Evolution of a Rumor

    Part of what makes the NBA off season so intriguing is the constant rumor mill that surrounds the draft, free agency and trades in general. While every major sports league faces roster changes, rumors and the like, basketball stands apart from baseball and football (for the most part) in that a single player coming to a team can immediately transform a mediocre team into a contender. The twelve man roster is an intricate puzzle comprised of roles, style, chemistry, system etc. As fans, the fantasy aspect of compiling our own "perfect" rosters is almost as exciting as the games themselves. That is why you see entire websites dedicated to rumors, the pontificating of fantasy trade scenarios and player comparisons. Since this element of the NBA is so addicting to fans, the media cannot help but to fan the flames by publishing rumors based on un-corroborated sources. As we saw around the trade deadline and the draft (many times involving the Blazers) trades would be reported to be on the verge of completion, but  as we would later find out, these same trades had not actually been discussed. Some of this false information was probably floated by an agent, but it seems likely that many of these rumors originated from sloppy or false reporting.

    Today I was almost a party to spreading an entirely false rumor throughout the media, but thanks to corroboration and correct journalism, the rumor was squashed before it was able to threaten anyone's credibility: I was answering the phones at 95.5 the Game when a caller relayed to me that his cousin, who lived in Indiana, had just heard on the local sports station that the Blazers were discussing a deal that would send Rudy and Martell and likely a first to Indiana for Danny Granger. Upon hearing this, my first thought was "please be real!" so I relayed this information to Jay Allen. The first thing he did upon hearing this was call the Pacer's beat reporter, the two major Indianapolis radio stations and someone within the Pacer's organization. All of our sources replied that this move had not been discussed between the two teams, so we just let the story die without any mention of it on the air. In hindsight, it was a pretty mundane occurrence for a major new outlet, but the whole situation opened my eyes to the realities of sports reporting. In today's blog driven, instantaneous sport's news world, I could easily have seen that rumor blown up to the point where people would actually have been disappointed it didn't happen When you work in the sport's media world, especially if you are covering a certain team, you can be led to jump the gun on rumors for two major reasons:

1. You are a fan of a team. In the instance of this imaginary Granger story, my wishful thinking propelled me to want to get this on the air ASAP, as if by putting this information out in the world would increase the likely hood of the deal actually going down. This also applies to the local media wanting to appease the fans. How much more excited would we be about the Blazers (considering it were possible) if Jason Quick reported a rumor that had us going after CP3 or Lebron.

2. Expediency. They don't give out awards for breaking stories in the NBA but it sometimes seems that media outlets feel a certain competitiveness when pursuing rumors or breaking news. This tendency could lead to someone like Sam Smith or others to throw caution to the wind while throwing out trade scenarios.

That post went longer than expected. I just wanted to shed some light on the machinery of the NBA rumor mill, and hopefully increase awareness to the possibility that rumors reported by even the most credible organizations could be pure fallacy.