The National Basketball Association is now slime-identified with a crew of upstanders known as “Spook,” “Peso,” “Vez,” “Sugar,” “Black Tony,” “Scruli,” and “Doc,” thanks to the strenuous efforts of FBI Director Kash Patel to generate a headline. “Current and Former National Basketball Association Players and Four Other Individuals Charged in Widespread Sports Betting and Money Laundering Conspiracy,” Patel’s press office blared last week. At a podium flanked by prosecutors as he announced arrests tied to the charges, Patel said, “The fraud is mind-boggling.” But read the actual indictments—which tell a different, much thinner story—and you might begin to suspect that the nation’s top cop was running a small con of his own.

Patel got his headlines. A front-pager in The New York Times led w

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