Someone called me yesterday to say they’d heard on the radio that Kawhi to the Lakers was a done deal.
I had to explain to them on the phone what I explained to hundreds of people yesterday in the comments of this blog, on twitter, and via last night’s episode of The Lob, The Jam, The Podcast: that buzz started with Chris Broussard, and you have a better chance of finding out secret NBA intel by going to your local park and asking the people playing pick-up where they think Kawhi is going.
Here’s what Broussard had to say about Kawhi Leonard’s free agency yesterday:
Oh, but Lucas, why are you embedding a tweet from LakeShowWorld that links to the Fox Sports article instead of sharing something from the article itself?
Because Fox Sports took the article down. Because they realized Broussard was egregiously mis/uninformed.
How could it be that yesterday afternoon, Broussard reported that Kawhi called the Clippers to say it was over, but this morning, Broussard is reporting that the Clippers may have “wowed” him last night—which implies they met with Kawhi after Broussard had already reported that Leonard had informed them they were no longer in consideration.
Broussard also said on television yesterday that he was “94, 95%” certain that Kawhi would sign with the Lakers by 6PM yesterday evening. It’s 10am the next day in California and Broussard has already forgotten this prediction and gone on TV to say “Kawhi has not made any decision yet.”
Chris Broussard is a notoriously incorrect human. He’s a professional misinformed person. He’s wrong for a living.
Don’t believe me? Last night, I googled “times Broussard was wrong.” Here were 3 results from the first page.
From Deadspin: “Always-Wrong ESPN Fuck-Up Chris Broussard Wrong Yet Again”
From the NY Post: “Everyone’s Making Fun of ESPN’s Chris Broussard”
From AwfulAnnouncing: “It was a rough night for Chris Broussard and his sources”
Best believe that if I looked through more results and tweaked my search terms I’d find plenty of articles like them. And that’s just actual people at actual outlets willing to put him on blast. Somewhere, someone more savvy than I am could probably find a comment section or reddit thread that lists all of his false reports over the years.
And you know what, good for him. He’s clearly successful and hopefully his fun, well-paying gig enables him to have a well-rounded, happy life. This isn’t a “Broussard sucks as a person” column. Sports gossip isn’t that deep. Let Chris have his talk show and if you enjoy listening, keep on enjoying.
This is just a “don’t treat his nonsense like news” column, because if you overreact to a Broussard tweet, you may as well be overreacting to some anonymous post on r/Lakers… which, by the way, stop overreacting to anonymous posts on r/Lakers.
We don’t know where Kawhi is going in free agency. It could damn well be the Lakers. And if it is, Broussard will still have been wrong. He will have been wrong about the supposed call to inform the Clippers they weren’t being considered anymore, a report he himself contradicted. He will have been wrong to say the Lakers were the favorites, as contradicted by Cris Carter on his own network.
Kawhi update: I’ve just been informed Kawhi has not made a decision. To think the Lakers are ahead of the Clippers or the Raptors would be wrong #KawhiUpdate
— Cris Carter (@criscarter80) July 2, 2019
If Kawhi goes to the Lakers, Chris Broussard will be a sports radio talking head who guessed right when talking about where he thinks a star free agent will go. That’s his role, and that’s fine.
But he won’t be an insider who had better intel than Adrian Wojnarowski, Shams Charania, Chris Haynes, Sam Amick, Ramona Shelburne, and Brian Windhorst. He’ll just be a guy on a radio show who guessed right.
Broussard has proven time and again over his carer that his reporting is shoddy and either poorly sourced or unsourced with the word “sources” attached to add weight (seriously, check the AwfulAnnouncing link above). He’s proven it clearly in this situation by so badly botching the details that Fox Sports deleted an article and tweet about his report.
Don’t take Broussard seriously. Don’t take him seriously if he says Kawhi to the Lakers is a done deal. Don’t take him seriously if he says Kawhi to the Clippers is a done deal. I don’t even follow him on twitter.
I know that waiting is tough, but we need to just wait for someone with credibility to tell us something.
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