One of the top NBA free agents, Malik Beasley, who is currently under a federal investigation regarding gambling allegations, is also the defendant in a lawsuit filed by his former agency.
New York-based Hazan Sports Management Group sued Beasley in U.S. District Court for breaching a marketing contract on April 18, a day before he and the Detroit Pistons opened a first-round series in New York against the Knicks.
ESPN was the first to report Tuesday on the lawsuit.
Hazan Sports negotiated a $6 million, one-year contract for Beasley with the Pistons last summer. The shooting guard fired the agency in April and hired Seros Partners, according to the lawsuit, despite a four-year exclusive marketing agreement.
The agency is asking for $1 million in damages, plus a $650,000 advance it gave him along with commissions and expenses owed, according to the lawsuit.
Both sides are working on a settlement, according to a June 11 filing.
A message seeking comment was left with the agency. Beasley’s attorney is not mentioned in the filings. His representative, Steve Haney, in the federal investigation said Tuesday he is not a part of the lawsuit.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York is investigating Beasley regarding gambling allegations tied to league games.
“In 23 years of practicing law, I’ve had numerous clients federally investigated who have never been charged,” Haney said. “Hope people keep that in mind and reserve judgement.”
The probe into Beasley comes 14 months after the NBA banned Toronto’s Jontay Porter, who was linked to a prop bet investigation and eventually pleaded guilty to committing wire fraud.
This past season, The Wall Street Journal was first to report that Terry Rozier — then of the Charlotte Hornets — was under investigation for activity related to unusual betting patterns surrounding him in a March 2023 game.
Rozier, now of the Miami Heat, has not been charged with any crime, nor has he faced any sanction from the NBA.
Porter’s ban came after a similar investigation into his performance and “prop bets” — wages where bettors can choose whether a player will reach a certain statistical standard or not during a game. The Porter investigation started once the league learned from “licensed sports betting operators and an organization that monitors legal betting markets” about unusual gambling patterns surrounding Porter’s performance in a game on March 20, 2024, against Sacramento.
The league determined that Porter gave a bettor information about his own health status prior to that game and said that another individual — known to be an NBA bettor — placed an $80,000 bet that Porter would not hit the numbers set for him in parlays through an online sports book. That bet would have won $1.1 million.
Beasley signed last year with the Pistons, taking a one-year contract for $6 million in the hopes of cashing in this summer as a free agent.
He made a single-season, franchise-record 319 3-pointers in the regular season. He helped Detroit make the playoffs for the first time since 2019 and end an NBA-record 15-game postseason losing streak in the first round against the New York Knicks.
Beasley averaged 16.3 points last season and has averaged 11.7 points over his career with Denver, Minnesota, Utah, the Los Angeles Lakers, Milwaukee and Detroit. He scored a career-high 19.6 points a game during the 2020-21 season with the Timberwolves.
The Atlanta native played at Florida State and the Nuggets drafted him No. 19 overall in 2016.
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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