Jontay Porter NBA Fixer

0:10It was Wednesday, March 20th, 2024. the tail end of what NBA announcers deemed a seven-game slide for the Toronto Raptors. The team had lost seven games in a row, with just 14 left in the season. That night, they were playing the Sacramento Kings, and with six players out for injuries or personal reasons, the team's bench was looking a little thin. They've been there night in and night out. Toronto, they have used 119, Jack. You know, it comes into play when you mention that because it's hard to form it when you have that many different groups out there. 21 different starting lineups. Nine minutes and 17 seconds into the first quarter, NBA journeyman John Taye Porter checked into the game.

1:01To the average viewer, he was playing normally. He grabbed two offensive rebounds in this first minute of play, and with just two minutes left, he attempted a two-pointer and missed. At the end of the quarter, Porter was back on the bench. Just four minutes into the second quarter, he was taken back to the locker room with an unspecified illness. Porter was out for the night.

1:31On the surface, nothing was out of the ordinary. Porter was just a marginal player playing at a marginal capacity. But almost immediately following the March 20th game, DraftKings and FanDuel, two of the top online sportsbooks, began to sound alarm bells. And less than a week later, ESPN broke the story that rocked the NBA and sports world. It's cardinal sin, you know, what he's accused of in the NBA.

2:13This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast One. You're listening to a story told in one episode called Jontae Porter, The Devil's in the Parley. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. In this episode, we follow the story of 26-year-old Jontae Porter. Jontae grew up in a family that believed there were two callings in life, faith and basketball. On the court, grit and hustle were his calling card. But when the rush of basketball wasn't enough, Jontay took up a new game. Tonight, the NBA is doling out a lifetime ban to Raptors forward Jontay Porter Jr. after a league investigation uncovered blatant violations of our gaming rules.

3:16Jonte Porter comes from a long line of basketball legends. Back in the early 80s, his mother earned the title of Miss Iowa Basketball her senior year of high school. Mike Halas, sports columnist for the Cedar Rapids Iowa Gazette, remembers covering a few of her games. I have been at the Gazette for 44 years. That means 1981 for starters. Lisa Porter, who was then Lisa Becker, played high school basketball at Jefferson in Cedar Rapids and was a prolific player to say the least. Back then, high school women's basketball in Iowa was a six-on-six sport rather than the standard five-on-five. It was three offensive players and three defensive players at each end.

4:08And if you were Lisa's height and had her ball skills and shooting skills, you were going to dwarf the opponent and score a lot of points. And that is exactly what she did. Lisa Porter had a record of scoring an average of 58.7 points per game. In modern basketball, averaging above 20 points, again, typically makes someone an all-star caliber player. And while today's 5-on-5 game is totally different from the 6-on-6 game Lisa Porter played back in the 80s, scoring nearly 60 points a game is a superstar level of play. Lisa Porter was simply unstoppable on the basketball court as a high school player.

4:59Lisa went on to play college basketball at the University of Iowa, where she also received her MBA. She met her husband, Michael Porter Sr., through Athletes in Action, a sports organization that doubles as a ministry. Michael Sr. played basketball for the University of New Orleans. Lisa and Michael Sr., both 6 '4", married in the early 90s and had eight children. Michael Jr., who would eventually help lead the Denver Nuggets to their very first NBA championship win, was the third born. A little over a year later, in 1999, Jonte Porter followed. Jonte spent most of his young life in the shadow of his older brother's superstardom, but insists that they were always best friends.

5:49He's even called himself the Robin to his brother's Batman. Michael Jr. and Jonte grew to be 6 '10 and 6 '11, respectively. It was a talented athletic family that Lisa came from, and combined with her husband's basketball prowess, it led to some pretty good DNA. The brothers grew up in Columbia, Missouri with their siblings, Bry, Sierra, Coben, Javon, Isaac, and Jada. They were homeschooled by Lisa and pushed to put in early morning hours at a neighborhood training gym by their father. Here's Jonte on the Jeremy Mills podcast back in 2020. He's describing what his daily routine was like growing up.

6:38For us, it was you wake up, go shoot a little bit, shower, do a little bit of school, go lift, go shoot, practice. It's just like constant, you know? Sometimes I wish I went to school just to have those, you know, the lunch breaks and bantering with your friends. It's just not there. It can get lonely at times, but luckily I had brothers and sisters both below and above me that had that same goal and drive that I did. So it wasn't really too much of an issue for me. Their focused efforts paid off. Both brothers became back-to-back state champions on their high school teams. In the mid-2010s, Michael Sr.

