An N.B.A. Player Got Hooked on Sports Betting. Soon, He Became the Bet
By Google News Sports ·
Jontay grew up in Columbia, Missouri, the fourth of eight children. His father, Michael, Sr., worked in Christian ministry, and his mother, Lisa, homeschooled the children. Both had played college basketball—Lisa, as a high-school senior, had averaged a nearly impossible fifty-eight points per game—and they saw the sport as their children’s ticket to college.
All eight of the kids eventually got basketball scholarships. By the time Jontay was sixteen, he was six feet ten. In most families, as a five-star high-school recruit, Jontay would have been the main attraction. But Michael was Mozart. In 2010, their father got a job on the coaching staff for the women’s team at the University of Missouri.
The men’s coach spotted Michael shooting alone in the arena one night and offered him a full scholarship; he was still in seventh grade. When he accepted it, as a high-school senior, he was the top recruit in the country. His highlight reels had racked up millions of views on YouTube. N.B.A. scouts believed that he could be the next Kevin Durant. “He’s a game-changer,” a league executive told the New York Post.
Big state schools turn their best athletes into local celebrities, but the hype that followed Michael to Missouri’s campus on his recruiting visits was closer to Beatlemania. Fans asked for autographs and took selfies. Jontay, who came along, was seduced by the hysteria. “Frat houses are putting up posters, and he’s literally treated like a king,” he recalled.
“I wanted to be a part of that circus.” He skipped his senior year of high school to join the team, too. The brothers were best friends. Still, it was sometimes hard to be one of the top players in the country but just the second best in his family. “He got all the attention,” Jontay said.
“I was just kind of his biggest fan.” For a time that first season, Michael was sidelined with a back injury, giving Jontay a turn in the spotlight. “He’s the best player I’ve ever been around,” Chris Hollender, then an assistant coach at Mizzou, told me. “I’ve always said I thought he was a more complete player than Mike.” At eighteen, Jontay led his team to the N.C.A.A. tournament.
“For me to finally get a taste of stardom?” Jontay said. “I was the man. I controlled the narrative.” Michael went to the N.B.A. draft that summer. Jontay planned to enter the following year. Then, during the final scrimmage before his sophomore season, he pushed off his right leg to explode toward the rim. “I felt, like, every crack in that moment, and just crumpled to the ground,” he said.
He had torn the major ligaments in his knee. His teammates lifted him off the ground and laid him on a table in the training room. “He was beside himself,” Hollender said. “Couldn’t catch his breath, he was crying so hard.” It wasn’t from the pain; Jontay knew what his injury meant for the team’s chances that season. “The only thing he said to me was ‘I’m so sorry,’ ” Hollender said.
“It was gut-wrenching.” In 2019, while Jontay was in rehab for his knee, he injured it again. “Everybody’s telling me, ‘You’re going to be O.K.,’ ” he said. “I knew it wasn’t true.” By then, Michael was a rookie with the Denver Nuggets. (He went on to win a championship with the team, in 2023.) But Jontay, watching the N.B.A. draft in his parents’ basement, saw sixty picks go by without a team calling his name.
Eventually, the Memphis Grizzlies took a chance and signed him to a contract as a free agent. He loved the N.B.A.—luxury travel, assistants…
Originally published by Google News Sports
