Ja Morant has been having quite the offseason this time around. The star guard was first involved in a trash-talking battle with Draymond Green, and he recently also put pen to paper on a massive 5-year extension with the Grizzlies, which can potentially go up to $231 million.
He also made some waves in the NBA world by stating that he’d cook Michael Jordan one-on-one , and while he definitely said that, a fake quote also began circulating along with it, which added that Morant claimed Jordan would be just another superstar in today’s NBA. Rather shockingly, ESPN, of all networks, fell for the fake quote and even went on to air a segment on it. Molly Morrison immediately called out the network for their embarrassing gaffe.
i know ESPN did not just do an entire segment based on a ja morant “quote” from ballsack sports 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/UqihKpMddW
— Molly Morrison (@mollyhannahm) July 11, 2022
It is crazy that ESPN could fall for this fake quote from Ballsack Sports so easily, and one has to question what kind of research they even do for topics at this point when you watch this segment of This Just In.
In all likelihood, none of the people involved in the process of putting this segment out ever saw that full interview he had with Taylor Rooks, and as the one-on-one quotes were legitimate, they probably thought the rest of it was true as well.
There is more fake news out there nowadays than ever before, and it spreads like wildfire too, which means there is a need to be extra careful to ensure that what is put out on television is legitimate. The fact that they ran a 2-minute segment on this without bothering to properly check if it’s true is concerning. ESPN had for many years been regarded as the gold standard for sports reporting, but those standards seem to be slipping now, and they need to get their act together after this latest embarrassment.
