Ethan Miller / Getty Images file

Charles Barkley, right, is often seen at the poker tables of Las Vegas. Barkley on Wednesday admitted to having a gambling problem.

Professional athletes have been gambling on themselves all their lives. Gambling with their bodies and with their futures against very long odds. Gambling that they would survive the winnowing process that inevitably weeds out most of the men and women who once dreamed of athletic success. Most of them lose that bet either due to injury, lack of physical gifts or a shortage of the kind of nerve that can allow a man to drive a golf ball over 300 yards down a tight fairway at the British Open with millions of people watching, all of them ready to criticize one misstep as quickly as they will applaud a successful shot.

The kind of guy who can do that, who can willingly take the last shot with a game, or even a championship, on the line, as Jordan did so many times and as Barkley has as well, is a guy who can't get excited by the mundane things of life. That is what draws athletes to the crap tables, roulette wheels and card rooms of Las Vegas.

Most, like Barkley, know it's a long shot but that's why they are there. They've been beating the odds all their lives. They like the pull of it, the difficulty of winning in such an environment. It's a long shot to make it in the NBA. It's a long shot to become a Hall of Fame athlete. It's a long shot to become a millionaire by playing children's games. To do it requires beating long odds many times over. Eventually some of those people become addicted to both the physical and the emotional surge that comes only by putting yourself out on the edge.

For some, it becomes a demon that has to be fed and sports alone can't do it, especially once the games stop but life goes on. It's what derailed Rose on his way to Cooperstown, although he's not the first and he won't be the last athlete caught betting on games and anything else he could think of.

Six-time world boxing champion Oscar De La Hoya knows the feeling.

He's been drawn to the tables and left some big money there. So, too, has former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, who once lost $300,000 in a night, a fact that led a scribe to write, "That tells me only one thing about Evander Holyfield. That wasn't his first night gambling.''

A far lesser known former world champion named Vinny Pazienza once was so deep in casino debt he claims he considered suicide. What he did instead is what athletes do all the time however — he bet on himself. Using a final $10,000 line of credit he gambled his way back off the brink of insolvency, although he knows the odds were against him then and remain so today. In an odd way, that's the attraction.

It's the attraction that brought them to sport. The difficulty of winning. The same thing eventually brings some of them into the kind of situations Daly and Barkley spoke of this week. As Barkley said, you don't beat the casino but that doesn't mean you don't try. The athlete understands you miss more shots than you make. You strike out more often than you hit the winning home run. You throw more incompletions than touchdown passes. None of those facts stop them from believing the next shot will go in, the next swing will be for the fences, the next pass will put points on the scoreboard. That unfettered confidence in themselves and that urge to risk embarrassment and injury in exchange for a moment of glory is what makes them great. It is also what demands constant feeling. For the elite athlete, the only game is the big game so is it any surprise that the only bet is the big bet?

Daly tells a story in his new book of how he won $750,000 in a golf tournament and immediately went gambling and was down $1.2 million in less time than it took him to play the tournament. What drives a man to do such a thing?

The same thing that drove him to have the nerve to win that tournament in the first place — competitiveness, obsession with life on the edge and a blind faith that they can do what others cannot — beat the odds and win where mere mortals lose.

More news

Nathan Denette / AP

Kobe's shot lifts Lakers

Kobe Bryant hit a baseline jump shot with 4.2 seconds left and the Los Angeles Lakers wrapped up a six-game road trip by holding on to beat the Raptors 94-92 on Sunday, their eighth victory in nine meetings with Toronto

PBT: Kobe struggles, but beats Raptors with late jumper

Headlines

• Label

PBT: Howard wants ball, and he's angry

CSN: Wall finds lesson in losing to superstars

First black NBA player gets honor at Hawks game

PBT: Will Ferrell to do All-Star intros? We 'Like' idea

Interactive: Who will be MVP this season?

Vote: Which team will win 2011-12 NBA title?

Interactive: Is LeBron the most-hated athlete?

Opinion: Knicks' Lin already inspiring others