If the Los Angeles Clippers are trying to appear innocent in the Kawhi Leonard-Aspiration scandal, they’re not doing a very good job of it. Wednesday’s media day offered the team a great opportunity to get out ahead of the reporting done by Pablo Torre Finds Out. But instead of tackling or addressing specific issues with the Torre’s reporting, they chose to give general answers, perhaps hoping the alleged scandal would go away on its own.
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ESPN NBA reporter Ramona Shelburne was at the event, and since this was the first time Kawhi was available to the media after the story came out, she planned to ask him about it. She wasn’t the only one, either.
But as it turns out, the Clippers weren’t interested in giving the story more oxygen. Shelburne told ESPN Radio about her experience.
After she asked a question about Aspiration at media day, Shelburne said, “Somebody [from Clippers PR] kind of reached out and grabbed the mic from me, it was like ‘OK, you’re done now.'”
Shelburne quickly saw what kinds of questions they really wanted to be asked. “Then it went to a team TV reporter who asked about being healthy during the offseason, then the next one was the team radio person, and they asked a question that was more basketball-related,” she said.
Shelburne added that one reporter got in an Aspiration question after her, but it was a softball one about avoiding distractions. She and the other five or six reporters who had been planning on asking about the scandal were all shut out.
“We had all talked before the press conference, and I said, ‘OK, we’re all going to ask Aspiration questions, right? Because this is his first public statement. Let’s tag team. Listen to whatever everybody else asks, we gotta cover all the bases here because this is probably the one and only time he’ll address it,'” revealed Shelburne.
It’s yet another bad look for the Clippers after weeks of having their name dragged through the mud by Pablo Torre Finds Out. Grabbing the mic from Shelburne, one of the most respected NBA reporters out there, and refusing to call on anyone else who planned to ask about Aspiration makes them look shady, for sure.
Meanwhile, Torre has been slowly dripping out more and more information, with five of his podcast episodes so far dedicated to the scandal. The evidence is pretty overwhelming, and it looks like the Clippers are basically pleading the fifth in the hopes that they don’t incriminate themselves.
As Rachel Nichols and Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated put it, Kawhi could have explained his Aspiration deal, but he didn’t.
Meanwhile, NBA commissioner Adam Silver is going to be under a lot of pressure to ensure a just resolution. On the one hand, it seems to be an open secret that teams engage in the kind of salary cap circumvention that the Clippers are accused of here. On the other hand, letting them get away scot free after being caught isn’t going to sit well with teams that are playing by the rules.
The Clippers will play their first exhibition game of the preseason against the Guangzhou Loong-Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association next week. It remains to be seen if all the postgame questions are about celebrating basketball on a global scale, or if Shelburne or anyone else can sneak in one about Aspiration.
