Coming home from road trips during their run of success in the previous decade, the Detroit Pistons did what most NBA teams do when they get on the team plane. They cracked open a new deck of cards and got down to some serious playing.
Although the pot was once was said to have approached $100,000, there was never any serious trouble, according to a person who regularly traveled with the team.
Now contrast that with the Washington Wizards, whose gun play over reported gambling debts, accrued during card games on team flights, has resulted in Gilbert Arenas' indefinite suspension and made for an ugly situation for the NBA.
"Guns and gambling — those are two words that carry a lot of emphasis, and it's not very good," said Knicks president Donnie Walsh. "This is not good for the league."
A league spokesman left the question of what David Stern intends to do about high-stakes card games open-ended, saying, "we've always viewed those as team decisions." The Nets and Wizards both said this past week they had prohibited gambling on team flights.
But other teams are still allowing players to gamble because, even if pots can be seen as excessive, the majority of players have shown over the years that they can act responsibly. One former Knicks executive recalled a point during the Patrick Ewing era when the stakes got too high. Management stepped in, demanded changes and the situation was resolved without incident.
This time, because of the publicity surrounding the gun play, Stern might be forced to crack down on high-stakes games.
"David will try to curtail it," said a former league executive. "He knows it's been going on for years. I don't know how he can do it. But the stakes in some of these games have gotten out of control."
The timing can't be worse. The NBA has just been emerging from a gambling scandal involving former ref Tim Donaghy.
It still is taking heat for putting its All-Star Game in Las Vegas in 2007. Earlier this season, Stern came under fire when he talked favorably about a day when there would be nationally legalized gambling on NBA games. But over the last week, the Wizards' high-stakes game and gun play has put the spotlight closer to home, and on a facet of NBA life as common as the players' per diem.
Card games have been a staple of NBA travel for decades, with coaches and even team executives sometimes getting into the action. One Eastern Conference GM, who said that he will continue to allow his team's card games, predicted that Stern might try to put in a rule that prohibits gambling and use the same language that covers the league's gun laws.
Players are not permitted to bring firearms onto team property or to team functions. Arenas violated that rule in bringing several unloaded firearms to the locker room. A report in the Washington Post said that Wizards reserve Javaris Crittenton also had a gun and loaded it during his confrontation with Arenas.
"Stern could say to the players, "when you're traveling, it's not on your time; you're still on the team's time," said the official. "And, you're traveling on a team plane. So you're on team property. That way, he could make the card games illegal."
But then he might also have to explain to his 400 players why he agrees to have his games shown on one of the league's primary broadcasting partners, ESPN, which is home to numerous poker tournament shows.
Unless Stern steps in and tries to limit the stakes, several GMs said that they are not going to cut off one of the players' favorite activities. The Knicks' Larry Hughes compared the games to activities at family outings, and is among the many players and coaches who point out that most have been run without incident. While there have been fights in the past over a player's failure to pay his debts, the Wizards took it to the extreme after returning from a pre-Christmas trip to the West.
"This Arenas thing is one team with a couple of idiots who obviously had a trust problem," said a second Eastern Conference GM. "Believe me, when the stakes get high, you can get nervous. But if you've got good people who have a level of trust between them, there won't be a problem."
The Wizards' dispute reportedly involved a game that featured a $60,000 pot. While players and executives talk about "friendly card games," they might have a hard time convincing their fans because of the excessive stakes.
"But relative to what the players make, the money is not crazy to them," said a former league official. "What you and I look at as ridiculous sums of money, to them, it's not. Putting thousands into a card game and seeing the pot grow, it's when things get interesting for these guys."
But in this case, it also has managed to create more image problems for the NBA.
"This just reinforces to people that we've got a bunch of rich, spoiled athletes who act irresponsibly," said one Eastern Conference team president. "It's one more thing we'll have to fight."
Over the Hill
The same day that Milwaukee's Brandon Jennings collected his second straight Eastern Conference rookie of the month award, Jordan Hill, the Knicks' No. 1 pick, was hardly dominating a game of four-on-four at practice.
In fact, Hill barely stood out in the halfcourt game involving backup players.
Hill's feel for the game and work ethic haven't been what the Knicks expected, which accounts for his limited playing time in 11 of the first 35 games.
The Knicks still have high hopes for Hill, but their decision to pass over Jennings continues to generate a negative backlash. The latest rumor had Knicks president Donnie Walsh telling his scouts that they blew it and can't afford another drafting mistake.
"That's all a bunch of bull----," Walsh said the other day. "I never did anything like that. Any innuendo that I'm displeased with my staff, I'm not. In fact, when I got here I went through the first draft with them, I liked their work, and I re-signed most of them."
The Bucks were only 3-11 last month, so Jennings' play didn't translate into wins. He has had his share of ups and downs since scoring 55 points in his seventh NBA game and helping the Bucks to a 7-2 start. That combined with the Knicks' 9-6 December, including impressive wins over Portland, Atlanta, New Orleans and Phoenix has taken some of the heat off of Walsh.
What won't help the Knicks is that Jennings could win the Eastern rookie award for the next four months. Since the top seven picks went to Western Conference teams, his main competition is seen as the two players taken ahead of him, Hill and Toronto's Demar DeRozan, who starts but is averaging only 20 minutes a game. But it's really only a two-horse race. As Bucks coach Scott Skiles noted, "Jordan Hill doesn't play."
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