Clippers PR Snatched Mic From Ramona Shelburne After She Asked Kawhi Leonard About Aspiration

If the Los Angeles Clippers are trying to appear innocent in the Kawhi Leonard-Aspiration scandal, they’re not doing a very good job of it. Yesterday’s media day was the perfect time to get out ahead of the reporting done by Pablo Torre Finds Out, but instead of really confronting the issue by tackling specific issues with the Torre’s reporting, they chose to give general answers and hope it goes away.

ESPN NBA reporter Ramona Shelburne was at the event, and since this was the first time Kawhi has been available to the media since the story came out, she had plans to ask him about it. She wasn’t the only one, but as it turns out, the Clippers weren’t interested in giving the story more oxygen.

Shelburne told ESPN Radio yesterday about her experience.

After she asked a question about Aspiration at media day, she said, “Somebody [from Clippers PR] kind of reached out and grabbed the mic from me, it was like ‘OK you’re done now.'”

Shelburne quickly saw what kinds of questions they really wanted being asked. “Then it went to a team TV reporter who asked about being healthy during the offseason, then the next one was the team radio person and they asked a question that was more basketball-related.”

Shelburne said that one reporter got in an Aspiration question after her, but it was a softball one about avoiding distractions. She and the other five or six reporters who had been planning on asking about Aspiration were all shut out.

“We had all talked before the press conference, and I said, ‘OK, we’re all going to ask Aspiration questions, right? Because this is his first public statement. Let’s tag team. Listen to whatever everybody else asks, we gotta cover all the bases here because this is probably the one and only time he’ll address it,'” she revealed.

It’s yet another bad look for the Clippers after weeks of having their name dragged through the mud by Pablo Torre Finds Out. Grabbing the mic from Shelburne, one of the most respected NBA reporters out there, and refusing to call on anyone else who planned to ask about Aspiration , at the very least, makes them look shady.

Torre has been slowly dripping out more and more information, with five of his podcast episodes so far dedicated to the scandal. The evidence is pretty overwhelming by this point, and it looks like the Clippers are basically pleading the fifth in the hopes that they don’t incriminate themselves.

As Rachel Nichols and Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated put it, Kawhi could have explained the his Aspiration deal, but he didn’t.

Meanwhile, NBA commissioner Adam Silver is going to be under a lot of pressure to come to a just resolution in this case. On the one hand, it seems to be an open secret that teams engage in the kind of salary cap circumvention that the Clippers are accused of here. On the other, letting them get away scot free after being caught dead to rights isn’t going to sit well with teams that are playing by the rules.

The Clippers will play their first exhibition game of the preseason against the Guangzhou Loong-Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association a week from today. It remains to be seen if all the postgame questions are about celebrating basketball on a global scale, or if Shelburne or anyone else can sneak in one about Aspiration.