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Things move quickly in the NBA news cycle. It’s been a few weeks since the Utah Jazz were chosen to be the scapegoats for Adam Silver’s terrible plan to flatten lottery odds in 2019. Instead of the flattened odds preventing tanking, they made it worse by incentivizing middle-lottery teams to lose more. Utah had to adjust to Silver’s incompetence to do what was best for the Jazz. Just like Utah was worse off because of Silver’s decision-making, ESPN is now worse off as well.
The Utah Jazz are “old news” now, everyone is slowly forgetting the big story a few weeks ago. Everyone but the Jazz, that is. And you can count on the Jazz not forgetting anytime soon. If you haven’t noticed, there have been some news stories recently involving the Utah Jazz, but the reporters have been different.
When the Jazz traded for Jaren Jackson Jr., it wasn’t Shams Charania who broke the news, it was Chris Haynes.
When the news that Jusuf Nurkic was out for the season due to nose surgery broke, it was Haynes, not Charania, who broke it again.
And it’s not just breaking news stories that are now being sent to different reporters, relationships are being cut off as well. On his podcast on February 13, Brian Windhorst said he was done talking about tanking, that the Jazz are an organization of “good people” just trying to do what’s best for their team. He talked about not wanting to talk about tanking anymore because he didn’t want to ruin any more relationships, like the one he apparently had with Utah.
It may seem like a small thing to some, but those relationships matter. Utah is a part of interconnected relationships and is a contact that can provide news and rumors. Now, that’s gone. Hope it was worth it for a week of bullying a small market team. And in all honesty, this might not be the only team. The Pacers have to be frustrated as well, and it appears they may be looking to fire back at Silver and ESPN, also.
Rick Carlisle was recently on the radio and said the league asked the Pacers to consider medicating Aaron Nesmith so he could play in the game they were fined for sitting out players.
Adam Silver could not look worse. He apparently wants to force teams to play injured players now? It seems insane, considering the issues the league is having with players going down with injuries. Just another example of horrible leadership from Adam Silver and the NBA. The question that comes from this is, what are the stories we don’t know about?
One thing you can bet is that these leaks and changes would not have happened had Adam Silver not put out some sort of bat signal to bully the Jazz and Pacers. Now, he gets even more bad press, and those reporters who salivate over access are now without the most important thing a reporter needs: sources.
Hope it was worth it, ESPN and Adam Silver, you can bet that Utah and Indiana will not forget, and no doubt if a vote ever comes to remove Adam Silver, you can count on two teams being involved.