ESPN was criticized for its coverage of last week’s bombshell NBA betting scandal. But news honchos David Roberts and David Kraft tell Front Office Sports they have zero regrets about how their newsroom tackled the FBI’s arrest of Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Heat guard Terry Rozier, and former Cavaliers assistant Damon Jones.

Despite the scandal breaking before 8 a.m. ET on Oct. 23, ESPN stuck with its weekday studio lineup of Get Up, First Take, The Pat McAfee Show, and SportsCenter before really digging in on NBA Today at 3 p.m. ET. The old ESPN would have gone all out with daylong breaking news coverage featuring the likes of anchor Bob Ley and legal analyst Roger Cossack, said critics. Today’s ESPN stuck with its morning studio lineup—even though the lineup of mostly non-NBA guests offered limited insight into a rapidly developing story.

Despite the Monday morning quarterbacking, viewership for every ESPN studio show was “up significantly” last Thursday, says Roberts, EVP and executive editor of sports news and entertainment. Driven by the salacious allegations about point-shaving, rigged poker games, and the involvement of four of the five New York Mafia families, viewership of ESPN’s studio shows spiked between 28% and 67%. 

Roberts says viewership was higher compared with a typical day across all of ESPN’s shows: Get Up (+28%), First Take (+33%), The Pat McAfee Show (+35%), 2 p.m. SportsCenter (+66%), NBA Today (+51%), 5 p.m. SportsCenter (38%), and Pardon the Interruption (+30%). They were all topped by a whopping 67% boost in viewership for Charles Barkley’s Inside the NBA.

And he’s not having second thoughts a week later.

“No, there’s no second-guessing,” he tells FOS. “Because we operate with the priority that, No. 1, getting it right is the first priority. Just to be totally transparent with you, we don’t call it second-guessing. Certainly, we’ll always review every story that we cover. Or every show. There’s always those kinds of post-mortem feedbacks—and also looking ahead—that happens after every show. So I don’t call that second-guessing. I just call that making sure everyone understands we’re in the business of advancing the story, making sure we’re right, and also understanding where the resources need to be.”

Shows like Get Up and Stephen A. Smith’s First Take have had years of experience covering big stories, Roberts says. 

“There’s nothing new there. It’s not like it was when we had SportsCenter on for 14 hours a day,” he says. “But the appetite for different types of programming has evolved. So we’ve positioned ourselves to evolve with those desired appetites of our audience.”

ESPN is paying the NBA $2.6 billion annually for the rights to its “A” media package. During their one-on-one interview with FOS, Roberts and Kraft outlined their game plan to cover the league’s biggest scandal since crooked referee Tim Donaghy in 2007. They’ve assigned a dozen reporters and analysts to the story while collaborating with colleagues at sister Disney network ABC News.

Among them: 

• Shams Charania on breaking news
• Brian Windhorst and Tim Bontemps on NBA news and the league’s reaction 
• Ramona Shelburne on Billups and the Blazers
• Vincent Goodwill on Malik Beasley and the Pistons  
• David Purdum on gambling and sports betting scandals
• Ryan Smith on legal analysis

Kraft, ESPN’s VP of news, points to the media giant’s strong coverage across multiple platforms. On ESPN.com today, Shelburne tells readers how the Blazers are grappling with the arrest of their coach. On Wednesday, Charania cited sources saying Billups and Rozier won’t be paid while on leave. On Monday, Michael Fletcher wrote about the Mob’s nefarious playbook for exploiting vulnerable athletes. On the day the scandal broke, Purdum charted the explosion in sports betting scandals since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a statute in 2018 that had restricted sports betting to Nevada for decades. Plus, new senior writer Dan Wetzel had a column warning, “Nothing comes for free, though, and on Thursday, the bill came due for the NBA.”

Meanwhile, one of Kraft’s first phone calls last Thursday morning was to his counterpart at ABC News. “They have sources inside the FBI that they can help with. We can utilize a whole number of levers,” he says. 

ESPN’s coverage was holistic, Kraft says, with all of its biggest guns weighing in on the scandal, including Inside the NBA. “Ernie Johnson provided some of the smartest questions while the story was still evolving in the 6 p.m. hour. So we were in good shape. And NBA Today did a fantastic job,” he says. 

Still, ESPN took plenty of heat for its slow-burning coverage last Thursday. ESPN “dropped the ball” on one of the biggest breaking news stories of the year, wrote Awful Announcing. Why didn’t ESPN go live with FBI director Kash Patel’s press conference at 10 a.m., asked AA, especially with Patel describing the scandal as the “insider trading saga for the NBA.”  

“Suffice it to say, the days of ESPN having the infrastructure to properly cover a breaking news story like this are long gone. The death by a thousand cuts that has happened to the network’s news division over the years in favor of investments in opinion programming came to bear yesterday,” wrote AA. “No one was ready to step in. The shows didn’t know how to handle a story so complex in nature. And viewers tuning in to learn about what the hell was happening and why the FBI arrested two active NBA figures were left with more questions than answers.”

Then there was the awkward on-air moment when Get Up host Mike Greenberg was discussing how leagues and networks have embraced the formerly verboten world of sports betting—while ESPN’s ticker touted ESPN Bet. As former ESPNer Joon Lee wrote on X/Twitter: “The industry can’t even talk about what gambling is doing to fans without selling it at the same time.”

In fairness to ESPN, there’s a fog of war quality to stories like the NBA gambling scandal. During the first hours, the most important thing is to be accurate, and not engage in wild speculation that needs to be corrected later. There will be no letup moving forward, promised Roberts. 

“The bottom line is we have a wealth of resources. We’re not going to hold back in any way on doing what is journalistically responsible and aggressive in how we cover this story,” says Roberts. “We have a responsibility to make sure we do the job. We maintain those journalistic standards. Because that’s what the fans expect when there’s a big story.” 

As for older ESPN viewers pining for the days of Ley, Cossack, and Outside the Lines, that chapter in ESPN’s history has closed. Ley retired in 2019 after a 40-year career. His long-running OTL was canceled in 2022 after a 32-year run. Cossack was among the 100 ESPNers laid off in 2017, along with familiar names like Jay Crawford and Trent Dilfer. 

As Roberts said, “I love Bob Ley. Have nothing but the utmost respect for Bob Ley. He’s enjoying his retirement—and we learned from the best. I didn’t get a chance to work with Roger Cossack. But we’re in real good shape with Ryan Smith as a legal analyst, not only for us but for ABC News. Times change. The industry evolves. My position is: You have to evolve with the times.”

The post ESPN Says No Issues With Its Handling of NBA Gambling Scandal appeared first on Front Office Sports.