Explaining Bizarre 'CNN Sports' Doc Rivers Report

The Milwaukee Bucks hired Doc Rivers as their head coach Wednesday morning, as first reported by "CNN Sports."

Sort of.

Tuesday, the NBA on TNT broadcast interrupted a discussion to relay the "breaking news" that the Bucks hired Rivers "per CNN Sports."

Note: TNT and CNN are sister stations.

"BREAKING: Bucks are hiring Doc Rivers as HC, per CNN Sports," the network then captioned the news on X.

“CNN?" analyst Jamal Crawford asked, noticeably perplexed.

The cast were as taken aback as basketball junkies.

"CNN Sports" took on a life of its own by trending on social media Tuesday night, trailing only the New Hampshire primary in engagement.

There are a few reasons for the confusion/curiosity in the CNN Sports report.

First, what exactly is CNN Sports? No one seems to know for certain. CNN Sports is not an entity.

We originally thought TNT was referencing the Sports vertical on CNN.com. However, the website never acknowledged the report last night.

Not once.

Second, TNT never attributed the news to a specific reporter. Is that not strange? Who at CNN Sports, which doesn't exist, broke the news?

Perhaps CNN employs a mysterious, anonymous counterpart to Adrian Wojnarowski, the ESPN NBA insider. But we doubt it.

Third, the information was not accurate at the time.

Multiple reporters corrected the CNN Sports report after being cited on the TNT broadcast-- including TNT's NBA reporter Chris Haynes.

Keep in mind, Haynes is as well connected as any reporter on the NBA beat.

So, what happened?

We tend to agree with the New York Times in that someone at TNT/CNN prematurely read aloud a pre-written report.

Let us explain:

Networks tend to write news stories they anticipate to drop before they are official. They leave the stories in the hopper until they are official. The idea is to get a story out quicker than the competition.

Yet, sometimes, those pre-written stories leak out live before they are supposed to.

Think about the bevy of websites that prematurely post a pre-written obituary before the obit subject has even passed.

It's cringe. And even when that person dies, the egg on the outlet's face ought to remain.

That's what seemed to happen here.

Multiple outlets reported earlier on Tuesday that the Bucks were likely to hire Rivers. So CNN likely wrote up the story, then awaited for confirmation to announce.

However, someone gave the go-ahead too soon.

As the Times noted, if CNN planned to confirm and not break the story, it would need not attribute the scoop to a specific reporter.

"An NBA TV scriptwriter pre-wrote a news item about Milwaukee hiring Doc Rivers, assuming someone else would break it first and CNN would then confirm it," posted the Times reporter.

Hence why TNT never attached the name of an employee to the report.

Now, CNN will argue the report was accurate. The Bucks hired Rivers the next morning. But that is not how reporting works.

A premature report is still, by definition, erroneous.

I could report, today, that Nikki Haley plans to drop out of the presidential race. At some point, she will drop out of the race. But reporting so today would be inaccurate.

Conclusion: "CNN Sports," whatever that is, is about as trustworthy as CNN.