NBA gambling scandal is hardly the first in professional sports annals - ESPN

The rocky marriage of team sports and illicit gambling dates back more than a century in the United States, bookended by the game-fixing scandal by eight Chicago White Sox players in the 1919 World Series and the current FBI investigation into prop betting and poker game fixing involving various NBA figures. No major professional sport appears immune to gambling scandals, as the following partial timeline suggests.

NBA

1950: Sol Levy, an NBA referee from 1948-51, faced seven criminal counts related to fixing games during the 1950-51 season, primarily by calling fouls to affect scoring. As The New York Times reported, he received a three-year sentence in New York in 1953 but won an appeal in 1954 that led to his release.

1951: A gambling scandal at the City College of New York was not NBA-specific but did involve players who at the time were playing in the NBA. Players and former players from seven colleges were arrested on point-shaving charges stemming from college basketball games from 1947-1950. Among those charged were former University of Kentucky players Alex Groza and Ralph Beard, who were playing at the time for the Indianapolis Olympians of the NBA and subsequently were banned after they later admitted to accepting bribes.

Former Kentucky teammate Dale Barnstable, who also admitted to taking a bribe along with Groza and Beard, was a seventh-round pick by the Boston Celtics in the 1950 NBA Draft but chose not to play professional basketball at the time. He was later banned.

Other college players from the 1951 scandal who were arrested included Bradley University's Gene Melchiorre, who was the No. 1 pick in the 1951 NBA Draft by the Baltimore Bullets but was banned and never played an NBA game.

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