Outdated entry drafts find relevance in feeding gambling's insatiable appetite

This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports.  For more information about  CBC's Opinion section , please see the  FAQ .

The San Antonio Spurs selecting Victor Wembanyama with the first pick in Thursday night's NBA draft is the least surprising outcome of any sports event, any year, ever. 

Wembanyama stands seven-foot-five but moves with the agility of a six-foot point guard. He drains three-pointers, and when he misses, he can take a couple of big steps in from the perimeter and dunk his own rebound. Futuristic size and speed, combined with old-school, follow-your-shot fundamentals made him too appealing a prospect for the Spurs, who won the NBA's draft lottery, to pass up.

Before the draft, FanDuel offered -50,000 betting odds that San Antonio would draft the French phenom first. For people who need calculators to comprehend gambling odds (people like me, for the record) a $100 bet on Wembanyama would have earned 20 cents of profit. If the median Canadian worker had wagered their whole annual salary — $68,400 — they would have won $136.80.

Offering odds that long is essentially not offering them at all.

If I were a gambling man (I absolutely am not, for the record), I might have dropped $10 on one of the Thompson Twins going first. Any late-game change of heart from the Spurs would have netted me $2,000. That's a big enough reward at a low enough risk to get me to consider betting again on next year's draft, whose rankings are already taking shape.

WATCH | Canadian Leonard Miller might be the most intriguing NBA draft prospect:

Which, of course, is part of the point under the sports industry's current setup.

To the extent that every aspect of pro sports is a competition,