"You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where it's gonna take you."
This week’s issue is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours.
A free t-shirt is almost never a good t-shirt, but you’d throw an elbow for one if a mascot launched it in your general direction. We say we want raises and recognition and fulfillment in our careers, but somehow we will accept cold pizza in a breakroom as emotional compensation. If time really is money, what does it say about us that we are willing to sit through a 90-minute timeshare presentation for a $50 gift card?
We are willing to act in uncharacteristic and irrational ways when a shortcut or free perk is presented to us. Why? We feel like we’ve won. It is no surprise, when you think about human nature, that the recent NBA scandals occurred. In October 2025, the FBI arrested Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Heat guard Terry Rozier, and former player Damon Jones in gambling investigations. Rozier had raised red flags back in 2023 when someone placed 30 bets in 46 minutes on him to underperform. He then played 10 minutes, claimed a foot injury, and sat out. Billups’ case allegedly involves an illegal poker operation tied to the Mafia. Jones provided inside information to co-defendants who used it to place bets. These guys were all multimillionaires with very little to gain financially and everything to lose.
I learned a lot when diving into those stories. Everyone is willing to cheat to feel as if they’ve won, the FBI has a creative writer on staff as they named the two investigations “Operation Nothing But Bet” and “Operation Royal Flush”. They also used the term “face card” as a nickname for the high-profile individuals used to lure victims into rigged poker games. I also learned of an NBA scandal that didn’t get investigated, nor uncovered by the FBI. Welcome to Operation Brickin’ for Chicken.
I know many of my readers are big sports fans. We spent an entire issue fixing sports (not “fixing” like the betting scandal “fixing” but “fixing” like “improving”). Truth be told, you could be a huge NBA fan, watch tons of games on TV, but if you’ve never been to an NBA arena, you may not even know the scandal we are investigating exists. At various NBA arenas, there is a promotion where in the fourth quarter or in the second half of games, depending on which arena you’re in, if the opposing team is at the free throw line and they miss two free throws in a row, everybody in the building gets free chicken.
I remember learning about this when watching a game on TV where the announcer let the viewers at home know, “This is why everyone is going crazy.”
This is a play-in game. The winner plays against the Knicks as the seven seed. The loser then has to play against Chicago. So, you might not even make it to the playoffs if you lose. This game mattered. It was deep in the third quarter. The Sixers had blown a lead earlier in the game. They were getting booed at home. The Heat are up 11. Caleb Martin, who is usually a dependable free throw shooter, misses one and then the other.
We have the chart of what the win probability was for the Heat at that moment in time. It was upwards of 80%.
It was in the bag. That moment is the moment where everything changes and you see the win probability descend, descend, descend, descend until all of a sudden you get a Sixers win. That promo saved them.
Brickin’ for chicken is changing the course of basketball games in a meaningful way. Dan Le Batard thinks it saved the Sixers organization as a whole. “This organization was ready to crumble last night and then free chicken arrived.”
You are a smart group of people. You know where I’m going with this. You’re thinking, “there is no way professional athletes would intentionally miss free throws to give a crowd, a road crowd at that, free chicken.”
Now you’re thinking, “that’s just some guy trying to spin his own failure into something positive to make jokes about.” Yeah, I’m in your head. What if I told you I have prepared evidence of a player not only claiming they missed on purpose, but claiming it in the moment.
That’s an eight-point game with four minutes and change left in the fourth quarter and Bobon actually did very clearly say, “I’m going to miss this.” And then missed it. He did a reverse Babe Ruth. Now, basketball fans at this point are thinking, “yeah but these are some low profile players. Not superstars. What’s the big deal?” I’ll admit when you’re right. What if I told you that the guy that this story is really about isn’t a role player or “some low profile player” as you all very disrespectfully called those fine young men. What if I told you actually this guy is a former MVP? No, a former two-time MVP. The one and only, Giannis Antetokounmpo.
From my research, Giannis loves fast food chicken as much as anybody has ever loved anything in the history of mankind.
