In the minutes after Duke’s victory Friday night, the game that moved the top-ranked Blue Devils one step closer to the ACC title, Isaiah Evans received a message.
This one wasn’t to congratulate Evans on reaching a second consecutive ACC Tournament championship game. Nor was it to applaud the guard’s career-high 10 rebounds, precisely the type of play that Duke coach Jon Scheyer praised in his postgame comments.
No, this one was to wish harm on Evans, who scored just six points in 32 minutes and missed all seven of his 3-point attempts. In Thursday’s quarterfinal win against Florida State, Evans scored a career-high 32 points and made seven 3-pointers. Some sportsbooks placed the over/under for Evans points at 15 for the game vs. Clemson.
“I just got a text right now. Some dude told me: ‘I hope you blow your knee out,’” Evans said after the game.
North Carolina launched legal online sports betting in March 2024. Two years in, the bettors in the state have wagered more than $13 billion through eight legal operators. Proposition bets on the stats of individual players — college and professional — are legal in North Carolina.
“Prop bets just aren’t healthy for the sport, especially with the threats that a lot of our players get,” Evans said, adding that it’s “definitely getting out of hand.”
“We’re out here doing what we do,” said Evans, a key contributor for the 30-2 Blue Devils. “We’re winning games. We’re not worried about your prop bets.”
Asked Duke’s Isaiah Evans about prop bets and if he or his teammates hear from angry bettors. Evans said he got a message last night after Duke’s win. @WRALDoc on sports betting in NC debuts Wednesday. pic.twitter.com/ML4hKoUqev
— Brian Murphy (@murphsturph) March 14, 2026
Evans is not alone.
In 2024, just after the launch of betting in the state, former North Carolina player Armando Bacot said he received hundreds of messages from fans upset that he didn’t get enough rebounds.
Duke senior Maliq Brown said he hears about betting all the time.
“You see it on social media, walking to the stands or in the arenas like this when it’s different fan bases,” Brown said. “Walking in, you can hear stuff.”
NCAA President Charlie Baker has called on states with legal sports betting to stop sportsbooks from offering prop bets on college games. Several states, including Ohio and Louisiana, have enacted such bans, while other states never allowed it in the first place.
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips told WRAL on Saturday that is in favor of eliminating those types of bets, due to both harassment of athletes and the potential for game manipulation.
The NBA and Major League Baseball have suspended and banned players for allegedly manipulating their performance to cash in on prop bets, such as the under on points or rebounds or whether the next pitch will be a ball or a strike.
Phillips said the prop bets are “dangerous” and should be “eliminated.”
“We should have zero tolerance for that,” he said. “The pressures that that puts on young people, I just think it’s enormously difficult for young people in class, living where normal students live, and the pressures that they get from friends and individuals that they come in contact with. Everybody wants to try to find out additional information about what’s happening with their team. It’s really tough on student athletes.”
Bets on individual athletes are among the most popular offerings for sportsbooks. During football season, bettors can wager on players to score the game’s first touchdown or a touchdown at any time. In basketball, the bets are often on how many points or rebounds or 3-pointers players will have during a game.
“Ultimately props have become popular because we are fans of players,” said Joe Maloney, president of the Sports Betting Alliance, which represents major sportsbooks in the United States. “It reflects our own fandom.”
North Carolina state Rep. Marcia Morey, a Democrat from Orange County, has introduced several bills to ban prop betting on college sports in the state legislature. They have gone nowhere.
“We’re seeing a huge increase in social media threats to college players,” said Morey, a former U.S. Olympic swimmer and NCAA investigator.
But former Rep. Jason Saine, who helped push the legalization of sports betting in North Carolina, argues that the public nature of the games themselves expose athletes to criticism, especially in the social media era.
“Athletes are in the public sphere,” Saine said. “They’re going to get criticized, period. That happened before sports betting. It will happen after sports betting.”
A new WRAL investigative documentary, The Gamble: Sports Betting in North Carolina, examines the rapid rise of the industry and the growing concerns about its impact. The documentary premieres March 18.
