Jackie Mac "Rondo has told the Celtics he wants out- it will happen"

[celticsclay]

I have heard that some members of Around the Horn no longer trust Jackie's credibility and they want her out and they want her out now. Why won't anyone believe me on this?  They are hoping to replace her with fellow ESPN host Craig Kilborn for reoccurring segments.

[Donoghus]

I have heard that some members of Around the Horn no longer trust Jackie's credibility and they want her out and they want her out now. Why won't anyone believe me on this?  They are hoping to replace her with fellow ESPN host Craig Kilborn for reoccurring segments.

Ha...other members of ARTH are questioning another member's credibility?

Is that's a bit "pot calling the kettle black"?

What's your source for this rumor?

[fairweatherfan]

The original sin of this thread is that somebody watched Around the Horn in the first place.

[Eja117]

Well I used to like it, but that was before I found out they'd say pretty much anything to each other than they won't say to us and then shame on you if you find out about it and think it's BS.

[celticsclay]

I have heard that some members of Around the Horn no longer trust Jackie's credibility and they want her out and they want her out now. Why won't anyone believe me on this?  They are hoping to replace her with fellow ESPN host Craig Kilborn for reoccurring segments.

Ha...other members of ARTH are questioning another member's credibility?

Is that's a bit "pot calling the kettle black"?

What's your source for this rumor?

I hope you realize this was a joke..

[MBunge]

I make my living writing about sports. I also went to school for it, for whatever that's worth.

edit: I'm not jackie MacMullan.

So, if you had a source telling you that a major sports told "wanted out" and said so to his team, what would you do?

More specifically, if you couldn't get on-the-record confirmation of what the source told you, would you nevertheless blab it around to anyone who would listen?  Remember, Jackie talked about how "nobody believes me", which clearly indicates that ATH wasn't the first time she's bandied around this Rondo rumor.

Mike

[Donoghus]

I have heard that some members of Around the Horn no longer trust Jackie's credibility and they want her out and they want her out now. Why won't anyone believe me on this?  They are hoping to replace her with fellow ESPN host Craig Kilborn for reoccurring segments.

Ha...other members of ARTH are questioning another member's credibility?

Is that's a bit "pot calling the kettle black"?

What's your source for this rumor?

I hope you realize this was a joke..

Evidently, not.  Although I thought the Kilborn part was pretty strange.

[celticsclay]

I have heard that some members of Around the Horn no longer trust Jackie's credibility and they want her out and they want her out now. Why won't anyone believe me on this?  They are hoping to replace her with fellow ESPN host Craig Kilborn for reoccurring segments.

Ha...other members of ARTH are questioning another member's credibility?

Is that's a bit "pot calling the kettle black"?

What's your source for this rumor?

I hope you realize this was a joke..

Evidently, not.  Although I thought the Kilborn part was pretty strange.

a joke is never good when you have to explain it, but I basically tried to say what jackie said including being frustrated nobody believed me and then referencing someone that no longer worked at the company (ie thomas on kings vs Kilborn at ESPN). Ahh well can't win them all.

[D.o.s.]

I make my living writing about sports. I also went to school for it, for whatever that's worth.

edit: I'm not jackie MacMullan.

So, if you had a source telling you that a major sports told "wanted out" and said so to his team, what would you do?

More specifically, if you couldn't get on-the-record confirmation of what the source told you, would you nevertheless blab it around to anyone who would listen?  Remember, Jackie talked about how "nobody believes me", which clearly indicates that ATH wasn't the first time she's bandied around this Rondo rumor.

Mike

One:
Blabbing things to anyone who would listen isn't a correct categorization, though, and that 'clearly indicates' nothing.

Remember when Simmons 'accidentally' broke the Randy Moss trade by screwing up a twitter DM and turning it into a public question? This is much more akin to that than someone telling tales to stir up controversy. I'm sure the producers of Around The Horn can come up with similarly salacious content during every taping.

Two:
As for what I'd do, I don't know, because I don't know what her sources are. I do know that I'd feel absolutely comfortable talking to my peers about it in that sort of setting, but that's way, way different from any kind of public statement/tweet/article/longform piece on the subject.

[chambers]

My suspicion is that Jackie can't get her bosses to sign off on a story about why and whether Rondo's departure is imminent because no one in the Boston front office is willing to go on the record about it beyond a 'no comment.'

