About The Windhorst Interview

Can’t wait until Deadspin murders Riley about the tampering story.

Personally, I don’t care what happened in the Celtics series. It’s apparent that LBJ could never, and will never, be able to lead a team by himself. Quitting or choking are both the same, IMO. Either way, he’s not a natural leader of men. Maybe a leader of an AAU team, but not an NBA team.

I am way more interested in the tampering charge. If this is true, I hope that all parties involved are severely punished.

You have my attention …

Can something still be done about these tampering charges or is there some kinda statute of limitations in the NBA? I don’t understand how Riley tampers, Gilbert knows but doesn’t do anything for fear of angering James, James stabs NEO in the back, and Gilbert doesn’t do anything.

After that tirade in Comic Sans, I’d have thought the first Gilbert would do is file some kind of grievance, if this actually happened.

Two things:

1) In order to choke LBJ would have had to try. He didn’t. Not trying = quitting in my book. Windhorst should know the difference by now.

2) Windhorst’s pseudo revelations are only doing more to destroy his journalistic reputation. If he knew about the meeting w/Riley back in the winter and didn’t report it HE DIDN’T DO HIS JOB. Sure it’s great he took his information to Gilbert, but with the benefit of hindsight what good did that ultimately do? Wouldn’t it have been better for everyone if Windhorst had reported this story then WHEN IT MATTERED and let the chips fall where they may? I’m inclined to think Windhorst was too afraid to harm his relationship with LBJ to actually report something that ended up being the tip of the iceberg in the biggest sports story of the past several years. Isn’t that the kind of thing journalists/reporters live for? Apparently not if you’re ESPN’s Brian Windhorst.

Good point Cavsanity…I can’t believe I didn’t think about it from that perspective yet. Here’s a reporter with the chance to show Cavs fans that LeBron is shopping himself around the league mid season, and he blows it. His first obligation was to the Plain Dealer and its readers…not Dan Gilbert, not LeBron James, not his own interest in following LeBron’s next career move.

I can’t blame Windy for following the money. However, I CAN blame him for being gutless at the most critical time to report on a HUGE sports story. What a hack!

Plus, reporting the tampering probably would have helped his credibility as a journalist and helped him land a job with the national media. Instead, his inaction secures his reputation as a LeBron insider, and he ends up on the “We Love All Things LeBron” beat.

Windy writes about sports, which is a subspecies of entertainment. Not sure “journalistic integrity” fits in that discussion. Sports has its own separate traditions of what and how things are reported because this stuff we love is just escapism, not life/death.

If a reporter from the National Enquirer heard Mel Gibson’s drunken rants for years and clammed up to keep her access, no one would care about “integrity.” The reaction would be, so what, it’s entertainment, get a life. So we’re all still upset about things, but let’s keep some perspective.

Its my feeling that Windy would not report the tampering charge because if he went public with this issue, Stern would make it his mission to prevent him from ever covering the NBA again since he materially damaged arguably their biggest draw.

Of course he would be applauded for his journalism and investigatory abilities and could probably find work generally covering the sport, but it is really hard to do a job if those you cover are actively seeking to keep you from doing so.

am i missing something here?

one on hand he says lbj didn’t quit but just choked.

on the other hand he says he has info on why he played poorly in playoffs?

i mean when he says played poorly in the playoffs, he means games 4,5, and 6 against boston. the rest of the games against chicago and 1,2, and 3 against boston he was his normal self.

so did he choke, or is there more to it?

Doesn’t the “yet” imply he wants to avoid getting the Raab/Esquire treatment? Seriously…his gig is entirely tied to access to the Heat. He throws down something that everyone confirms that adds to damaging LBJ, they’ll just pull his access as well. Whatever the story is, it’s not getting told until there’s an alternative gig set up for him once it runs. Either that, or he’s hoping someone ELSE breaks it and he can just write the “confirmation” story.

@21: why is the Cavs/Hollywoodd analogy not apt? Because the Cavs are a type of entertainment you and I just happen to be more interested in than Mel? If you say it is because LeBron affected our economy, the PD has business reporters that was all over that.

@ 24: Because Windhorst has long been viewed as a sports journalist with a solid reputation and a lot of integrity within the NBA. I don’t see how comparing a “reporter” from the National Enquirer covering Mel Gibson makes any sense here.

