The NBA season is one week away, and there's one game I can't stop thinking about. On Nov. 2, Kawhi Leonard's Toronto Raptors will travel to Los Angeles to play the Clippers, his former team and the subject of the NBA's harshest-ever punishment over the cap shenanigans they did to sign him back in 2019. The spectacle of Leonard, back in L.A. in a Raptors uniform, will be so weird, and I'm curious to see how the basketball media will cover it.
Speaking of basketball media, that's the true subject of this week's episode of Only If You Get Caught. If you've read Defector's coverage of the story, you're probably familiar with the many media angles to the scandal; how investigative podcaster Pablo Torre broke the story, how ESPN helped Clips owner Steve Ballmer run cover, and how the Worldwide Leader duffed its big scoop about a supposedly light punishment for the team. This is the most interesting part of this story, and on this week's episode, we pulled in Torre himself to talk it though and reflect on the role of the media in the whole saga. He spoke about whether he could have done this story at ESPN, what he makes of the theory that this is a mostly victimless "crime" that only really indicts the salary cap, and the potential conflicts of interest around an outlet charged with covering the league also paying them a ton of TV money. It was a fun episode!
As you can see above, OIYGC is on YouTube this season! You can subscribe to all of Defector's shows on our YouTube channel. The audio version of the show can still be found wherever you listen to podcasts. The transcript for this week's episode can be found here.
