Casino Owned By Rockets Owner Already Paying Out Bets On Warriors Winning the West

Seriously. If you made that bet at the Golden Nugget, you can collect your money.

According to David Purdum of ESPN.com, the casino, which is owned by Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta is already paying out bets to people who picked Golden State to make it the furthest in the Western Conference because of Fertitta’s relation to the Rockets.

Fertitta bought the team back in September for a record-price of $2.2 billion, and it forced the casino to switch up how it handled NBA bets. According to ESPN, the Golden Nugget stopped all NBA futures bets that involved the Rockets to make sure there were no conflicts of interest, which meant people bet on what team would “finish best” in the Western Conference or NBA Finals as a way to exclude Houston.

Since the Rockets aren’t an option to bet, the Warriors have already put together the best finish this season out of the other teams in the West. And as if this isn’t already bad enough for the casino, if the Rockets win the series and advance to the Finals, the winner of the Eastern Conference will automatically “finish best” in the Finals, so if you bet on the Celtics or Cavaliers at the Golden Nugget prior to the season, you should be a Houston fan now.

“It would be a decent handle in a slow month, but it’s not going to kill us if we don’t book [the Finals],” Golden Nugget sportsbook manager Aaron Kessler told ESPN. “We’d still have baseball, and we still have the [Vegas Golden] Knights.”

Something similar happened back in 2006 at Caesars Palace when executive Gary Loveman took an ownership stake in the Celtics, according to ESPN. Luckily for Caesars sportsbook, Boston missed the playoffs that season. 

Article Appeared @https://www.si.com/nba/2018/05/11/casino-owned-rockets-owner-tilman-fertitta-paying-out-bets-warriors-winning-west

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