ESPN Lies: Shams Going On TV And Declaring That Kawhi Leonard Reportedly Had No Knowledge Of The Clippers Cap Circumvention Is An All Time Embarrassing Lie

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Since the NBA's verdict officially dropped and the punishments have been handed out, there was a thought that the whole Kawhi Scandal story would finally come to an end, but things just keep getting more insane as the days go by.

One of the big takeaways from yesterday's news was the fact that outside of a pretty light $700K fine while comes out to be basically half a game check, Kawhi Leonard walked away scott-free. He didn't get suspended, his contract wasn't voided, and by how his statement read yesterday, the trade back to Toronto is still going through

I think most people had the same reaction upon reading that post

Giphy Images.

In reality, we all know Kawhi got away with the scam. Why do you think the NBAPA didn't fight back on the penalty? Because even they knew he got off easy. 

And while on the surface the Clippers and Steve Ballmer look like the biggest losers in all this, I'm not sure that's true. Sure, their immediate future is somewhat screwed and they are the butt of every joke right now, but eventually that'll pass. It may take a decade or so, but just like the Wolves after their death sentence, they'll survive.

To me, the biggest loser in this whole thing has to be ESPN no? It started with the very clearly full of shit reporting that came out in mid-August, which was an obvious attempt by the Clippers to feed ESPN bad info to help create the narrative that they did nothing wrong. 

I'm on the belief that this probably played a factor in Silver's punishment, and we now know why the NBA immediately pushed back so hard on that initial report. It was complete bullshit. It's pretty clear that ESPN put their most respected writers on the byline of a story to legitimize it when in reality it was obviously carrying water for Steve Ballmer. 

It also showed just how important the investigative reporting by people like Pablo Torre is, because the major network most rely on for accurate news when it comes to this stuff was clearly compromised. How many people saw that report from ESPN and then came to the conclusion that Pablo Torre was wrong or making it all up? My guess is quite a few!

And the thing is, we're still seeing it happen even after the NBA's ruling came out! This time, it's from Shams who is going on TV and declaring that Kawhi Leonard actually had no idea any of this was going on

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Whereas the ESPN report clearly came from the team side, this is clearly Shams working from what I can only imagine is the agent side. It's legitimately insulting to our collective intelligence to try and have us believe that Kawhi has zero knowledge of the cap circumvention. How do we know this?

There's a goddamn paper trail!

We're also to believe that someone has zero idea where tens of millions of dollars that are hitting his bank account are coming from? That he and Uncle Dennis had zero conversations about what was happening and what the plan was? 

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Listen, it's certainly not new that ESPN can sometimes be full of shit. There's a reason #ESPNLies exists, and it's shit like this. To make matters worse, the actual report doesn't even suggest what Shams is saying in that clip! 

I just don't understand the goal here from Shams. Who believes this? Given what happened with the earlier ESPN report, their credibility on anything related to this story is shot. It's very obvious that the Clippers used those reporters and Kawhi's agent is using Shams, so what's even the point here? Is the idea that the general public will go 

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"Oh, well then that changes everything! Kawhi actually did nothing wrong and he shouldn't even have to pay a fine!"

I'm not sure people even really care that Kawhi and his camp did these things. The issue is that the TEAM went along with it and broke the rules. So what good does it do for Shams to go on TV and gaslight people like that? It's all just very weird.

Can you imagine Woj ever doing something like this? This isn't to say he never carried water for teams, I think we all remember this gem ahead of Game 7 between BOS/PHI back in 2023 which obviously came directly from Daryl Morey

but I don't think he'd go on TV and blatantly lie like Shams is doing in that clip. I get it, he does favors for agents and in return they give him scoops and blah blah blah, but come on man. You would think that at some point you would draw the line, and suggesting Kawhi Leonard has zero knowledge of everything that went down is probably a good place to start.