SEO Title LIV Golf Folds, Embiid's Grit & Sports Gambling | 99Chalk

A wild week of comebacks, Saudi investment money, and America's gambling problem. Again, we are in the prime time of sports right now. We have all the major sports going on and we have NFL offseason news. It is a great time for sports fans.

Winner: PGA Tour

It is official. The Saudi Public Investment Fund is officially pulling their funding after a battle with the PGA Tour starting in 2021. After all of the back and forth and stealing of players, the league is dead. One of the biggest things we can learn from this is that just throwing money at a sport is not going to create a winning product. We see this in sports all the time, especially baseball. You certainly have a chance to win when you throw money at the problem, and LIV was surviving along, but at the end of the day, talent is going to win. In this case, the talent is a good product. Fans of golf did not want a team sport. They did not want loud music. Fans wanted to watch the best golfers play each weekend, and that is what the PGA Tour provided to fans not Liv.

Over the next months and years, it will be interesting to see how the Tour treats the players that defected for a paycheck. Will they let Bryson back on the Tour with all his fame, or will they have him endure a suspension before he is let back in? How are prior golf legends going to be remembered? Legacies will be tarnished because of players’ desires to chase a check. You cannot win in sports by throwing money at the problem.

Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers

On April 9th, Joel Embiid felt sick before a game against the Houston Rockets. He went to the hospital, and after getting scans, it was determined he would need an emergency appendectomy. Joel came into the NBA injured, and it is a narrative that has never left his side, even after he won the MVP in the 2022-2023 season. He could never get over the hump in the playoffs, and unfortunately, that is how we define legacy in the NBA. I could spend hours discussing the problems that ring culture has created in the NBA, but we will save that for another time. This story is about the warrior named Joel Embiid.

When Boston got the series to 3-1, everyone wrote the 76ers off. No one thought they could pull off the comeback. A team with a top-15 player in the NBA, a player who was suspended for 25 games, a firecracker rookie, and Joel Embiid. This is a hodgepodge team, but they have found something. This was clear after Game 5 when they kicked the Celtics’ ass. The playoffs are about momentum and the 76ers had it. They beat a Celtics team that just played too extreme a version of basketball. The 76ers may have pushed the Celtics into some uncomfortable conversations about the direction and future of this team. When you have three devastating losses sandwiched in between a championship, it makes things complicated, but it is time. You cannot ignore the playoff failures of Joe Mazzulla and the Jaylens, but this series is about the 76ers and Embiid. Who knows if they will be able to beat the Knicks — probably not — but Embiid deserves his flowers, and if he was not remembered as a warrior before, he will be remembered forever as one.

Gambling in America: Brendan Sorsby

You turn on any sports game, any sports show or podcast, and you will hear "Thank you DraftKings for sponsoring this show." "Place your boosted parlay using FanDuel today." Everywhere we look, we are greeted by some ad from a gambling site promoting us to spend money on predicting the outcomes of sports. We have children that are starting to gamble at 12 or even younger! This is not good! On April 27th, Brendan Sorsby checked into a residential treatment program for a gambling addiction. First, it is really great he is getting the help he needs for this addiction. It is hard to take that step and everyone should be proud he is doing this. But this is an important conversation we need to have about gambling and the issues we are going to start to see in sports if a change is not made. Sorsby was making thousands of online bets on a variety of sports while in college, including betting on Indiana football while redshirting for the Hoosiers. This is not another Chauncey Billups situation or Terry Rozier — law enforcement is not looking into his situation — but instead it is a sad story of a young man who fell into addiction. We will see similar stories like this start to come out because when children are watching ESPN, all they see are the betting lines and how an injury affects the spread. Something must change or we are going to face an epidemic around sports gambling.

Other highlights from this week

1. Dalton Rushing: Wow. Dalton Rushing is really leaning into being the biggest villain in the sport. He is calling other players fat and he is trying to pull a Chase Utley at second base. It is strange, but could be something that baseball needs. We love a heel in sports, and if Dalton Rushing and the Dodgers lean into it, that would be fun. We need an evil empire again in baseball, and it looks like maybe Rushing is going to bring the Dodgers into that position.
2. Blowing a 3-1 lead: Wow! Two 3-1 leads blown this playoff already. The Pistons completed the comeback against the Magic and the 76ers kicked the Celtics' ass and sent them back to Boston. Who can hate a 3-1 comeback? It is one of the most enticing things to happen in any sports playoff. A team with their back against the wall, clawing back from defeat. It is an awesome thing to watch, and watching the Celtics blow a lead is always fun.
3. Executive arrested for embezzlement: On April 29th, a former senior vice president of finance was sentenced to federal prison for embezzlement. Just a wow story. An executive embezzling approximately $3.7 million from the NBA team through fraudulent expense reimbursement requests and misuse of corporate credit cards. He cannot be the only executive doing this — I cannot believe that. There must be other executives out there trying to wine and dine people and their families with the corporate card. The Hawks almost had a great month and it was trending that way, until the Knicks kicked their ass multiple times in the series and then a former executive gets arrested for embezzlement. Crazy story.

Well, that is it for this week’s recap. Let me know if you liked it. See ya next week.