The news in October that stars and coaches from America’s National Basketball Association, the NBA, were allegedly involved in a $7 million illegal gambling operation — involving what prosecutors described as “x-ray poker tables” and “sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards” — was all the more alarming for who their co-conspirators were said to be. More than 30 people were arrested in a sweeping FBI investigation, among them members of an organisation as infamous as the NBA is famous, and one that many believed had long faded from view: La Cosa Nostra, the Italian-American mafia. “New York City’s...