The Warriors had a rat in their building Wednesday morning. Now the organization is trying to detect them.
On Friday morning, TMZ posted a non-audio video of Draymond Green hitting Jordan Poole during Wednesday practice that has since gone viral with tens of millions of views.
So how did TMZ get hold of the video in the first place? Golden State also wants to know.
Madeline Kenney of the Bay Area News Group first reported that the Warriors were looking into how TMZ obtained the clip. ESPN’s Ramon Shelburne and Adrian Wojnarowksi added more context Friday afternoon, saying the Warriors will take “all legal steps” to determine who shared the video.
TMZ has a history of paying for viral content in the past. According to the New York Post, TMZ paid a hotel worker $250,000 for a video of artist Solange Knowles attacking rap icon brother-in-law Jay-Z in an elevator. The Post also reported that the employee was later identified and fired. TMZ knew there would be a lot of interest in this story, as evidenced by the nearly 20 million views the video received on Twitter alone in its first six hours.
You have to think that someone shared this video and got a six-figure payout in return, at the risk of losing their job. The strange thing is that if the video originated from someone within the organization, the franchise will only be harmed by it.
Perhaps a guest was in the building and pulled out their phone at the right time? Perhaps a trusted employee sent it to a friend who was in love with money?
Steve Kerr and the Warriors won’t be happy. The coach opened his news conference Thursday by expressing his disappointment that the episode left the building in the first place. This was before the video came out.
“Any time something happens, we try to handle things internally,” Kerr said. “Very difficult to keep everything at home, obviously.”
Either way, it’s an entirely different fire for the organization to put out as one of its franchise players has changed the start of the 2022 season.