7:13took the job of assistant coach for the University of Washington men's basketball team. The family followed him to Seattle, where, quickly enough, Jontae and Michael Jr. helped bring their new high school to a perfect season and a state title. They both received athletic scholarships to the University of Missouri, and Jontae graduated high school early. With that, they found themselves back in their home state. Jontae played one season at the University of Missouri. During his freshman year, he showed real promise. He was honored by his Southeastern Conference as the co-sixth man of the year and was named to the 2017-18 All-Freshman team.

7:58His basketball future looked bright, but in the fall before his sophomore year, he tore his ACL and MCL, sidelining him for the entire season. Less than a year later, he re-tore his knee. But he took a chance at the NBA anyway, entering his name into that year's draft. Jonte went undrafted, but was signed by the Memphis Grizzlies in early 2020. He played for them until the summer of 2021, when the team released him. That same year, his brother Michael earned himself a contract worth close to$200 million with the Denver Nuggets. While his brother achieved NBA stardom, John Tay was barely hanging on to his NBA dream.

8:46He moved on to the G League, NBA's minor league, for a couple years. Then, at the end of 2023, he got a chance at the NBA. He signed a two-way contract with the Toronto Raptors. That meant he was eligible to play for both the Raptors and Toronto's G League team, the Raptors 905. By the beginning of 2024, his hard work and perseverance paid off. Jante was in the Raptors starting lineup. On the court, he was tracking toward a life in basketball, in line with his family's legacy. Off the court though, he was pursuing another, more precarious passion.

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10:45For Jhontae Porter, basketball was life. Even though Jhontae had worked his way up to the Toronto Raptors starting lineup, he was never really a household name. He didn't mind being in the background, though. Here he is talking to a reporter after practice with the Raptors in early January of 2024. I'd say I'm overall pretty reserved, dude. So the easier I can break out of that shell, be more comfortable, I think the more it'll translate to on the court, you know, the nerves won't be there. I won't be as anxious. Jante's$400 ,000 salary was a drop in the bucket compared to his brother Michael's five-year$180 million NBA deal with the Denver Nuggets.

11:30But Jante claimed the difference in pay never bothered him. Here he is talking about it on two podcasts from the fall of 2022, Bound to be Rich and Jeremy Mills. My brother was like always the biggest superstar growing up. He was like number one ranked eighth grader. So the public eye was always on him. And then consequentially me as well, because I was always on the same team as him. So I would always do interviews, talking about my brother. With Michael, I've always been his biggest fan, I feel like. I mean, he's obviously making more money than me, but I can't, who am I to complain? You know, I've made it and I still have goals and aspirations as we talked about, but there's no point in complaining because there's always going to be somebody that's making more.

12:13There's going to be a LeBron James in the world. Jonte's personality on the court was mostly physical. He was a player's player. He was big and tall, even for the NBA, and worked hard to catch rebounds. Here he is again talking to a reporter after practice in 2024. So for me, I don't have a lot of NBA experience. I've only played probably count on two hands how many NBA games I've played. So going out there, just being overall physical, rebounding, not doing too much with the basketball, just fitting in where I can get in. And over time, my role will probably expand and evolve. But for now, I'm really comfortable just going in there, doing what I can to impact the game, whether that's on defense or offense, and just bringing in overall physicality.

12:59Because that's my job as a big man is to be physical, rebound, block shots, all that. Porter's side hustle, though, revealed another part of his personality. his intellect and business savvy. He'd always been a reader, mostly of the Bible, novels, and self-help books. And as a child, he fixed cell phone screens for fellow classmates. I remember in high school, my backpack, instead of being filled with books, I'd just put a bunch of iPhone bags in it and then go to the bathroom and customize the kids' phones for$20 and take that back home. So yeah, man, I've been hustling since a kid. I just like to see my money grow.

13:45He reportedly first dabbled in Bitcoin in high school, more than doubling his five grand initial investment into profit. As an adult, he hit rock bottom after his second knee injury and was even reconsidering his basketball career. I mean, I'm not going to say I'm depressed, but I was super sad for obvious reasons when I hurt my knee that second time. I was like, I might play again. This basketball even bore me. Maybe I should just go back to school and get a little job or work for my brother because he'll be a millionaire. It's just like there's all these thoughts running through your head. Jante needed something else to focus on.

