authorized betting partners, DraftKings and FanDuel, to stop offering a specific set of player prop wagers this season, and every market on the banned list corresponds to a tactic used in the league’s two recent gambling cases.
As Casino.org first reported, the restrictions ban parlays combining multiple unders on one player’s statistics, first-of markets such as first basket, first rebound and first assist, bets on the opening tip, and under bets on players expected to play fewer than 12 minutes in a game.
That list is bespoke policy written from two federal cases. Jontay Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was permanently banned by the NBA in 2024 after admitting he left two Toronto Raptors games early, in January and March of that year, so associates could win under bets on his stats. Federal prosecutors said one charged bettor placed an $80,000 parlay on unders across Porter’s assists, rebounds, points, 3-pointers, steals and blocks for a March 2024 game, with a potential payout of about $1.1 million. That wager is a multi-under parlay on a low-minutes player, and both formats are now prohibited.
The Rozier allegations fit the same template. Prosecutors allege he conspired with gamblers to leave a March 2023 game early while playing for the Charlotte Hornets, letting bettors profit on his statistical unders. He has pleaded not guilty, and the banned markets treat the mechanics of the scheme, not the man: unders on short playing time and micro-markets that a single player can move.
First-of and opening-tip bets sit in the same category of risk. One possession or one tip is enough to decide them, which makes them cheap for an insider to influence and expensive for a sportsbook to police. By pulling them along with the parlays, the NBA is not tightening general housekeeping rules, it is closing the exact doors its cases came through.
The policy also reaches beyond the markets themselves. The league has told teams and sportsbooks it is requiring in-person training on betting rules for all players, coaches and training staff this season, and is launching an AI-based platform to flag unusual betting activity. The restrictions extend to WNBA games beginning in 2027, which points to a durable league-wide standard rather than a one-off.
For DraftKings and FanDuel the instruction lands on revenue-generating markets, though neither operator has publicly quantified the loss. Porter’s sentencing, postponed several times, is currently scheduled for December 10, 2026, so the cases behind the ban will keep moving in court regardless of league policy.
