Whoops! ESPN Ran An Entire Segment About Ja Morant Throwing Shade At Michael Jordan With The Only Problem Being It Was Completely Made Up And Never Happened

Thearon W. Henderson. Getty Images.

There's a chance today that if you went on Twitter and are a basketball fan, your timeline included this video with Ja Morant and Taylor Rooks

Look, it's not the first time a player has been in an interview with Taylor Rooks and said something outrageous. She seems to bring it out in these guys. It wasn't too long ago when Jaylen Brown had one of these he declared the Celts were going to win the next 5 titles or some shit. Things get out of hand. It's also not that surprising that Ja is super confident in himself and his abilities. For my money, it's not really that big of a deal. Of course some talking heads like Skip Bayless lost their mind over it, but that's what he does and it's the down time in the NBA calendar. A video like that is going to go viral and as a result the talking head shows are going to discuss it. Fine. That's all fair and good.

Unfortunately, that is not what the Worldwide Leader did. Instead, they took this quote from known parody account @BallsackSports

and ran with it as being legitimate. Now this isn't the first time Ballsack has tricked a media outlet with this stuff, and it just goes to show how starved everyone is for content and how easily fake news can spread. That's basically the whole point of the account. It's just some dude who makes the quotes up. And yet….

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So, if we're keeping track here, not only did they run an entire segment that was based off a fake quote, but they even changed the source! That says Bleacher Report last time I checked. While it's true, Ja did talk to Bleacher report, he in no way shape or form said that quote. That feels like something you probably shouldn't do

Listen, I know Ja is vocal about how the Grizzlies need more national respect and that they deserve to be on TV more, and he's right. They are an awesome team that is loaded with really good young talent who play a very exciting brand of basketball. That alone should be enough to get them more air time. I'm not too sure what Morant was talking about was having talking head segments around made up quotes. 

Hey, getting duped happens. We've all been fooled by a fake Woj account once or twice in our lives. We just didn't happen to go on TV and report it as fact. I'm not really keen on the whole journalism thing or how this stuff works, but there's no researcher? No fact checker? I can only imagine the poor intern that put this together because they saw it going viral on Twitter today. That person is sweating BIG TIME right now. 

Let this be a lesson to everyone out there that when you see shit like this, take a second and look where it comes from. Don't be ESPN. I know this is a content rules all world that we live in where people are more obsessed with being first than right, but look at what can happen. How embarrassing. If it sounds too ridiculous to be true, it most likely is. I'm pretty sure this is like the 5th time ESPN has been duped by Ballsack so is the joke really on us? Are they behind it? I mean we're talking about them and no publicity is bad publicity I guess?

Either way, welcome to journalism in 2022 apparently.