The ongoing war of words between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum took an unexpected turn Monday courtesy of Celtics television analyst and SiriusXM radio host Brian Scalabrine.
To briefly recap: Last Thursday, Brown posted a cap emoji on an Instagram video where Tatum talked about his reaction to the Celtics trading Brown to the Sixers. The next night, Tatum told reporters, “This ain’t no f–king Shaq and Kobe, there’s no beef.” Brown concurred Saturday, telling reporters, “There’s no beef, but there might
be a little lamb chops and some gravy.” (He also added that Tatum had “hell of a PR team,” which is a phenomenal dig. 10/10, no notes.)
That brings us to Monday. On his SiriusXM radio show, Scalabrine said Brown “demanded to be traded” from the Celtics, “not through the media, but to the organization.”
“If you’re actually doing that, and you’re going to say Tatum is the one that’s lying, your whole basis of this thing is a lie,” he concluded.
As it turns out, Scalabrine might need to look in a mirror before calling someone else a liar. On the NBC Sports Boston broadcast prior to Monday’s game against the Celtics and Chicago Bulls, Scalabrine cleared up his report by essentially rebutting everything he said earlier in the day.
“He technically didn’t demand to be traded,” Scalabrine said. “I just summed it all up, I just summed up the entire word salad and kept it simple, but I think that’s what got me in trouble there.”
When asked what Brown’s demand was, Scalabrine replied, “I have no idea. I don’t know what the ultimatum was or the demand or whatever it was, but he technically did not demand to be traded. It was ‘Do these things right here or else.'”
A representative from Brown’s team told ESPN’s Kris Rhim that Scalabrine’s report was “10000% a lie.” The representative added that once the Celtics informed Brown that they planned to trade him, his “only request was to have input on his destination,” which Chris Hine of the Philadelphia Inquirer also reported.
Journalism is currently in a state of disrepair for countless reasons. The rise of AI will only make things exponentially worse. (It already has.) But one of the fundamental tenets of journalism—at least back in its heyday—was that you double-check what you’re reporting before you actually report it. Once upon a time, they had these things called “editors” and “fact-checkers” who were an extra layer of review to ensure that journalists weren’t reporting inaccurate information. (Most of them have now been laid off because they didn’t make their company’s Line Go Up quickly enough.)
Of course, the live, off-the-cuff nature of radio and TV make it far more difficult to vet information in real time. That’s why you do that work beforehand before spouting it to a national audience. We’ve all been on the internet long enough at this point to know that aggregators will pounce on any juicy material and disseminate it widely. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened to Scalabrine on Monday.
As the father of two young boys, teaching accountability has been one of the biggest parenting challenges to date. It’s hard to own up to your mistakes and admit that you screwed up; it’s far easier to blame someone else or deflect responsibility. But is that the world we want to live in?
Scalabrine shouldn’t necessarily lose his job over a mistake like this, but he should feel compelled to apologize and own it. No hedging, no wishy-washy, “Well, there’s nuance, but…” The only words out of his mouth should be, “I screwed up, I deeply regret the error, and I will not report anything unless I am 100 percent sure it is accurate moving forward.”
But given the state of everything these days, this faux pas will probably put him in line to be the next White House press secretary by next week.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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