14:24So he took another shot at cryptocurrency. I didn't actively trade until I got hurt and kind of learned it by myself. I kind of just had to remind myself that life's not all about basketball. Because up until that point, that was all my dream, all my goal was just to make it to the NBA. And I knew I'd be happy, but that wasn't looking as sure as it was a few months prior. So I guess I just kind of reminded myself life's so much more. I can learn more things. I can do more stuff. And that's kind of when trading became a new hobby. And I started learning more about that. I saw how much fun that was while simultaneously working to come back in basketball.

15:02Jonte shouted out his own Twitter handle on the Bound to be Rich podcast at TayTrades11, a platform he used to share tips and tricks from the crypto world and to promote his subscription-based trading firm, Financial Cloud. He joked that day traders like him have to be sick in the head to achieve success. I kind of just started looking at money differently when it was in my trading account. I almost treated it like a video game where I'm just not panicking too much if I lost. I'm almost looking at it just like numbers on a screen, which it is in a sense. And I wasn't freaking out. I only put in money that I was okay with losing and just wrote down my rules every day and stuck to them.

15:47While day trading is technically a form of investment, not gambling, it still carries major risks. It involves making decisions by the minute, based on short-term changes in the stock market and, oftentimes, limited information. Day traders can win money quickly, but more often than not, they lose it. And the hobby can become addictive. Sports betting is similar, and Jante dabbled in it as well. It triggers the same parts of the brain that day trading does, neural pathways that govern anticipation and reward. From 2021 to 2023, during the tail end of which he signed that two-way NBA contract, Jante reportedly bet millions of dollars through his VIP account on FanDuel, a major online sportsbook.

16:44None of the bets he placed directly were on NBA or college basketball. Doing so would have violated league rules. Instead, he likely bet on other sports, which weren't explicitly prohibited. But it wasn't long before he did start pushing the limits of the law. He started by betting on basketball via other people's phones. And that was a big no-no. Here's Brad Sinkov, a sports betting and gaming industry reporter for Covers.com. I tell people this all the time, and I don't think people understand to the degree that they are monitored. When you sign up for a sports book and you agree to all their terms and conditions, they are able to locate and track you.

17:36They are able to monitor what's going on. They have access to your bank account. When you sign into them, you go through Plaid a lot and they have access to these things. So they can monitor a lot of things that you're doing that you don't even realize they're doing. When another person places bets for you, that person is called a proxy. And Jante used proxies in an attempt to get around sportsbook surveillance measures. measures. Porter couldn't sign up for a sports book because if Porter did, he would be flagged and the NBA would know about it and immediately suspend him. So he had to go through other people to place his wagers that those other people were going through legalized sports books.

18:23By 2024, Jante had himself some serious gambling debt. One of the main people he was in the hole with was Amar Awalde, a Brooklynite who reportedly ran a bodega with his family in the New York City borough. It's unclear how Jante met him, but allegedly Awalde offered Jante a way out of his gambling debts. Awalde and his group of fellow schemers demanded Jante intentionally limit his own play by faking injuries or illnesses so he could exit the games early in order to influence the outcome of the bets. Before the game started, Awalde and his partners would place prop bets against Jante's individual performance, or more specifically, his lack of performance during Raptors games.

19:19The plan was for Jante to deliberately play poorly to guarantee those bets would hit and text messages show that he went along with the plan willingly. On January 26, 2024, Jonte entered the game against the Los Angeles Clippers with just over 4 minutes left in the first quarter. At the end of the quarter, he was benched and didn't come back in. Supposedly, he'd irritated an eye injury he got at a game four days earlier All the while, Awalday and his friends were making money They'd made several parlay bets on Jante's underperformance in the game And with him out of it, they were winning big Parlay bets are types of bets that have multiple components to them In this case, the bets look something like Porter would get less than a certain number of points and less than a certain number of rebounds and less than a certain number of assists, etc.

20:26The Washington Post has described parlays as the slot machines of sports betting, meaning that the house, not the better, nearly always wins. Turns out that's not the case when the bets are fixed. Awalday and his friends reportedly won over$100 ,000 that night. Nearly two months later, Jante and his betting buddies were at it again. Days before the Raptors' March 20th game against the Sacramento Kings, Jante claimed to his social circle that he had food poisoning. Meanwhile, he was using the Telegram messaging app to tell Awalde his real game plan for March 20th. He'd leave the game early, claiming he was still sick.

