Professional gambler Haralabos Voulgaris, one of the few people in the world that makes a living betting on the NBA. He also moonlights as a professional poker player, with almost $2,000,000 in career tournament earnings.

So when Voulgaris said all the recent game-fixing allegations had him spooked about continuing to ply his trade toward the NBA, it might have been the greatest testimonial that the legitimacy of the NBA has been severely shaken.

TRUE HOOP’s Henry Abbott discussed the Tim Donaghy scandal with the Canadian, and how it’s affected his outlook on the NBA:

The Donaghy scandal basically made me question whether or not I wanted to continue betting the sport.

For one, after the details emerged I have heard from several people who knew about the games while this was going on.

Towards the end of Donaghy’s last season I guess the information was getting passed around quite a bit. I have always insulated myself from discussing the sport with other gamblers, I pretty much go about my work, keep it to myself, and bet the sport, so I was not privy to this information.

Voulgaris’ massive collection of statistics allowed him to go back and research the validity of Donaghy’s claims that games were fixed:

Most of the information I have about Donaghy is from the 2006-2007 season and its plain as day to me that Donaghy did change the outcome of the games, I don’t see how any rational human being could argue otherwise.

In the wake of the Enron scandal, some economists said (perhaps facetiously) that betting on sports was a safer investment than investing in stocks, since the information put out by the respective leagues could be considered more reliable than was was released by the Securities and Exchange Commission. No more.

You know when the degenerates are spooked, your league is in bad shape. If the gamblers can’t expect a fair shake in enjoying their product, who can?