Austin Gamblers Fulfill Their Destiny, Winning 2024 PBR Teams Championship

Is a 2025 repeat run in the cards for a team labelled “The New York Yankees of PBR”?

Austin Gamblers celebrating team win / PBR

Some tag the Austin Gamblers with a derisive label. They’re the New York Yankees of PBR Teams.

That’s totally fine with Team President JJ Gottsch.  The Yankees, after all, have 27 world championships and are headed to the 2024 World Series.

Gottsch, who spent more than three decades in the baseball world as a shortstop in the 1991 College World Series, a minor league general manager, and executive working for Nolan Ryan, sees the Yankees comparison as flattering recognition of a blue-chip team committed to excellence.  

His high-powered squad was better than excellent on Championship Sunday in Las Vegas.

With the pressure as mighty as it gets in professional bull riding, the stacked, home run- hitting Gamblers’ lineup knocked down ride after ride, going an otherworldly 9-for-10 on the day that matters most.

The fifth-seeded Gamblers lived up to high expectations for a PBR Teams championship by beating the league’s top two teams.

They started the day with a perfect 5-for-5 showing to upset the No. 1 Kansas City Outlaws.

There was no let down. An hour later they put up four more rides to down the No. 2 Carolina Cowboys by two bulls.

Finally, the mighty Austin Gamblers tasted the champagne they always felt should be theirs.

The Gamblers have led a seemingly charmed existence since the league’s draft lottery inside Madison Square Garden in 2022, which would set the order for selecting the riders forming 8 new bull riding teams.

Austin entered the lottery with the lowest odds (4.7% chance) of winning the No. 1 pick.

Inside the Hulu Theater, they had one ping pong ball out of 21.  That lone ball dropped in their favor.

Jose Vitor Leme / PBR

There was no drama or debate about who they’d pick. Two-time World Champion Jose Vitor Leme looked as comfortable and right in green and black as Joe DiMaggio in New York Yankees pinstripes.

Leme was the league MVP the first two seasons, leading the Gamblers to back-to-back regular season championships.

Both years, however, Austin faltered in Las Vegas, unable to spray the bubbly atop the shark cage at the end of the elimination tournament.

Beyond Leme, the talent had been in place for the Michael Gaffney-coached squad.

In the stretch run of the 2022 season, Gottsch engineered a trade with the Kansas City Outlaws to land 2019 rookie of the year Dalton Kasel.

Gottsch added the final piece of the puzzle in the 2024 expansion draft. In a bid to win now, he traded youth (20-year-old Cort McFadden and 24-year-old Austin Richardson) for veteran experience in Kaique Pacheco, now 30.

Pacheco, left unprotected by the Nashville Stampede ahead of the draft, had gone to the Oklahoma Wildcatters, and Gottsch engineered a blockbuster trade for the “Ice Man.”

Pacheco and Kasel were sublime on Sunday.

Pacheco led off the games versus Kansas City and Carolina with scores of 87.5 and 88, respectively.

Kasel then swung a very big bat with two critical 90-point rides, including a championship event-best 92-point ride aboard Always Been Crazy in the final game.

PBR

Leme's 89-point trip aboard Tijuana Two-Step clinched the title, upsetting the No. 2 Carolina Cowboys, whose three scores still weren’t enough.

The middle of the Gamblers lineup, which often had been a liability in a disappointing 13-15 season, came through when the chips were stacked highest. Lucas Divino was 2-for-2 on the day, and Ramon de Lima put up an important ride in the first game against Kansas City.

When Leme brought home the big buckle, he gave his teammate and fellow countryman Pacheco a new distinction in PBR history. 

Pacheco, who won the individual PBR World Championship in 2018, became the first rider to claim two team titles, with Nashville in 2022 and now the Austin Gamblers.

It’s worth noting that the New York Yankees won five straight world championships from 1949-1953.