Anyone with a computer in their mom’s basement can make up a trade rumor these days. I could go on ESPN’s “Trade Machine” and offer LeBron James for DeMarcus Cousins and Rudy Gay and it will tell me “This trade is successful.”
The difference is when “journalists” use the same principle to publish articles under well-respected outlets.
Last week, a writer for the Washington Post published an article about possible landing spots for Blake Griffin.
He proposed Griffin could end up with the Cavaliers in a trade involving Kevin Love.
Nowhere in the article does he say the trade is imminent or in the works, but people who believe everything they read on the internet to be true take stories like this and run wild with it.
I don’t mean to single out the writer of that article alone, but it’s a growing trend, especially during the NBA season. Maybe you made a Love for Griffin trade in NBA 2K16 for your Playstation 4. That settles it, then.
Until something of substance comes up, please be smart enough to differentiate between what stories have actual evidence and what stories are basically the equivalent of two guys throwing out b.s. sitting at a bar. The writers don’t have to spell it out for you either way and they can deny that they intended for you to believe it to be true.
At the end of the day, they get their clicks, their site loses credibility among intelligent readers, and the general population is dumber.
The update on the Love trade rumors as of February 7, 2016, “There’s speculation everywhere. Substance nowhere.”
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