Who the f*** is Moose? Inside our Malik Beasley investigation

The author describes the Malik Beasley gambling investigation story as the "craziest, most perplexing mystery" encountered in their NBA reporting career. A central question driving their investigation for the podcast "Pablo Torre Finds Out" was uncovering the identity of "Moose," hinting at a double meaning behind asterisks used in the narrative.

ESPN's Shams Charania broke bombshell news on the eve of NBA free agency, revealing Malik Beasley was under federal investigation for allegedly gambling on his own games and prop bets. The report stunned the NBA community, including the author who wrote an immediate analysis that became their most-read piece of the year, indicating intense public interest.

The Detroit Pistons were reportedly "blindsided" by the investigation despite preparing a $42 million contract offer for Beasley. No team or insider publicly anticipated the scandal—except for one cryptic social media post five months earlier. On January 30th, an obscure Twitter account predicted Beasley would face federal investigation, after which the account holder vanished, leaving the "Beasley Prophecy" as the only warning.

This mysterious prediction led the reporting team—Pablo Torre, Amin Elhassan, and the author—to pursue what they termed a "Moose hunt" to uncover both the source of the prophecy and the significance behind the name "Moose."