No full notes today. Those should be back later this week, if not tomorrow.
1. Is Shams Charania a Reporter?
“The expectation is that (Bronny) is going to stay in the NBA Draft,” said LeBron James today through his spokesperson, Shams Charania, adding that Rich Paul is an awesome agent and that someone is definitely going to draft Bronny. This was all very funny. It’s funny to think of an NBA team wanting to take a flyer on an undersized guard with heart concerns coming off a poor lone season in college. It’s funny to see Rich Paul try to spin Bronny’s predictable underperformance with a sudden emphasis on how he, Rich Paul, is more worried about his clients finding the right developmental situation than being drafted with an early pick.
The funniest thing about the interview, though, is how brazen Charania has become in carrying water for his sources. The Darvin Ham hit piece was an eye-roller, but Ham made himself look silly before Charania, with the backing of the New York Times, aired all of Klutch Sports’s grievances regarding Ham’s performance. Today marked a new step in Charania’s career as a shill.
Bronny James might be drafted. It’s a believable outcome. Whether Bronny deserves it or not, organizations want LeBron James to play for them, and understandably so. He’s still a good player, he attracts other talent, and he draws crowds. While LeBron recently softened on the possibility of playing with his son, it’s not outrageous that someone, possibly even the Lakers, will take a flyer on Bronny in the hopes of securinga year or two of LeBron. June 27th marks the end of the NBA Draft. June 29th marks LeBron James’s deadline to opt out of his contract with the Lakers. Second round picks often end up in the G-League anyway. It makes sense.
Charania didn’t say anything clearly untrue. But he didn’t offer that explanation. Instead, he mentioned Rich Paul and/or his agency, Klutch Sports, at least four times in a two-minute span. He also devoted half a minute to a narrative framing LeBron’s impending retirement in two years as a decision not based on LeBron’s ability to keep playing at a high level, but on LeBron wanting to start contributing more to family life so he could give back to his wife and others who’ve sacrificed on his behalf. I wonder which anonymous sources are feeding Shams that line.
For those unfamiliar: The deal with Charania (more commonly known as Shams) is that he’s an “NBA insider.” He shares rumors from NBA circles and he sometimes breaks news regarding personnel moves approximately four minutes before other media. The latter is a surprisingly valuable skill in the Twitter age. Like Adrian Wojnarowski, commonly known as Woj, Shams has become part of the fabric of the modern NBA experience. In related news, the NBA’s alienated some of its fans in recent years by becoming, as a product, so aggressively online.
If you’re wondering why Shams is able to break all that news four minutes early, the answer ties back to the other part of his job: The rumor-sharing. In exchange for getting news first, often from players’ agents, Shams will say anything they ask him to say, on television, on podcasts, or in writing. It must be somewhat believable—he shrewdly worded his Bronny “reports” today—but the man is a mouthpiece. A waterboy. A spokesperson, paid indirectly for his services.
Shams and Woj both work very hard, and clearly, a lot of fans find value in their work. Likewise, carrying water for industry sources is nothing new. This is part of the media game, one of the two biases which have wrestled the journalism industry from its late–20th–century foundations in recent years (the other is personal ideological bias). What’s either troubling or refreshing about Shams is how transparent he is about how he does his work. He’s not really a reporter—he rarely shares information others wouldn’t report, and a large part of his job is strategic communication—but he doesn’t call himself one. He’s an insider. A gossip, a propagandist, and a valuable man.
(This is a good time to remind everyone that Bryce James, Bronny’s younger brother and the new great hope for an heir to LeBron’s kingdom, is barely in the top 150 of the 247Sports recruiting composite for his class.)
2. The Draft Lottery Worked
The Pistons got a bad draw yesterday, and this stinks, because Detroit is a likable city and the Pistons mean something to the sport of basketball. There are comforting narratives—this is a weak draft class, and if Adam Silver does try to rig a lottery he’s likelier now to help the Pistons than he might be if they’d just picked first—but it’s a disappointing time for the franchise.
Overall, though? The lottery worked. A Play-In Tournament team won the first overall pick. The Hornets and Blazers, like the Pistons, fell dramatically from their pre-lottery position. The idea of a lottery is to disincentivize tanking by adding randomness to the draft order. This year was a strong example of how fickle the exercise can be.
Did the draft lottery achieve its purpose? Not at all. Tanking is still rampant, and that will remain the case. It’s true that there’s no benefit to being the worst team rather than the third-worst team. But. It’s still also true that there’s little benefit to being the tenth-worst team rather than the eighth.
The lottery lessens the incentives to tank. But with incentives to not tank naturally lacking, the balance still encourages losing.
3. What Is Goalie Interference?
Against the Lightning, the Panthers were aided by a stringent interpretation of what constitutes goalie interference. Against the Bruins, the Panthers have now been aided by a loose interpretation of the same rule. Was there a memo telling refs to loosen up? Did last night’s refs see the reaction from the Tampa Bay series and adjust in response? These are earnest questions. It’s highly possible I missed reporting on a memo.
Either way, the NHL has managed to get itself a rules controversy on par with the NFL’s pass interference replay reviews a few years ago. We can all tell something isn’t working. Usually, especially with hockey, we can at least wonder a little bit if we could be the ones missing something.
