Nate McMillan wasn’t a big gambler in his day, but that’s not necessarily the case with some players in today’s NBA.

Okay, many players.

While on assignment for SLAMonline/SLAM Magazine over the weekend, I had the chance to speak with McMillan, along with Phil Jackson and Cleveland’s Mike Brown about the chances a ban on gambling could come down from David Stern based on the unfortunate dramatics involving Gilbert Arenas in Washington.

Now, no one is going to confuse the Blazers with the Wizards in this respect. But I found McMillan’s comments to shed much light on the topic – guys with a lot of money and a lot of time on their hands.

“You start playing cards on a five-hour trip; just think what you could lose in that time in Vegas. And that’s normally when it happens, on the longer trips. If you’re playing cards for four or five hours, that’s a lot of money,” McMillan told me for the story running now over at SLAMonline (“Coaches Not Ready To Ante-Up”).

“But our guys don’t [gamble]. If it was an issue, I would address the issue. Those are more your older teams. I’ve played on teams where guys got into it, when I was playing. I didn’t play cards. But it was a way to pass time for a lot of those guys. If you didn’t pay up before the next trip, then you couldn’t get in. It was never something that became an issue on the team.”

McMillan said time and again it’s not an issue with Portland, even when I jokingly used Steve Blake and Raef LaFrentz’ old card games on the team plane as an example of gambling gone wrong.

Let’s just put this out there: Even if teams and some coaches around the league don’t feel a league-issued ban is right, or even that one is coming, this whole NBA gambling topic isn’t going away any time soon. Too much damage has already been done. I’m not sure what that looks like yet. I’m not sure if anyone does.

But if David Stern’s office is going to act, I believe it will be in the coming weeks before the NBA All-Star Game which starts February 12^th in Dallas.

photo: trailblazerscentercourt

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