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I'm not saying Porter shouldn't be punished, but it is an interesting relationship between sports and gambling. We get hammered in the face with sports gambling ads while watching sports. Even ESPN has their own sports book now, ESPN Bet. Clever naming by the folks in Bristol, by the way. Very original. So we're bombarded by sports gambling...then the NBA suspends a guy for life for gambling on his games. I mean, there's a link on the NBA's website that takes you right to THEIR sports book. You can go read an article about Porter getting a lifetime ban, and in one click from that very page, open a sports gambling page to bet on the NBA.

Does that absolve them of their hypocrisy?

It wasn't all that long ago that keeping a book was illegal almost everywhere in the US. Sports leagues stayed as far away from it as possible because history shows that hardly anything can destroy credibility of their league easier. Then came river boat casinos, then online betting, legality in more locations. People got addicted. Other companies were making easy money praying on them. It was too much for the sports leagues to resist when they could promote it easier than anyone.

I don't know if this behavior is actually hypocritical. You can make an actual rational distinction as to why it might be OK for everyone to gamble on your league but your league's employees. So, it isn't quite the same as a drug company spending 10's of millions on a mass marketing campaign peddling an addictive drug as hard as they can but the #1 company rule requires their employees don't use it because it would seriously harm their job performance and thus destroy the company, but at least the look at it from the outside at first glance feels similar to that.

Like I said, I don't know if it is actually hypocritical but on a first glance it is going to feel hypocritical. But you are right. It is closer to the marketing company that the drug company hired not allowing their employees to use the drug. But, again, it don't think that it is exactly the same thing as that either because there is a distinction to be made here as to why it might cause harm when a player bets that isn't harmful in the same way when someone else bets.