Here’s Why Iman Shumpert Says He Doesn’t ‘Like’ A Cavs Beat Reporter

Cleveland’s Game 6 win over the Bulls in Chicago to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals also featured a pretty glaring non-basketball play by Bulls forward Nikola Mirotic. The Spanish-Montenegrin rookie clotheslined Iman Shumpert during the game and was whistled for the Flagrant 1 foul.

A moment of lighthearted levity between Iman Shumpert and LeBron James was recounted by Northeast Ohio Media Group’s Chris Haynes, and it made for a good headline. The comments by Shump — on its surface — seemed like a threat, but Haynes did mention a laugh by LeBron in his piece, and we went out of our way to put the pin back in the grenade that was any serious suggestion of violent retribution by Shumpert when he joked with a teammate in the locker room.

Whether that sort of banter should have been used in Haynes’ piece, we’ll leave up to his editors, but because we weren’t the only ones who wrote about it, it seems Shumpert wasn’t too happy with the quotes inclusion and subsequent aggregation elsewhere. He let Haynes know he wasn’t a fan:

This is not the first time this season a player has informed a beat reporter they don’t like him. Russell Westbrook said so directly to Berry Tramel of the Oklahoman when he was questioned after a game in January.

This is going to happen, and it’s not really the beat reporter’s fault, or the players; sometimes people forced to work together aren’t very chummy. There was a lot of contention in the Cavs locker room this season, but whether that was trumped by the media — specifically, Haynes — only Haynes and the Cavs know. Haynes has got a job to do, and sometimes that conflicts with a player’s best interests.

We probably wouldn’t have directly related an obviously hyperbolic exchange that was met with a laugh by another teammate, even if — like Haynes did — we mentioned LeBron’s chuckle at the suggestion Shumpert made about Mirotic. But we weren’t in the Cavs locker room and Haynes was, so we’re not going to pass judgement on his call to include the quote in his piece.

There’s a certain amount of trust and a rapport you’re expected to develop with the players you cover every day, and Haynes obviously factored in that component of his job with telling his story, which focused on the rest Kyrie Irving got after the Mirotic flagrant led to a run by Cleveland that basically ended the game and series.

We’ve discussed locker room interactions before between NBA players and the media, and a lot of beat reporters disagreed when it was suggested they not interact with players in the locker room before games. It’s a place where they can develop a relationship with players and build trust. The quote Haynes used probably falls in line with the “invasion of privacy,” NBPA Executive Direction Michele Roberts spoke about earlier this year, which facilitated the piece.

For his part, Shumpert didn’t dwell on the comment aside from the above tweet, and even semi-apologized to his fans for bringing it up. We don’t think he’s likely to be sitting for a full-length feature with Haynes any time in the future. We also don’t think Haynes overstepped his territory as a reporter by including the snippet of dialogue — even though we likely wouldn’t have done the same.

Haynes’ integrity shouldn’t be questioned, since he relayed the LeBron laugh at the comment and didn’t imply there was any veracity to the implied threat in Shumpert’s joking remark. Still, after a host of blogs picked up on the quote, we don’t blame Shumpert for being ticked off about it either.

(Via @I_Am_Iman)