ESPN’s Don Van Natta defends report on Clippers investigation

The NBA’s investigation into the Los Angeles Clippers’ alleged salary-cap circumvention came to a close last week, when the league levied a massive punishment against the franchise. The Clippers lost five future first-round picks, were fined $30 million, and team owner Steve Ballmer was banned from team and league activities for a year.

That punishment vindicated Pablo Torre, whose initial reporting last summer on Kawhi Leonard’s questionable endorsement deals sparked the league’s investigation. It also raised questions about a report ESPN ran two weeks earlier titled “Sources: NBA has no evidence Ballmer funneled money to Leonard via sponsors.” The story was triple-bylined by ESPN insiders Don Van Natta Jr., Baxter Holmes, and Ramona Shelburne, with Shams Charania and Bobby Marks contributing.

On Tuesday, Van Natta responded to some of the criticism the report has received since the Clippers’ punishment has been handed down, via an email to Puck’s John Ourand.

“For this particular story, the most important test, in our view, is how our Aug. 17 story holds up against the findings ultimately released in the Wachtell report more than two weeks later.

“Accuracy is critical, and we hold ourselves to the highest standard. We believe readers who judge the facts of our Aug. 17 story against the specifics released in the report two weeks later will see that we accurately reflected the status and direction of the NBA’s investigation at the time of publishing.”

Van Natta then went on to note specifics from the story they reported — that the NBA found no evidence Ballmer funneled money through Aspiration, that the investigation was focused on introductions of Leonard’s representative Dennis Robertson, that the NBA was on the brink of handing down penalties comparable to the Joe Smith case in 2000 — that the NBA’s investigation ultimately backed up.

This is all well and good and factually correct. But people took issue with ESPN’s report not because of those specific facts, but because of how they were framed.

First and foremost, you can look to the headline. There were plenty of ways to title the ESPN report. Something like “Sources: NBA’s investigation into Clippers cap circumvention moving towards conclusion” could have worked and included the same information. Instead, the framing seemed to specifically focus on exonerating Ballmer. While this can read as a media literacy complaint — “No one reads the article anymore; they just read the headline” — how an outlet frames a story in its headline gives you insight into what that outlet believes that story is telling you.

You can also look at the segments of the ESPN story directly surrounding some of the segments Van Natta referred to in his email.

Right before going into the punishment handed down in relation to the Joe Smith case two decades ago, the ESPN report read: “Two sources familiar with the NBPA’s thinking and the arbitration process said an argument that a sponsor introduction counts as salary cap circumvention likely would not survive. One of the sources said, ‘That’s dead on arrival’”

ESPN then discussed the Smith case, noting that “physical evidence of the under-the-table agreement helped establish one of the strongest penalties ever imposed for any NBA franchise or player.”

In the next paragraph, ESPN wrote, “One league insider with direct knowledge of league business said a salary cap circumvention penalty based on player introductions is ‘an outrageous overreach’ and that ‘it’s the job of players’ agents to ask for introductions to sponsors and potential endorsers.’”

Taken in that context, it sure feels like the ESPN story is getting at the idea of, yeah, a penalty that extreme sure doesn’t seem like it’s happening in this case. The dissonance between what the story seemed to be laying the foundation for (a light punishment against the Clippers) and what happened in reality brought so much scrutiny to the piece in the first place.

Another interesting part of Van Natta’s message addressed Torre’s reporting and the social media response to both stories directly.

“Our reporting was in no way a response to, or an assessment of, earlier reporting on this topic, by Pablo Torre or anyone else—some readers, particularly on social media, may have mistakenly thought otherwise. Pablo’s team has been rightfully commended for first raising the questions that led to this investigation. Our team described—for the first time—the settlement negotiations ongoing at the time between the NBA and the Clippers.”

This is a crucial note—the head-to-head clash between Torre’s reporting and ESPN’s was driven far more by social media reaction than by the players directly involved. But that narrative stemmed from the fact that Torre had continued to pursue the story for roughly a year, while the league’s investigation seemed to go largely unreported by more mainstream outlets—up until the end, when ESPN decided to get involved and title a story “Sources: NBA has no evidence Ballmer funneled money to Leonard via sponsors” two weeks before one of the harshest punishments in NBA history was delivered.

In an interesting close to the story, Ourand added that he tried to interview the reporters behind the ESPN story, but the network declined to make them available. When he received the email from Van Natta, he decided to publish it in full.

The story of the Clippers investigation is largely closed now, but the stories of who reports, what they report on, and when, why, and how it’s reported will be around forever.