Former Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter pled guilty Wednesday in federal court to a conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the betting case that got him banned from the NBA and has entangled four other individuals with federal charges.

Porter made his plea at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. He was released on a $250,000 bond signed by his mother and his wife, and his sentencing has been scheduled for Dec. 18. While federal conspiracy to commit wire fraud can carry a maximum term of 20 years, Porter likely faces 41 to 51 months in prison based on sentencing guidelines.

GO DEEPER

Timeline of Jontay Porter’s NBA career and gambling investigations by league, police

Porter was banned by the NBA in April for his role in the sports gambling scandal that involved him manipulating his performance and availability so that others could hit the under on prop bets involving him during games on Jan. 26 and March 20 while he was with the Raptors.

Porter is the first active player or coach to be expelled from the NBA for gambling since Jack Molinas in 1954. More recently, NBA commissioner Adam Silver gave a significant drug suspension to O.J. Mayo in 2016 that effectively kept him out of the league, and he banned LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling in…

TORONTO — Larry Tanenbaum said that for the second time in his time as a major player within the world of Toronto professional sports, he finds himself in the right place at the right time.

Speaking at a news conference to announce the WNBA expanding to Toronto, Tanenbaum recalled Toronto getting an NBA expansion franchise more than 30 years ago. He remembered hitting the road to visit all of the league’s owners, one by one, to sell them on the idea of the NBA coming to Toronto.

Tanenbaum left out an important part: He did not win the bid for the team. John Bitove and Standard Broadcasting’s Allan Slaight got the expansion team, with Tanenbaum not becoming involved until the Toronto Maple Leafs essentially bought the Raptors and the arena that would become the Air Canada Centre (and now Scotiabank Place) in 1998.

By then, Tanenbaum was a minority partner with the hockey team. That was five years after Toronto got an NBA team and into their third season of play. There was a thought that Tanenbaum was too public with his initial campaign for an NBA team, and that irritated the league, and especially commissioner David Stern.

This time around, Tanenbaum’s foe came from inside the house that Tanenbaum helped build in 1998. It has been widely reported that Edward Rogers, the…

A new class of basketball legends is headed to Springfield, Mass.

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame announced its latest class Saturday, featuring 13 new members. Vince Carter, Chauncey Billups and Seimone Augustus headline this year’s group, but they are not the only names on the marquee.

Michael Cooper, Walter Davis, Bo Ryan and Charles Smith are headed to the Hall of Fame too. Former Knicks guard Dick Barnett was elected through the men’s veterans committee. Harley Redin, a longtime women’s basketball head coach at Wayland Baptist University, was chosen by the women’s veteran committee. Michele Timms, a longtime Australian National Team member and a former WNBA All-Star who had her number retired by the Phoenix Mercury, was voted in by the international committee.

Jerry West, Doug Collins and Herb Simon will go to the Hall of Fame as well as contributors. The Athletic reported earlier in the week that Carter, Billups and Barnett would be part of this year’s class, which will be formally enshrined in August.

Carter is inarguably the biggest name headed to the Hall this year. Carter made eight All-Star Games during his 22-year career and will be remembered as one of the best dunkers in NBA history, including his memorable dunk over Frederic Weis at the 2000…

INDIANAPOLIS — There isn’t too much scoring in the NBA — 70-point games and record-breaking team offenses be damned.

The players don’t like to see what happened to Joel Embiid, or even Tyrese Haliburton, but they support the spirit of a league requirement for games played to determine eligibility for awards like MVP.

Clippers or Celtics? Joker, Embiid or even … LeBron? And who wants to be NBA commissioner Adam Silver for a day?

The Athletic again put on its collective hard hat, grabbed a lunch pail and jumped head first into All-Star media day, a savage, unruly affair in which players sit up on a dais, behind a gate, having questions shouted at them by YouTube influencers, goofballs on top of other goofballs’ shoulders, rappers, WNBA players and, yes, traditional reporters.

From the practice court at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Joe Vardon, Sam Amick, David Aldridge and Mike Vorkunov spoke to 18 players, most of them All-Stars, a couple from the Skills Challenge, 3-Point or Slam Dunk contests, and one second gentleman, to canvas them on who’s the NBA’s best player, the best team and what about the league needs to change.

Not everyone polled answered every question, but they all had plenty of ideas:

Who is the best player in the league?

Nikola Jokić, Joel Embiid — 3
Luka…

LAS VEGAS — This week, the NBA will descend upon Las Vegas in full force. Even for a city used to spectacle, it’s bringing something novel along with it. For the first time in decades, the league will hold real, live, actual — yes, they count — regular-season games in Sin City. It is a step into the breach unlike any other for the NBA.

Professional basketball has come to Vegas before. There have been exhibition games, the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, NBA Summer League, even a few Utah Jazz games in the 1980s, a playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers in 1992, the NBA G League Ignite franchise since 2020 and, for the last six seasons, WNBA games. But the NBA has never put a product on display quite like the one it will on Thursday afternoon when the NBA In-Season Tournament semifinals tip off at T-Mobile Arena.

While it is a seminal moment for the league and the city, it is also one open to much conjecture and forecasting. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has tiptoed around expansion in recent years, and Las Vegas has come up as a potential home for a new franchise. This week will likely do little to silence those rumblings.

In July, Silver called Vegas “our 31st franchise;” now, everyone is waiting to see if Vegas will actually be the league’s…

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This is an NBA newsletter, but why wouldn’t Mario Cristobal just kneel with 33 seconds left with Georgia Tech having no timeouts?

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Eight Random Thoughts

NBA training camp/preseason musings

Remember when training camp lasted for weeks with action and stories? Pat Riley remembers …

With preseason action already underway and training camp in the books, here are eight random thoughts and observations as the 2023-24 NBA season nears:

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WNBA Finals, Game 1

Wild Aces lock down Liberty

In the first half of Game 1 of the WNBA Finals, it appeared Liberty sharpshooter Marine Johannes would fuel an upset. She finished with 14 points and knocked down four 3-pointers in 20 minutes off the bench. Johannes entered Game 1 with five total points in 42 minutes during New York’s first five games this postseason.

Then, the second half happened and the Aces did what they always do: Las Vegas locked down the Liberty and cruised to a 99-82 victory. Jackie Young (26 points) dominated Sabrina Ionescu and Courtney Vandersloot. Kelsey Plum and Chelsea Gray (46 combined points, 11 total rebounds) were relentless. And the Aces’ defense was led by A’ja Wilson, who…

BURNABY, B.C. — Bringing a title to Toronto will always be the top line of Masai Ujiri’s resume in the NBA. He has done many great things, with the Raptors, the Denver Nuggets before him and especially with his Giants of Africa charity. Putting together that team, capped with two audacious trades for a pair of likely future hall of famers, is what will linger most strongly for the most number of people.

Not a minor accomplishment, though: making the Raptors relatively normal. To be fair, this started under the tenure of Bryan Colangelo, who brought Ujiri to Toronto, as the director of global scouting, for the first time. Colangelo didn’t win as many of his battles with the Raptors’ corporate ownership structure as his successor, but he saw the Raptors were behind in many facets and started bringing them to the attention of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment’s board of directors.

It was Ujiri, who was lured away by new (and brief) MLSE chief executive officer Tim Leiweke, who got the Raptors to modernize. Maybe it took the wasting of Bruno Caboclo’s first year to make it happen, but the Raptors got their own D-League (now G League) team in 2015. They got a new practice facility, OVO Athletic Centre, in 2016, replacing the gym and workout room tucked away on the third…