ESPN May Not Be Huge Fans of Small Market Teams, After All

Friend of YCS Brian sent me a really interesting (although sadly unsurprising) email today about the ongoing saga of the Yi Jianlian contract negotiations, specifically in re: ESPN's coverage therewith.

Brace yourself, this post contains accusations that ESPN may be engaged in irresponsible journalism. I'll give you a moment to collect yourself, I assume you just did a spit take followed by an exaggerated "WHAAAA!?!?!?!?!!" Good to go? Good.

The basic gist of what's happened is that ESPN.com's Mark Stein has run with a quote from Guangdong Tigers chief Chen Haitao in which he indicated that Jianlian would "never" play for the Bucks. Stein's blog story (sorry, it's insider) details the Yi "ultimatum" the Bucks face from the reluctant Tigers to allow Jianlian to play for Milwaukee. The story was on the front page of ESPN's NBA page for most of the day and remains prominently placed on the NBA page as of this post.

Sounds fine, right? On the whole, yeah, there has been some controversy over the fact that the Bucks took Yi dispite the fact that his people didn't want him in Milwaukee.

Well, there's a problem. The story apparently isn't true. Both the AP and fantasy sports site Rotowire have picked up the story and have clearly indicated that team officials in China are angrily denying that such statements (which first appeared in Chinese newspapers) were ever made.

Now, this isn't really a major issue on its face, because Stein or an editor at ESPN.com could simply throw a phrase into the article relating the way the story's validity is under review. The problem is, though, that they don't. To small market fans that don't get all their sports news from the WWL, this seems problematic. I'll let Brian elaborate and close it out in his own words, complete with plenty of passionate vitriol on behalf of Bucks nation:

I just wanted to point out that ESPN ran on their front page the sensational article that Chen Haitao said that Yi Jianlian would never play for the Bucks. When the AP puts out a story saying that the club is denying the story and the club is "very willing to work with the Bucks", where do you see it? Certainly not on ESPN's front page, they still have links to the original article that the Guangdong Tigers are denying.

As a Bucks fan and Milwaukee native this seems like a huge smear campaign by ESPN against the Bucks and the city of Milwaukee. Sorry we aren't in a big market, but the draft is the draft and no matter how many articles they run and how much negativity they spread, Yi will be playing for the Bucks.

I know the ESPN brass are probably already crying over the fact that the Brewers may be playoff bound, but they are going to have to deal with David Stern making them broadcast Bucks games now too. Well ESPN needs to suck it up and someone needs to be on the forefront pointing out this irresponsible journalism.

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