ESPN GETS EXPOSED FOR ABANDONING JOURNALISM

After investigative sports journalist Pablo Torre dropped bombshell reports about how the Los Angeles Clippers had allegedly circumvented the salary cap to pay Kawhi Leonard through third-party endorsement deals, he was met not only with intense criticism from some of the leading voices in sports, including Bill Simmons and Mark Cuban, but also with outright denials by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer.

Torre faced even more fire after ESPN released a sourced report, authored by Don Van Natta Jr., Baxter Holmes, and Ramona Shelburne, in August claiming the NBA had found no evidence that Ballmer and the Clippers had funneled money to Leonard through sponsors, with calls rising for him to apologize or retract his Pulitzer Prize-winning story.

However, on Wednesday, it was revealed that the NBA had, in fact, found enough of a smoking gun(s) to determine that Leonard had been paid in a manner that circumvented the NBA’s salary cap. Los Angeles was forced to forfeit five first-round draft picks, Ballmer was issued a $30 million fine, and Leonard was required to pay $700,000 in restitution for improper benefits received. Ballmer, President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank, and President of Business Operations Gillian Zucker were all also assessed suspensions from the NBA.

Most of the sentiment in the wake of the Clippers’ punishments was focused on praise for Torre for standing by his reporting through the criticisms. However, many were also quick to note ESPN’s failures in its reporting on the situation. Among those was Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix.

“I like our colleagues over at ESPN, but they just swallowed a big bunch of bullsh*t,” Mannix said. “Like, just a big bunch of bullshit that clearly came from the Clippers. Like, the Clippers, even like in their initial statement, they said like something to the effect of that the, you know, the NBA saying this now is not what they led us to believe, you know, a few weeks ago.

“Which is basically a tell there. They kind of gave away the story there where they said, hey, because that implies that they were the ones suggesting they were the ones that gave up the story.”

Mannix touched on massive journalistic failures of the one-sided nature of ESPN’s report.

“And just like, just a whole bunch of bullsh*t that was out there in that story. And I don’t like to get into media stuff because it’s a hard job. And so you’re fumbling around. Yes. Oftentimes you’re fumbling around in the dark, but that’s a— you can’t run a story like that when, when you’re, you’re not getting at least a semblance of the picture from the other side.

“And it’s very clear. That the NBA was not cooperating in any way, shape, or form. Sometimes they don’t cooperate publicly, you know this, but they do cooperate privately. They’ll tell you kind of what’s going on behind the scenes. Clearly, they weren’t doing that, and that led to one of the more egregious misses that we’re going to see in NBA reporting.”

The gap between the ESPN report and the NBA’s heavy hand highlights the difference between insiderdom and journalism, bringing to light what people in power want to keep in the dark.

The post Chris Mannix rips ESPN for Clippers report: ‘They just swallowed a big bunch of bullsh*t’ appeared first on Awful Announcing.

2026-09-04T17:35:02Z