Fault’s kaleidoscope

Why it's proving difficult to pin blame in the NBA's newest gambling scandal, and the limits of interpretation.

Caputo, I kept repeating in the packed Roman emergency room, pantomiming someone falling as I said it. The expression of the triage nurse seated behind the plexiglass screen going from curious to perplexed to frustrated with every repetition, while behind me blood bloomed through the fabric of Dylan’s track pants.

Understanding I was not understood I turned to motion to Dylan, pointing to his leg, the blood. Blood, in this setting, a universal symbol. Needing no translation.

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Where does fault lie?

There’s a lot of urgency behind this question since the NBA season got underway Tuesday night, and two days later the FBI held a press conference to announce the arrests of NBA personnel in a U.S. federal investigation into illegal sports betting.

Since the arrest of Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat player Terry Rozier, and former player Damon Jones, I’ve seen fault lain at the feet of the league, of addiction, of the sports betting industry, of the mafia, of Donald Trump. I’ve yet to see it placed, even nudged gently around the toes, of the men who stand accused.

Jaylen Brown said on Friday that the league has fallen short in protecting players from the strains and stressors that have come with the proliferation of sports betting. Brown, current VP of the NBPA, was specifically referencing negative interactions with fans who, upset with the outcome of bets, harass players in person at games, or via phone and social media, but he also referenced integrity, both in a literal sense — are players intentionally manipulating their play and/or presence in games — and an amorphic one — that its questioning could lead to its perceived lack.

Brown qualified the question of integrity with money. That players saw no “benefit from any of the profits” of sports betting’s entrenchment in the NBA but had to deal with the negative aspects of the fallout. It was less, I think, a personal qualification than one made out of the capitalistic world we’re boiling in. That to put oneself forward for any task, even a moral one, requires compensation. Still, the qualification is a telling one.

Because to get back to fault, and in this case fault’s apparent lack of clarity in causation, it’s become clear in these allegations that we’re talking about two versions. There is fault in its definitional sense, even its origins: fallere, Latin for “to deceive” — an active tense that implies full consideration, full comprehension, of the deception in question. Fault, here, very clean.

Then there is the kind of fault I’ve gotten the sense everyone else is talking about this week, a fault of optics.

It’s why the blame is getting so shifty, as if guilt were a child’s kaleidoscope toy and with every rotation a new, vivid universe of fault formed up in the beholder’s eye. Fault’s interpretation predicated on whatever the eye catches first. It’s also why the first thing Brown said on the subject was that if Billups et al. were innocent, “it’s not a great look for them publicly, and media-wise.”

The optics of fault in this are impossible to pin because collectively, we’re moving into a societal mode of thought where consequence can be explained or shrugged away, and because in the strict sense of sports betting, that roving eye has fallen on everything. If you don’t bet on basketball, it’s likely you consume media sponsored by a betting company. Even by watching NBA basketball, in arenas or at home, you take in a little bit of of sports betting’s slow drip: announcers highlight plays brought to you by betting companies, betting companies sponsor teams, the league itself has two official betting partners.

What Brown said, what I’ve read and heard others say this week — including Adam Silver, who said he wanted more regulation in the sports betting space ahead of Tuesday night’s season opener and this scandal breaking — rings if not hollow, then like echoes; shouting after something way past the point of no return.