Bogyo wrote:Still nothing firm on the Sarver story. In this day of age that means more smoke than fire. Also the strong response (wording, etc) from his team probably means that they have a lot of info about it and some (most of the big allegations) are false, or they can fight them easy. They will too, and he likely will not be forced to sell...So what likely happened is that Bobby is just a giant gaping aaaahole (what we all know). He probably offended a lot of people during his tenure here, and some of those people were women, or asians/jews/LGBT/black/latino. Some of them felt that his insults and his actions towards them was some kind of racism, or phobia. By now enough of these stories have piled up that somebody tried to make it into something that its not (really, maaaybe a bit but you can't prove it as he is an arrogant jerk towards everybody, not just minorities). That's why ESPN is not airing the story - they probably never will, or it will just be a watered down something about how Bobby is not the nicest human being. We'll be stuck with him for longer, as the media boys have cried wolf one too many times.
About possible new owners: not sure I'd like either. Maybe Bezos if he just doesn't care about us enough, just dumps the cash on the franchise and let's the basketball people do their thing. I'd see more of a chance of that with him than Musk. I've seen somebody mention the Saudi, as they go all out in soccer nowadays... True, but the thing is that they only do that for diplomacy, they have been trying to get back on the right side of public eye since they slaughtered and butchered a reporter into pieces and moved his pieces in suitcases so they wouldn't get caught with the body... on the orders of their Sheik who might have been watching this whole thing live... not something I'd love my team to be associated with, even tho the money they shell out is crazy...
They probably know some of the allegations because I'm sure ESPN asked Sarver to comment, but they won't have gotten a copy of the sources, the receipts so to speak. Sarver may think he can beat it based on what the reporter asked him to comment on, but if texts, emails, phone calls, etc. come out it's hard to deny those and he won't know what the report has backing it as of yet.
Additionally the guy who is behind the story, Baxter Holmes, is a pretty legit journalist and not a publicity hound.
The reason nothing has come out yet is because ESPN is likely sitting with their legal team and Holmes and triple checking his sources to make sure if it goes to print that it is rock solid and can insulate them from any kind of retaliatory legal action. In other words, he can't publish if it's just some anonymous sources, he needs these people to stand by their statements about Sarver publicly otherwise the story can't go out because they'll lose in court. That's going to take time if what Gambo said is true and 50 people were interviewed for the story.
What's interesting to me is that the story itself wasn't leaked, but the idea that the story EXISTED leaked. This seems like a favor to Sarver as it lets him get in front of it, get his ducks in a row, prepare his defense, etc. and sows doubt about its veracity before the story has even come out.
Just look at the board, when the story broke we were all like, okay Bobby S time's up seeya. Now it's swung completely the opposite after his statement where most people are saying yeah, he's going to beat it and stick around.
I dont know whether the allegations are true, but the idea of a story existing being leaked and not the story itself, to me, screams that Sarver leaked the story (probably once he was asked to comment) to give him the chance to control the narrative before any of the actual allegations come to light.