That's not how it works.  Since when did her bosses let a "no comment" from a front office prevent them from running a story?

Which is more likely...

1.  Jackie has a piece of super juicy information that literally NO ONE ELSE ON EARTH HAS but they're not running with it.

2.  Jackie doesn't actually have any hard info and was just BS-ing.

Mike

exactly.  You also gotta add that she decided to let these other guys know said super juicy info for no reason whatsoever.....annnddd Rondo did this but he and his agent have decided to lie about it for the time being, knowing they will essentially be exposed later.

I'm going with wishful BSing, exaggerating, and speculating.

She's a human and prone to human mistakes.  So am I. I could be wrong.

So she was never told anything, by any source that has inside information regarding the Celtics front office?
So quite simply she's made it up/speculating even with her overall good to very good reputation? Okay.

  So you're saying that you absolutely believe it's true that Rondo's told the team that he wants out of Boston?

This thread is slowly dying, but I'll oblige.

I don't believe it's absolutely, positively, 110% true, because I don't know the true context of Jackie Mac's quote.

None of us do. So all we can do is draw conclusions/speculate from the information in front of us. 
 
a) I do believe that Jackie Mac believes it's true that Rondo 'wants out' in one form or another.
b)  I believe someone has told Jackie Mac this and she trusts them-whether or not that information is bogus or misleading- I have no idea, there is definitely a possibility of this.
c) I'll also give her a higher than normal level of credit than most NBA journalists because of her good history of Celtics inside information on matters like this one.

So the most logical conclusion I can come to is that using the information Jackie Mac has, added to the notion Rondo's trade value isn't that high right now, and that both he and the Celtics best bet of getting the best outcome for everyone is that he stay and finish the season in Boston

  - I'd say there's a high possibility that he's said he wants out as a free agent if we can't get any more stars to Boston to play with him. I think he wants to play in Boston, but under the condition that we aren't rebuilding during his prime. I don't think he's asked for a trade.

Let me ask you Tim. Do you think it's absolutely untrue that Rondo may have told the Celtics he wants out if they don't add another star soon? Do you think Jackie Mac made up the whole thing?

[chambers]

For what we have to work with, you could, taking that quote verbatim and in a vacuum, infer that Rondo wants to move to Waltham, or Lynn, or Woburn, or Franklin, because Rondo told the Celtics that he wants out of Boston. Feel free to try and prove me wrong.

Context and qualifiers are exactly why we can't say anything about this -- the same way those single tweet 'sources say' are useless, and why people who are good at this job don't use them in any official capacity.

I agree with this, I'll also add that there are particular journalists that the public chooses to trust for information presented like that. Adrian Woj is one of those journalists. In my eyes, Jackie Mac isn't on Woj's level, but she's a very respectable journalist and has proven to be correct on multiple occasions.

When she says 'It's true', I will stop what I'm doing at pay attention. Why are people putting down their newspapers and listening to what she has to say? Because she's not known to just make this stuff up.

I’ll repeat this because it’s the important part of why people (like myself) are actually giving this rumor some credit and not waiting for the punch line like A Sherod Blakely:

Just off the top of my head, let's look at what stories she 'broke' to Celtics fans, and think about how solid her 'sources' must be to have the scoop on most of these:

*in 2007 she correctly knew/ predicted that the Celtics would potentially offer Big Al for Garnett. She was an honest critic of Paul Pierce at the time and people slammed her for suggesting that the Celtics move Big AL out of town for a 31 year old KG. She actually said that Pierce preferred to build a team around Big Al, but if someone like KG came along, he'd accept that to get a star like that, you must sacrifice a rising star like Al Jefferson.

* She also had the official word on the Kevin Garnett to Boston trade before anyone else. Marc Stein got his information from Jackie Macmullan at the time. Again, I remember people were RIDING her big time after suggesting that the front office was willing to move Big Al for a dirtbag like KG, and how silly she was for making stuff like that up. As if we'd trade all our picks and talent for one aging star.

* She knew about KG's bone spurs before anyone else, and his hip injury.

* She knew KG was coming back to play in 2013-14, but said KG would only play if Pierce was around. Subsequently KG and Pierce were traded to the Nets, but only after KG agreed to waive his no trade clause to go and play with Pierce in Brooklyn.