21:18Jante's aim, again, was to make sure he wouldn't play well to earn both Awalde and himself hefty payouts. Awalde and his crew met up at an Atlantic City resort and casino to put their part of the plan into place. a wager of 80 grand on Jante's game. Jante did as he said he would. He played in the first quarter of the game. But about four minutes into the second one, he was taken into the locker room. NBA announcers explained he was done for the night and out with an illness. In other words, he'd underperformed again and his partners would win big. Or had they? Before O 'Wilday and his crew could withdraw their full winnings, DraftKings froze the bettor's account.

22:15It was the amount that was waging. And that's always going to raise an eye with sportsbooks. The first thing they're going to say is, OK, why did we receive from somebody who probably hasn't been betting on a large scale, all of a sudden betting$60 ,000 on a game and playing a wild parlay?

22:46When Amar Awalde and Jontay Porter started working together to rig Jontay's basketball performance, they thought they had beaten the sports betting system. But here's the problem. Sportsbooks track this sort of behavior, and they can act fast to correct it. Here's reporter Brad Sinkoff talking about parlays, which, again, are kind of like sports betting slot machines. Sportsbooks offer parlays like crazy. It's how they make money. It's the window shopping. It's how they draw you in to sportsbooks, sports betting. And when someone hits on those, they want to know why. And they want to know who it is, why they did it.

23:32Both FanDuel and DraftKings traced the suspicious bets on Jante's January 26th and March 20th games back to a wow-days group. The NBA got involved, then the International Betting Integrity Association, and finally, the FBI. It didn't take long for them to reach a conclusion. By mid-April, the NBA investigation found that Jonte had violated the rules of the league. He was banned from the NBA for life. Developing right now, Jonte Porter, the brother of Nuggets star Michael Porter Jr., pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a federal criminal case tied to a betting scandal that got him banned from the NBA for life.

24:20In court this afternoon, the former Toronto Raptors player said he agreed to withdraw early from games to get out from under large gambling debt. He also quotes as saying, I know what I did was wrong, unlawful, and I'm deeply sorry. As for the other five named conspirators, three of them have pleaded guilty, including one who was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport en route to Australia. Awalde has reportedly been indicted. The last one, a man named Shane Hennon, who goes by Sugar and the World of Gambling, was apprehended at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on his way to Columbia.

25:05In January of 2026, Hennon was also allegedly implicated in a conspiracy to fix dozens of college basketball games that took place over two seasons. Jante pleaded guilty in the summer of 2024 and was originally set to be sentenced in that December, but his sentencing was pushed back until December 2025. His sentence, prosecutors said, would likely be around three to five years. It might be easy to chalk Jante's crimes up to a few reckless choices made by a young athlete. Plenty in the sports world still do. Here's a clip from Numbers on the Board, a basketball podcast on ESPN. Jontae Porter, are you f***ing me?

26:02I'm not even laughing, bro. If everything is true, because they do have to investigate and everything, Jontae Porter is a damn fool. He's a damn fool? The reason Jonte Porter is a damn fool is because like you just said and like KB just said, anybody with any type of sense understands that betting, it is first and foremost a business. Yes. This is a major operation from everybody who is running these sites and casino. It is a business. business you're also in a business of the nba which to think you can just loosey-goosey randomly put twenty thousand dollars on jante porter whether you was doing it yourself through your mama account a cousin a friend in a group chat you have to be a damn fool to think nobody is going to yes that's just stupid but the story is only getting more complicated at the time of this episode's airing, Jhontae's new sentencing date came and went with no news or updates.

27:10Which could mean Jhontae is cooperating with the feds. An investigative piece published last November in The Athletic connects Jhontae's sports betting case with another high-profile one. That of several alleged fixed and illegal poker games run for the past several years by gamblers across the U.S. Jonte's not the only NBA star involved. Chauncey Billups, coach for the Portland Trailblazers, and Terry Rosair, guard for the Miami Heat, have also been charged. Awalde, or Flappy, as he's reportedly known in the gambling scene, is also one of the implicated gamblers. And he allegedly has ties to the New York Mafia.

27:59We'll have to wait to hear if and how Jhontae found himself in so deep. In the meantime, sports bettors may notice a new change in their betting options. Sportsbooks that partner with the NBA will no longer offer their customers prop bets on players who have a two-way contract. In other words, players who generally make the lowest salaries in the league. The change has a nickname. The Jonte Porter Rule.

28:41Thanks for tuning in to The Opportunist. This episode was written by Ashley Green, produced by Abby Newhouse and Alex Boyd, and executive produced by Connor Powell. We'll be back in two weeks with a new story about people seeing an opportunity to get ahead and taking it. Until next time.

29:19Thank you.