There are all of these documented instances of Giannis professing his love for chicken. There’s a time he showed up to a press conference with a bucket of chicken wings. There’s a time where he tweeted about Roscoe’s and how much he loves Roscoe’s and wishes they would open one in Milwaukee. There’s the trip to China where he goes and he professes love for chicken feet. When he won All-Star MVP how did he celebrate?
And yet none of this has to do with the promo that we’re talking about. None of this is any real evidence of a scandal worth investigating. This is merely his love of chicken in general, but what about how he’s interacted with the incentives that we’re dissecting? Here’s a video of him at a Milwaukee Bucks game where there’s a chicken giveaway while the opposing team is in a chicken scenario. He’s on the bench, obviously, it’s the end of the game and he pulls a phone out to scan the QR code for the free chicken giveaway that they’re giving to the fans. He’s so enthusiastic about chicken, about the promo, he wants in on it like everyone else in the arena.
But in terms of his personal performance at the line, not as a spectator, but as somebody with something to lose, or in this case win. How does he do? When it comes to chicken eligible free throws, Giannis is the Robin Hood of chicken giveaways.
We will prove this mathematically. We are going to be analyzing Chicken Eligible Shots. For a quick reminder, the way the promo works, if you miss the first free throw and you miss the second free throw. Everyone wins free chicken. If the opposing player makes the first free throw, we don’t care what happens on that second free throw shot because there is no chicken up for grabs. So, the only way we can figure out if you’re handing out chicken as an opposing player is if you are converting on Chicken Eligible Shots. We have another term we need to understand. We have to build metrics off of this. It’s not enough to say, “Hey, how many Chicken Eligible Shots did he take?” We need to move from counting stats now to efficiency, which is the key to any good metric. The Chicken Conversion Rate, which is your Chicken Eligible Misses divided by your Chicken Eligible Attempts. In essence, this number gives you the efficiency you have at providing chicken to 20,000 people.
CCR = Chicken Eligible Misses/Chicken Eligible Attempts
And so, we must ask, what is Giannis Antetokounmpo’s CCR? Over the last two years, Giannis has converted a Chicken Eligible Shot (meaning missed the second consecutive free throw) 80% of the time. 80%!!! For the record, an NBA player, who is a two time MVP makes only 20% of his free throws when chicken is on the line. That’s awful. Again, NBA fans will tell you, “yeah but Giannis isn’t a great free throw shooter to begin with.” which is true, but overall in his career, he’s in the 60% range. Here’s the crazy part, when you look at his quarter by quarter free throw percentage for this year, he shoots 64% in fourth quarters of games. He’s a pretty good free throw shooter when the game is in crunch time. The only time we have a drop is when he’s shooting free throws versus when he’s shooting free throws with chicken on the line. And then that drop goes from 64% all the way down to 20%.
Now, for all my mathematicians, statisticians, and any other “-tician”, I need to confess that the sample size is incredibly small. The reason 80% is such a round number is Giannis has only had 10 Chicken Eligible Attempts. That’s not a lot. It’s 10 shots for chicken, right? However, when it comes to giveaways of any other sort of variety: pizza, ice cream, hot dogs, whatever it is, he shoots his regular free throw percentage. When it comes to chicken, he shoots the absolute worst. This is where all of that context we ran through earlier comes into play because this guy has a demonstrated connection with a love for fast food chicken.
Other than his love for chicken and wanting to share that with the world, why would Giannis intentionally miss a Chicken Eligible Attempt? As is the case with elbowing a stranger for a free shirt, as was the case with “Operation Nothing But Bet” and “Operation Royal Flush” there must be something to gain. Have you ever looked at the All-Star voting? You know who’s number one? Not Steph Curry, everyone’s darling. Not LeBron James, the greatest player ever, according to some people. Not Victor Wembanyama, the new phenomenon. The number one All-Star vote receiver in the league is Giannis Antetokounmpo who plays for Milwaukee where it’s not like everyone in Wisconsin turned out to stuff the ballot boxes.
Huge shoutout to one of my favorite podcasts Pablo Torre Finds Out for breaking this story and to Greyson Harris for telling me about it. In the spirit of this week’s issue, if I don’t post a Daily Dispatch over the next two weeks, everyone gets free Chick-Fil-A*
*we don’t actually have the budget for that
