Daily Mail – A new book makes shocking new claims that ‘coked-up’ members of the New York Knicks’ 1981-1982 team fixed games for their drug dealer, who bet thousands of dollars on the team in the midst of their terrible season.
Brian Tuohy’s new book, Larceny Games: Sports Gambling, Game Fixing and the FBI, cites FBI sources who said they investigated whether three members of the team – who were said to be ‘heavy users of cocaine’ – were involved in a point-shaving scheme to benefit their supplier, who is identified only as ‘one of the largest dealers on the East Coast.’
According to Tuohy’s FBI sources, the dealer was known as a degenerate sports gambler who typically bet $300 a game on NBA games. When it appeared he had his hooks in some of the Knicks players – in roughly January of 1982 – the dealer began upping his bets to $10,000, often betting against the Knicks to win or cover the spread.
By March of 1982, the dealer had won six of the seven large bets he’d made against the Knicks – all while continuing to bet his regular $300 on games in which the Knicks were not playing.
‘Over…the last two months, all three [players] have given…tips on when to bet the Knicks to lose. This has occurred seven times and six of the tips were good,’ according to FBI files citing two unnamed sources.’
Simultaneously, the FBI began to suspect that the three Knicks players were ‘betting against themselves,’ with one of the men owing a ‘large…gambling debt’ to a bookie with the Luchese crime family.
‘So many people say it’s impossible to fix a game because guys are paid so much money,’ Tuohy told The New York Post. ‘But you can see how easily they can get hooked on some drug, be gambling themselves and get in deep with a bookie.’
