Former NBA player Metta World Peace, also known as Ron Artest, claims he was asked to fix games when he played for St. John's in the late 1990s and was once offered as much as $35,000.
“I got approached a couple times to throw games," Metta World Peace told Yahoo Sports. "The one interesting time, they come to me in my neighborhood and said, ‘Hey, I got $35,000 for you.’ I’m like, ‘All right, that’s cool, I’ll take $35,000.’ They said, ‘We need you to throw a game.’ That’s when I’m like, ‘You [expletive].’ But it crossed my mind — $35,000 to throw a game? Not bad."
Metta World Peace said situations like that worry him, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to allow legalized sports betting in most states.
“They find these kids that don’t have any money, and they attack them," he said. "That’s the problem I have with betting, because these guys who are betting, they’re bullies. Some of them are bullies. They’ll force a kid into a situation, and then when the kid’s trying to go to the NBA, they hold it against the kid.”
After the Supreme Court's ruling Monday, the NCAA announced Thursday that it would support a federal model on legalized sports gambling. NCAA president Mark Emmert said the NCAA wants a national oversight board that would oversee the new laws within each state, and Metta World Peace agrees there needs to be a way to help protect student-athletes.
“They’ve got to have really harsh rules on people who are using kids,” he added. “If anybody gets in that situation, they should snitch, and that person should go to jail, because you cannot be putting kids under pressure like that.”
