Despite defending their Clippers reporting, ESPN assigned longtime LA reporter Ramona Shelburne to Portland for media day. Former Blazers writer and Portland native Ben Golliver was assigned to Clippers media day. Shelburne’s reporting was then seemingly cut from a Hoop Collective podcast episode
ESPN’s Hoop Collective published a 2+ hour podcast highlighting various media days around the league with more than half a dozen different reporters who were there in person. At the end of the podcast, Brian Windhorst thanks all the reporters who were on the show, including Ramona Shelburne. That struck me as strange, because Shelburne’s segment didn’t appear in the podcast, so it appears that it was filmed but cut. It made me look into what she would have reported on, and found out she was at Blazers media day.
In her place covering the Clippers at media day was Ben Golliver, a writer who began his career covering the Blazers. He’s a longtime NBA writer now and has been LA based for some time, but new to ESPN so it seems like an unusual move to displace Shelburne, who has a lot more seniority at the company and deeper connections to Clippers organization. If ESPN felt like they needed to someone to cover Blazers and Clippers media day, it would have normally been a more natural fit to send Golliver to cover the Blazers instead.
Shelburne also still does Laker related reporting, including breaking the sale of the Lakers to Iger and Kushner this summer, but was not assigned to Lakers media day either. Instead Brian Windhorst was ESPN’s in person reporter at Laker media day, which was an atypical assignment for him.
So all these assignments were somewhat conspicuously different from the norm. The assignments appear to stem from an effort to not associate Shelburne with the Clippers to start the season and and also not wanting to assign her to the more high profile and prestigious job of reporting on the Lakers. ESPN had her assigned to a small market team not projected to be a contender and then cut her reporting segment entirely from a national show on which it would have appeared.
It suggests to me that despite their public defense, ESPN is internally embarrassed by their Clippers cap circumvention story and coverage and/or felt it would look bad to have Shelburne continue to do it so soon after their misleading story.
Sources
Shelburne identifying herself and asking Lillard a question at Blazers media day: https://youtu.be/yDw8ThkkXA4?si=bfUuhMenY5tQxqV-&t=538
Windhorst thanking Shelburne among guests who appeared on the podcast even though she wasn’t in the final cut. Golliver’s segment covering the Clippers can be seen earlier in the episode: https://youtu.be/fG1dCTMvY1A?si=rXr7naniT6zQ-s2c&t=8952