Thursday’s federal arrests of Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier came with a large and surprising information dump. It took me several hours, some press conference footage, and the help of a few colleagues to convey the relevant facts. But if I had a seven-figure salary and an immense network of sources, I probably would’ve done a little better than to sum it up as an “NBA-Mafia crossover,” as ESPN’s Shams Charania did when sharing a clip of himself speaking on Inside the NBA. While I’m grateful for that unforgettable coinage, his commentary left something to be desired.
As always, it’s pretty fun to see what words come tumbling out of a scoopster’s mouth once they stray outside their usual comfort zone of reporting that Player A signed a B-year, C-million dollar contract with Team D, thanks to the very handsome and chiseled Agent E. Once they have to start talking about real shit, you wind up with, say, a false report of robbery, anti-vax buffoonery spun as noble pro-labor activism, or flatly misleading information. When pressed to describe a federal investigation into alleged gambling schemes, Charania filled up five minutes of airtime on Thursday with the word “allegedly” and a potpourri of loose facts.
