One of the biggest debates that pops up every draft season revolves around reporters tipping picks. Some people love the practice and get tweets from folks like ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Yahoo’s Shams Charania pushed to their phones so they are in the loop before Adam Silver announces the pick. Others like to be surprised and make it a point to stay off of Twitter so they don’t know what’s going on until you’re “supposed” to know what happens.
Apparently, the NBA has decided to try and do something about it. According to Awful Announcing, the league spoke to ESPN, Yahoo, and Turner Sports about the practice of spoiling picks, and while the league says it did not push them to make a decision, all of them decided to keep their reporters from spoiling picks before they happen.
“We spoke with our media partners about our preference that ESPN’s exclusive broadcast rights be honored, but each organization will make its own editorial decisions,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass told Awful Announcing. The decision by the three outlets to keep their reporters reined in was confirmed by Tim Bontemps of the Washington Post.
Been lots of talk (understandably) about ESPN not breaking draft pick information ahead of time during this year’s NBA Draft, but it isn't going to be the only league broadcast partner to be withholding from breaking picks. Yahoo, Turner, etc. have agreed to do the same.
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) June 20, 2018
This certainly will not be a popular move among a number of basketball fans, especially ones who don’t want to watch the second round of the draft but want to know the picks as they happen. There’s also no word on whether this agreement is just regarding picks, or if trades and other draft-related reporting will be saved for television.
