It’s not exactly clear why Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard has decided to dip his toes into the world of sourced reporting on Twitter. However, we know that the summer in the NBA is always the weirdest time of year, so here we are.
This week, Lillard decided to drop news of not one but two moves in the journalism world. First, Lillard revealed that friend Chris Haynes would be taking over the main national NBA post for Yahoo! Sports. A couple days later, Lillard tweeted news that USA Today’s Sam Amick would be joining The Athletic.
Via Twitter:
Sources:Free Agent reporter @ChrisBHaynes reaches agreement w/yahoo sports as Senior NBA insider, Will help build their NBA team.More coming
— Damian Lillard (@Dame_Lillard) September 5, 2018
Sources: @sam_amick leaving USA Today for a national job at The Athletic ... 🤷🏽♂️
— Damian Lillard (@Dame_Lillard) September 7, 2018
Reading between the lines, it’s likely that Haynes was the source for each of these moves as he is one of Lillard’s closest confidants in the sports media world. Pro Basketball Talk has confirmed that Amick will be heading to The Athletic, so at least Lillard’s sources -- whoever they are -- seem accurate.
In the meantime, no doubt this will fuel the running joke around the Blazers about “journalists in the locker room”. Lillard’s backcourt teammate CJ McCollum completed journalism school while he was at Lehigh.
It’s a brave, weird new world.
