The Charlotte Hornets opted to take Alabama forward Brandon Miller with the second overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft on Thursday night. It wasn’t a gigantic shock, as Miller is viewed as a more snug fit alongside LaMelo Ball and is a potential All-Star down the line, but there were plenty of folks who believed Charlotte made a mistake in passing on G League Ignite guard Scoot Henderson. Instead, Henderson fell to No. 3, where he is now a member of the Portland Trail Blazers.
There was plenty of chatter in the lead-up to the Draft over whether the Hornets would take Miller or Henderson, and there was no strong hint that Henderson would be the guy than a tweet from Shams Charania of The Athletic on Thursday afternoon which said there was “serious momentum” behind taking him No. 2.
Sources: Scoot Henderson is gaining serious momentum at No. 2 with the Charlotte Hornets in tonight’s NBA draft. Hornets have been torn over the last week between Henderson and Brandon Miller. Team has final meetings today to settle on decision.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) June 22, 2023
Not long after, Troy Machir of BetRivers noted that there were some pretty stark swings in the betting market, which saw Henderson skyrocket to -910 to go second and Miller crater to +400. Eventually, these ended up leveling out, and Miller had as good as -1000 odds to become a Hornet.
UPDATE: Scoot Henderson is now -910 at @BetRivers to go No. 2 overall.
Brandon Miller is now +400. https://t.co/O56EWMWzCc
— Troy Machir (@TroyMachir) June 22, 2023
The change in odds for the No. 2 overall pick in the last two hours at @BetRivers:
Brandon Miller: -910, -305, -215, +400, +210
Scoot Henderson: +300, +150, +110, -910, -490
— Troy Machir (@TroyMachir) June 22, 2023
Within the span of eight hours, the odds on Brandon Miller to go No. 2 overall have swung from -910 to +400 to -1000.
— Troy Machir (@TroyMachir) June 23, 2023
All of this, mixed with a tweet by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN about how there was alignment from the beginning in Charlotte on Miller being the pick, led to some questions about Charania’s report. In addition to his work for The Athletic and Stadium, Charania is a FanDuel partner and co-hosts the show Run It Back on FanDuel TV. It is easy, then, to make the jump that something nefarious was going on here, and there were plenty of folks on the internet alleging that Charania reported bogus information in an effort to bring more money in to FanDuel — he falsely says Henderson has momentum to get picked, money comes pouring in, and then, when that ends up not happening, FanDuel suddenly has a gigantic influx of cash.
This would, of course, be a gigantic problem. But in a comment to Darren Rovell of Action Network, a spokesperson for FanDuel indicated that that there is some separation between the company and the way Charania goes about his business.
“FanDuel is not privy to any news that Shams breaks on his platforms,” the spokesperson said. Of course, every reporter gets their own information in their own way, and every reporter gets stuff wrong every now and then as a result. It’s also worth mentioning that, while Miller ended up being the pick and the Hornets were aligned, it’s certainly plausible there were last-minute conversations going on that led to Henderson’s name gaining some amount of momentum internally that wasn’t able to unseat Miller atop their board.
The only way to know what happened here is to straight up dump Charania’s phone, which is not going to happen, so for now, all we have is FanDuel’s remarks on the matter. We’ll let you know if that changes.