Jontay Porter, banned for life by the NBA, takes his gambling story to a New Jersey high school as Ontario suspends PointsBet over bets on his games

Jontay Porter, the former Toronto Raptors forward the NBA banned for life in 2024, has taken his story to a high school classroom. He spoke to students at Torah Academy of Bergen County, an Orthodox Jewish boys’ high school in Teaneck, New Jersey, about how gambling ended his NBA career. The school shared photos of the visit this week, showing Porter at the front of a packed room, then surrounded by students after the talk.

The talk came the same week that Ontario’s gambling regulator closed its case against a sportsbook that took bets on Porter’s games. On Oct. 20, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario announced that PointsBet Canada had agreed to take its Ontario site offline for two days.

Jontay Porter recently visited an Orthodox high school to share his story and warn students about how gambling cost him his career and led to a lifetime ban from the NBA.

(via Torah Academy of Bergen County) pic.twitter.com/g4EFU7PA1N

— Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) October 23, 2026

Why Porter was banned

Porter was a two-way player with the Raptors when the league banned him on April 17, 2024. The NBA’s investigation found that before a March 20, 2024, game against Sacramento, he told someone he knew was an NBA bettor about his own health. An associate of that bettor then placed an $80,000 parlay that he would underperform, a bet that would have paid $1.1 million. Porter played three minutes that night and said he felt ill. Sportsbooks noticed the unusual bet, froze it and never paid it out.

The league also found that Porter placed at least 13 bets on NBA games from January through March 2024, using an associate’s online account. The bets ranged from $15 to $22,000 and totaled $54,094. None were on games he played in, though three were parlays that included a Raptors loss. He was the first active NBA player banned for gambling since Jack Molinas in 1954.

In July 2024, Porter pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He still has not been sentenced. A hearing set for December 2025 was postponed with no new date.

From the ban to the classroom

In a July 2026 interview, Porter described the ban as a turning point. “Honestly, despite how embarrassing, how much shame there was with that, and the fact that I can’t play in the NBA even if I was good enough still, I think it was the best thing that could have happened to me,” he said. “That was the last day I ever gambled, and I started to repair relationships.”

He has said he wants to “turn my pain into purpose.” He started a nonprofit, the Open Gate Project, which helps people with gambling addiction get treatment and offers scholarships to pay for it. The school visit in Teaneck is part of that work.

He is also playing again. In February 2026, Porter signed with the Seattle SuperHawks of the revived United States Basketball League, a spring league with no ties to the NBA. He had a triple-double in his debut on March 7, with 21 points, 14 rebounds and 14 assists, and helped Seattle win the title in the league’s first season back. The lifetime ban still keeps him out of the NBA.

Ontario’s case against PointsBet

The PointsBet case grew directly out of the Porter scandal. After the bets surfaced in early 2024, Ontario’s regulator asked every sportsbook it licenses whether it had taken bets on Porter, and whether it had spotted and reported anything suspicious. PointsBet said it had not offered those bets.

In October 2025, federal indictments in Brooklyn showed that the Porter scheme was part of a wider insider-betting operation, and the regulator asked sportsbooks to check again. This time, about 18 months after its first answer, PointsBet said it had in fact taken bets on Porter. In a February 2026 notice, the regulator called this a “systemic failure” and proposed a five-day suspension.

PointsBet appealed, saying the problem came from human error. A hearing before Ontario’s Licence Appeal Tribunal was set for Oct. 19, but the two sides negotiated a deal and PointsBet dropped its appeal. PointsBet agreed to two days offline instead of five, plus an independent audit using an auditor and audit method the regulator approves. Any problems the audit finds must be fixed and checked independently. It is the first time Ontario’s regulator has temporarily shut down an online gambling operator as a penalty. The dates of the suspension have not been set.

The wider fallout

The Porter case is one reason betting rules around the league have changed. Some sportsbooks have stopped taking under bets on players with two-way or 10-day contracts. Before this season, the NBA also told its betting partners to stop offering opening-tip bets and parlays built only on one player’s unders, as we explained in our story on the new betting limits.

The federal cases that followed are still moving through the courts. On Oct. 22, Eric Earnest became the latest defendant to plead guilty in the inside-information case that also charges Terry Rozier, as we reported in our story on the Earnest plea. Follow every league-wide story on our Around the league page.