The National Basketball Association is preparing  for its 75th anniversary on Tuesday. But it also increased its presence in the cryptocurrency space as it braces for the future.

The NBA agreed to its first cryptocurrency sponsorship deal with Coinbase, the publicly traded company that makes an exchange for crypto trading. In the agreement, Coinbase will leverage just about all the NBA’s platforms including the WNBA, NBA G League, NBA 2K League and USA Basketball. Terms of the deal were not provided.

Eighteen former NBA players were charged with attempting to defraud the NBA’s Health and Welfare Benefit Plan of nearly $4 million, officials said Thursday.

The defendants include Terrence Williams, Alan Anderson, Anthony Allen, Shannon Brown, William Bynum, Ronald Glen “Big Baby” Davis, Christopher Douglas-Roberts, Melvin Ely, Jamario Moon, Darius Miles, Milton Palacio, Ruben Patterson, Eddie Robinson, Gregory Smith, Sebastian Telfair, Charles Watson Jr., Antoine Wright, and Anthony Wroten.

He’s gone from selling sunglasses as a youth outside an Athens metro station to NBA superstar for the Milwaukee Bucks league champions and now Giannis Antetokounmpo has two villas at a luxury resort in Greece’s Peloponnese.

He can afford it. In 2020 he signed a five-year $228 million extension on his contract but the money didn’t go to his head as he powered the Bucks to the NBA title and won the tourney MVP award for it with a performance for the ages.