So Michael Jordan owns the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats now. This is exciting for the people of Charlotte because if all of the team owners got together for a pick-up game, theirs would definitely win. The move hasn’t been without criticism, though, with the main one being that Jordan didn’t make a ton of great decisions as GM of the Washington Wizards (including his bad idea to come out of retirement and play for them). There has also been a rather muted protest about the NBA letting a known compulsive gambler own a team.

I think the NBA should let anyone own a team who is willing to pay for it, since America is a free country, but it does bring up an interesting question. Major League Baseball banned Pete Rose from the league for life because of his gambling habits when he was managing the Reds, though it was never proved that he bet on any of his team’s games. He is not even allowed in the Hall of Fame, despite his accomplishments as a player. Now that the world knows of Jordan’s compulsive gambling habits, which was largely kept quiet during his playing days, how does the NBA feel about him owning a team?

There are a lot of reasons to be for or against sports betting, but the biggest concern among most people is the integrity of the game. People worry that if enough money is involved, the games could be fixed. We’ve all seen the movies where a gangster walks up to a boxer and informs him that he’s going to take a dive. If you don’t think that organized crime has its hands all over the boxing profession, then you’re naïve.

But while many people don’t see boxing as legitimate for that reason, look at the other sports. Baseball had the Black Sox Scandal, when Chicago threw the 1919 World Series, resulting in eight players being banned for life. The NBA for years had endured conspiracy theories that the powers that be made sure certain teams (especially the Bulls and Lakers) made it to the championship games and certain players (such as Jordan) always got special treatment from the refs. And then came Tim Donaghy, the NBA referee who was convicted in a gambling scandal that involved, you guessed it, organized crime. I’m fairly certain that if Donaghy one day wanted to own an NBA team, the league would say no. So why does Jordan get a pass? No one has ever proved that he bet on his own team, though the same can be said for Rose.

And I guess the bigger question is this: Should sports betting be allowed or not? For the aforementioned reasons, many sports fans support a ban on sports betting, though doesn’t everyone love those Super Bowl office pools and filling out your Tournament brackets? In Europe, sports betting is common for their major sports, including soccer, and to my knowledge there has been no cheating scandal (someone please correct me if I’m wrong). And in the United States, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 makes sports betting illegal, with the exception of jai alai and horse and dog racing. The pari-mutuel racing, of course, would be pointless without betting, but the jai alai exemption seems a bit strange.

What is stranger, though, is that the law also doesn’t apply to sports lotteries in Delaware and Oregon and sports pools in Nevada. Las Vegas has a thriving sports betting industry. So is sports betting wrong and dangerous unless it’s done in Nevada? Maybe we’re supposed to think that sports betting is wrong and dangerous if it’s not being regulated by the government, so they can “protect” us, but if you think that government involvement in an industry reduces corruption, then you have way too much faith in the government (and you probably haven’t paid attention to any other their dealings with unions and lobbyists). So if government involvement doesn’t give it more integrity than involvement with the Corleone family (some would say that the federal government is actually organized crime), that brings us back to the original question: Is sports betting okay or not?

Professional athletes are rich and spoiled. If there’s one thing they like more than making a ton of money, it’s flaunting that money. That can include buying a new stretch Hummer limo made entirely of 24-karat gold, residing in a house that rivals Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu, or just going around in strip clubs throwing $100 bills at people. Oftentimes it also includes gambling.

The Gilbert Arenas story has once again linked gambling with professional athletes. Many teams, in response, have banned their players from gambling. Instead, it seems like they shouldn’t hire athletes that they can’t trust to play a friendly game and not end up pointing guns at each other (if that even happened). The reports of what happened keep changing, with the most recent version I heard being that it was all a misunderstanding and that they were joking around about shooting each other over a gambling debt. Maybe teams shouldn’t hire athletes who don’t know that you shouldn’t joke about gun violence while wielding loaded guns. Just thinking out loud here…

There are people out there that are going to blame the situation, which resulted in the indefinite suspension of the superstar guard, on gambling. They will say that if you don’t let the players gamble, these things won’t happen. These are the same people who think whenever someone is shot and killed it is the fault of the gun instead of the shooter. Both arguments have the same problem (well, then anti-gun argument has a lot of problems): It ignores individual responsibility.

We at Gambling Review have always said that people need to gamble responsibly. That means to never bet money you can’t afford to lose, never bet money that would lead to you owing someone, always pay off your bets (to avoid gambling debt), and treat it like a fun game. If you’re not having fun, to the point where you feel like bringing guns into the mix, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Banning athletes from gambling won’t keep them out of trouble, unless you also ban them from drinking, driving, going to strip clubs, going to dance clubs, bachelor parties, and whatever else they like to do for fun.

The point is this: Professional athletes need to be responsible, just like everybody else. Some say they are wrong to throw their money away by gambling it rather than donating it to a charity. Maybe. If so, though, isn’t spending money on anything nonessential irresponsible? Is it irresponsible to buy a big high-definition TV? You don’t need TV at all and even if you want to watch television, there are cheaper sets out there. What about a new car? There are plenty of clunkers out there that you could buy for less (except those destroyed by the government). Why waste money on a house when there are plenty of cheap trailers out there? Why go to Disney World when you can have fun skipping stones across a pond?

Yes, I know that there is a line out there where wasting money is wrong. Why should Michael Jordan bet $1 million on a golf hole while impoverished children in the Chicago slums can’t afford to wear his Nike sneakers? Be that as it may, a person has a right to use their money as they choose. If you want to satisfy both urges, the urge to gamble and the urge to help people, there are lots of charity gambling tournaments out there. I think hitting those is a great idea for millionaire athletes with plenty of money to spend.