Unfortunately, stories of deranged sports bettors accosting professional athletes over losing bets are becoming all too common. Seemingly every week, we get a story about a tennis player getting harassed in their DMs, or gamblers lobbing threats at professional athletes for missing an easy shot or making a mistake.
Most of these instances are confined to social media, but it turns out that no place is off-limits for these unhinged bettors. Not even church.
Fred VanVleet, who won an NBA Championship in 2019 with the Toronto Raptors and is a former All-Star, told a story on the “Club 520 Podcast” about the time he was confronted by an ornery bettor at a church service.
The subject was broached when VanVleet was asked by one of the hosts if any fans ever came after him for messing up their parlays.
“The internet don’t bother me,” VanVleet explained through a sigh to co-hosts Jeff Teague, DJ Wells, and Bishop B. Hen. “It’s the in-person one you gotta be careful for.”
The conversation took a sharp right turn into the Lord’s House, leaving the hosts stunned.
“I had somebody run down on me in church,” VanVleet continued. “Church!…I said, ‘Damn!”
VanVleet, who is set to miss the entire 2025-26 season due to a torn ACL, explained that the unrepentant gambler, whom he described as a “young’n,” blamed him for a losing parlay that would have paid out $3,000.
VanVleet never explained when the impious kerfuffle took place, but given his injury, it couldn’t have been any time this season.
Although VanVleet and the hosts of the podcasts were able to laugh through the conversation and make some jokes about the unholy situation, it underscored an unfortunate, but all-too-common ripple effect of the legalization and mainstream embrace of sports betting in an age where athletes are easily reachable, and thus harrassable, thanks to social media.
That said, you’d think that, of all places, a house of worship would be out-of-bounds for this kind of unfortunate encounter.
