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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Bryan Kalbrosky

NBA fans were baffled when CNN Sports (of all outlets) reported that the Bucks hired Doc Rivers

After the Milwaukee Bucks suddenly fired head coach Adrian Griffin, NBA champion Doc Rivers emerged as a leading candidate to replace him.

Despite the winning record in Milwaukee, Griffin’s departure wasn’t exactly shocking. Rivers, who was the head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers until last season, makes plenty of sense as his successor. Rivers was already serving as an “informal consultant” for the team, per The Athletic.

What baffled everyone, however, is that the first outlet credited with breaking the news was CNN Sports. Even though CNN is a trusted news outlet, it isn’t a desk known for its sports department.

So what exactly happened here? How did basketball insiders like Adrian Wojnarowski (currently Rivers’ colleague at ESPN) and Shams Charania get scooped by an outlet that doesn’t have much of a sports presence?

During a broadcast of NBA on TNT, host Adam Lefkoe relayed that CNN Sports was reporting that Doc Rivers was accepting the head coaching gig with Milwaukee.

Jamal Crawford, the longtime NBA player who is now an analyst on the show, immediately asked Lefkoe to confirm that the outlet was indeed CNN. How is this possible? Others had the same question. Here is more from Awful Announcing:

“This Doc Rivers report is the first time CNN Sports has been mentioned as a thing in literally decades. CNN Sports Tonight, the highlight show alternative to SportsCenter from Turner, hasn’t aired since 2001. CNN was linked with the Sports Illustrated brand before the platform was taken over by Bleacher Report sports content in 2013. In fact, all of Warner Bros. Discovery’s sports branding had transitioned to Bleacher Report in the last several years before it literally just rebranded to TNT Sports earlier this month.”

A.J. Perez of Front Office Sports later reported, however, that the news was fully vetted by CNN before it was passed along to TNT.

It is important to note that CNN and TNT are both owned by the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. But at the time of the broadcast, there was nothing on the CNN Sports website that mentioned Rivers.

Perez was told this was likely due to CNN’s coverage of the GOP primary in New Hampshire.

As noted on Twitter/X by New York Times reporter Kevin Draper, a CNN Sports correspondent named Coy Wire appeared on NBA TV (also owned by Warner Bros. Discovery) to confirm that Rivers was hired by Milwaukee.

Draper added that he was also told by a CNN spokesperson that all of the reporting went through their “editorial process” at the network.

Later in the night, CNN Sports eventually published a story that credited “a source with knowledge of the conversations” but the reporting had no byline.

But this was far from the end of the story and the confusion continued.

Chris Haynes, who is widely considered the network’s top basketball insider and news breaker at NBA on TNT and Bleacher Report (which is also owned by Warner Bros. Discovery) refuted the report.

He claimed there is “no agreement” yet in place for Rivers to take over as the head coach of the Bucks. Bill Reiter of CBS Sports also reported that there is no agreement in place.

So what exactly happened here? Was this a giant miscommunication or was CNN Sports the first publication to break this news? Basketball fans had a lot of questions.

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