In the minutes after Duke’s victory Friday evening, the sport that moved the top-ranked Blue Devils one step nearer to the ACC title, Isaiah Evans received a message.
This one wasn’t to congratulate Evans on reaching a second consecutive ACC Tournament championship sport. Nor was it to applaud the guard’s career-high 10 rebounds, exactly the kind of play that Duke coach Jon Scheyer praised in his postgame feedback.
No, this one was to want hurt on Evans, who scored simply six factors in 32 minutes and missed all seven of his 3-point makes an attempt. In Thursday’s quarterfinal win towards Florida State, Evans scored a career-high 32 factors and made seven 3-pointers. Some sportsbooks positioned the over/underneath for Evans factors at 15 for the sport vs. Clemson.
“I just got a text right now. Some dude told me: ‘I hope you blow your knee out,’” Evans stated after the sport.
North Carolina launched authorized on-line sports activities betting in March 2024. Two years in, the bettors within the state have wagered greater than $13 billion by eight authorized operators. Proposition bets on the stats of particular person gamers — school {and professional} — are authorized in North Carolina.
“Prop bets just aren’t healthy for the sport, especially with the threats that a lot of our players get,” Evans stated, including that it’s “definitely getting out of hand.”
“We’re out here doing what we do,” stated Evans, a key contributor for the 30-2 Blue Devils. “We’re winning games. We’re not worried about your prop bets.”
Asked Duke’s Isaiah Evans about prop bets and if he or his teammates hear from offended bettors. Evans stated he acquired a message final evening after Duke’s win. @WRALDoc on sports activities betting in NC debuts Wednesday. pic.twitter.com/ML4hKoUqev
— Brian Murphy (@murphsturph) March 14, 2026
Evans is not alone.
In 2024, simply after the launch of betting within the state, former North Carolina player Armando Bacot said he received hundreds of messages from fans upset that he didn’t get sufficient rebounds.
Duke senior Maliq Brown stated he hears about betting on a regular basis.
“You see it on social media, walking to the stands or in the arenas like this when it’s different fan bases,” Brown stated. “Walking in, you can hear stuff.”
NCAA President Charlie Baker has called on states with authorized sports activities betting to cease sportsbooks from providing prop bets on school video games. Several states, together with Ohio and Louisiana, have enacted such bans, whereas different states never allowed it in the first place.
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips advised WRAL on Saturday that is in favor of eliminating these varieties of bets, on account of each harassment of athletes and the potential for sport manipulation.
The NBA and Major League Baseball have suspended and banned gamers for allegedly manipulating their efficiency to money in on prop bets, such because the underneath on factors or rebounds or whether or not the following pitch will probably be a ball or a strike.
Phillips stated the prop bets are “dangerous” and must be “eliminated.”
“We should have zero tolerance for that,” he stated. “The pressures that that puts on young people, I just think it’s enormously difficult for young people in class, living where normal students live, and the pressures that they get from friends and individuals that they come in contact with. Everybody wants to try to find out additional information about what’s happening with their team. It’s really tough on student athletes.”
Bets on particular person athletes are among the many hottest choices for sportsbooks. During soccer season, bettors can wager on gamers to attain the sport’s first landing or a landing at any time. In basketball, the bets are sometimes on what number of factors or rebounds or 3-pointers gamers may have throughout a sport.
“Ultimately props have become popular because we are fans of players,” stated Joe Maloney, president of the Sports Betting Alliance, which represents main sportsbooks within the United States. “It reflects our own fandom.”
North Carolina state Rep. Marcia Morey, a Democrat from Orange County, has launched a number of bills to ban prop betting on college sports within the state legislature. They have gone nowhere.
“We’re seeing a huge increase in social media threats to college players,” stated Morey, a former U.S. Olympic swimmer and NCAA investigator.
But former Rep. Jason Saine, who helped push the legalization of sports activities betting in North Carolina, argues that the general public nature of the video games themselves expose athletes to criticism, particularly within the social media period.
“Athletes are in the public sphere,” Saine stated. “They’re going to get criticized, period. That happened before sports betting. It will happen after sports betting.”
A brand new WRAL investigative documentary, The Gamble: Sports Betting in North Carolina, examines the speedy rise of the trade and the rising considerations about its affect. The documentary premieres March 18.
