Michael Rubin gets roasted by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission over Sixers’ past draft mistake
The decision to take Markelle Fultz over Jayson Tatum “will go down as one of the biggest charitable contributions in sports,” Rubin joked.
The Sixers are in such dire straits, even the Massachusetts Gaming Commission is dunking on them.
When Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin sat down for a meeting with the commission to seek a five-year gaming license for Fanatics Sportsbook in the state, where the company has been operating since 2023, he was immediately hit with a different line of questioning — about the Sixers’ NBA draft in 2017.
“You were in ownership in 2017, were you not?” said Paul Brodeur, commissioner to the gaming commission. “That was the year the Sixers traded the rights to Jayson Tatum and received Markelle Fultz, if memory serves.”
Rubin left the ownership group in 2022 after Fanatics had grown so large that there were potential conflicts of interest with players and the league as a whole. And that was before the multibillion-dollar company entered the sports betting game.
“I would say it will go down as one of the biggest charitable contributions in sports that we’ve known, and I’d think, with that, this should be the fastest review,” Rubin joked. “You guys should just thank me for everything in the state of Massachusetts. I think it was so bad I had to cease my ownership with the 76ers.
“Jayson Tatum’s my guy. I came to support him last year. So after the humiliating, embarrassing trade up to No. 1 and being fleeced by the fine Boston Celtics, we saw we just had to switch teams and get with the winning team.”
While Rubin took the heat, he wasn’t technically in charge of making draft picks. Bryan Colangelo was the Sixers’ general manager at the time, and traded up to take Fultz — a year after selecting Ben Simmons with the first overall pick.
Brodeur said his Sixers fan friends still think it’s too soon to make jokes about the team’s draft mistake, but Rubin’s been ready for jokes about it since the day it happened.
“I’m a little built different,” Rubin said. “I like being abused, I can take abuse within 10 minutes after. Any time you feel the need to give me abuse about some of the horrific things we’ve done in Philadelphia as a sports city, especially with the Sixers, you can give me all the hard time you want, and I’ll actually enjoy taking it.”
That makes one of us.