My point is not about LBJ/the economy of Cleveland/or sports versus entertainment it’s the fact that Windhorst sat on a story that potentially would have changed the future of the Cleveland Cavaliers had he reported it. I think it’s fair to ask what those reasons were for not reporting it and if he was acting out of his own self interest or if there were external forces within the Plain Dealer that didn’t feel comfortable running the story.

@Clown Baby, I typically visit the heat index after losses. Didn’t think it would be amusing so often.

Windhorst doesn’t appear to have much in the way of journalistic ethics. His hedging and his failure to report what he knows suggests this.

While he is a pretty talented reporter, he also appears to be another me-first guy willing to sell his integrity in order to feed his ego.

If Windhorst sat on a story like that, that is seriously damaging to his credibility as a journalist. That’s odd, and odd to admit to.

As for the “revelation”, it seems odd to play it up like that; personally, I’ve felt that LeBron has a serious issue with that elbow that he’s downplaying because he can be quite effective even with it, and that he’s joined a team where he has to shoot far less and therefore it won’t hurt him much. If anything, it makes perfect sense: Remain The Chosen One while switching his game to a more driving/passing style, who can defer to others when jump shots are needed.

I’m starting to suspect that the secret has to do with the fact that he injured his elbow doing something he shouldn’t have…perhaps riding a motorcycle or some other actvity that wasn’t allowed by his contract.

In any case, BW seems to have withheld valuable information that would have been very relevant to Cavs fans as they defended LeBron while simultaneously hoping that he would stay in Cleveland.

To Harv…it doesn’t matter how important sports are as they relate to more important news items. The simple fact is that a reporter’s job is to find relevant information and report it to the public. Sometimes that job is difficult, because the subjects of your stories don’t want you to tell people about the bad things they do, but that’s understood when you enter this career. The fact that your job could become more difficult because you may lose the coveted “easy acces” should not prevent you from DOING YOUR JOB. There are other ways to find out information than to get it straight from the source, and the added benefit is that they don’t come from an athlete that may or may not be honest with you to protect his image.

What if a reporter was hiding the fact that a high-profile athlete (say…Lebron perhaps) was point shaving to affect gambling outcomes? Would this be irrelevant because sports are just entertainment? I say no.

I’d like to hear this “information” right before the playoffs. Say, maybe, Cavs (8 seed) vs. Heat (1 seed). I think Windy would be doing the city of Cleveland and every NBA fan a favor unleashing the story then.

“While he is a pretty talented reporter, he also appears to be another me-first guy willing to sell his integrity in order to feed his ego.”

More like in order to pay his bills, rent, and keep him in McRibs. This is Windhorst we’re talking about here. You can fault him for not being the Bob Woodward of the NBA if you want, but does he really strike anyone as being an egomaniac?

Like it or not, he IS doing his job. Today’s beat reporters know better than to bite the hand that feeds them. Only columnists can get away with that.

I can’t figure Windhorst out. For years he made sure people understood that he wasn’t a Cavs cheerleader, yet, he was definitely a fan because he would become audibly agitated in his podcasts when the Cavs would play poorly. Like LeBron, he always kept the city of Cleveland at arm’s length it seemed. And when he left he proclaimed that he did his job with integrity and was always honest, objective, and a REALIST.

It seems hypocritical now that he always made sure to present himself that way. Now he’s a redundant Heat writer who seems to lack the same intimate access he had with the Cavaliers. He doesn’t have to defend himself to us now, but why the severe lack of “HERE’S WHY THIS ALL HAPPENED” articles leading up to and following “The Decision”? I still can’t get over his silence. And now, he comes out and basically says “I know MUCH more than I’ve lead on.”

This is the guy that would give us intimate details like the time the real McLovin was standing next to the Cavs ball boy that LeBron nicknamed McLovin and the team was dying laughing. And yet, months after the fact – no one in Cleveland has ANY clue what the heck happened over the last 2 years inside the center of the LeBron Universe (which LBJ thinks is the REAL universe).

You can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to promote yourself as the ultimate beacon of realism and objectivity, then yes, you do have an obligation to be judgmental about what you report, but not reporting something THIS HUGE which has a billion dollar effect on the region, leaving town, and then doing remote interviews to proclaim that you IN FACT have these secrets to tell…
Color me disappointed in Windhorst.

@Scott – understood. which is why I don’t think it ever really gets answered and why I am not grabbing my pitchfork to go after BW. still, it stinks.