*Recently she was the first one with information on why the Wolves were not in love with our potential Kevin Love trade package. I mean she gave the reasoning like it was a word for word account from Flip Saunders mouth and it was 100% correct. Even I doubted her at the time thinking she doesn't know what she's talking about because 'all the signs were there!'.


What's so hard to understand that some people think this should be taken seriously?
How many NBA journalists have a record like the above? Two or three?

[indeedproceed]

I'm still mad at whoever leaked to Chris Sheridan that LeBron was going back to Cleveland. Seriously , I'm actually annoyed with that person. Id felt good about writing off Chris Sheridan years ago. It's annoying.

[BballTim]

My suspicion is that Jackie can't get her bosses to sign off on a story about why and whether Rondo's departure is imminent because no one in the Boston front office is willing to go on the record about it beyond a 'no comment.'

That's not how it works.  Since when did her bosses let a "no comment" from a front office prevent them from running a story?

Which is more likely...

1.  Jackie has a piece of super juicy information that literally NO ONE ELSE ON EARTH HAS but they're not running with it.

2.  Jackie doesn't actually have any hard info and was just BS-ing.

Mike

exactly.  You also gotta add that she decided to let these other guys know said super juicy info for no reason whatsoever.....annnddd Rondo did this but he and his agent have decided to lie about it for the time being, knowing they will essentially be exposed later.

I'm going with wishful BSing, exaggerating, and speculating.

She's a human and prone to human mistakes.  So am I. I could be wrong.

So she was never told anything, by any source that has inside information regarding the Celtics front office?
So quite simply she's made it up/speculating even with her overall good to very good reputation? Okay.

  So you're saying that you absolutely believe it's true that Rondo's told the team that he wants out of Boston?

This thread is slowly dying, but I'll oblige.

I don't believe it's absolutely, positively, 110% true, because I don't know the true context of Jackie Mac's quote.

None of us do. So all we can do is draw conclusions/speculate from the information in front of us. 
 
a) I do believe that Jackie Mac believes it's true that Rondo 'wants out' in one form or another.
b)  I believe someone has told Jackie Mac this and she trusts them-whether or not that information is bogus or misleading- I have no idea, there is definitely a possibility of this.
c) I'll also give her a higher than normal level of credit than most NBA journalists because of her good history of Celtics inside information on matters like this one.

So the most logical conclusion I can come to is that using the information Jackie Mac has, added to the notion Rondo's trade value isn't that high right now, and that both he and the Celtics best bet of getting the best outcome for everyone is that he stay and finish the season in Boston

  - I'd say there's a high possibility that he's said he wants out as a free agent if we can't get any more stars to Boston to play with him. I think he wants to play in Boston, but under the condition that we aren't rebuilding during his prime. I don't think he's asked for a trade.

Let me ask you Tim. Do you think it's absolutely untrue that Rondo may have told the Celtics he wants out if they don't add another star soon? Do you think Jackie Mac made up the whole thing?

  I'll oblige too. These mental gymnastics people are going through are pretty hard to take seriously. The whole "I don't know the context of her quote" nonsense is by and large coming from people who were attacking posters who were scoffing at the claim when the people doing the attacking didn't take it at face value either You started this thread, you saw the video, you saw the question that led to her comment, and you saw her entire comment. You were talking about how emphatic she was in her claim, now you're saying the opposite. Based on your current line of thinking, her comments weren't really all that thread-worthy.

  In regards to your question, obviously I'm not 100% sure that Rondo hasn't said he'd want out if the Celts don't add another star. However, that's pretty much unrelated to Jackie's claim, since that's not what she said. As for her actual comment, it's apparently too vague to talk about. Nobody knows whether it's her opinion or whether she has sources. Nobody knows whether she meant that Rondo told the team he wants out, or whether she meant that he told the team that he might leave under certain circumstances. She might as well have not even opened her mouth. I'd say that it's fairly unlikely that her actual comment was true and accurate, and much as it bothers them nobody who's been supporting her in the thread has disagreed with me.

  The effort is there ("I don't believe it's absolutely, positively, 110% true") but then reality ("I'd say there's a high possibility that he's said he wants out as a free agent if we can't get any more stars to Boston to play with him. I think he wants to play in Boston, but under the condition that we aren't rebuilding during his prime. I don't think he's asked for a trade"). Based on the second comment, the first one would qualify as quite an understatement.
 

[chambers]

I'm still mad at whoever leaked to Chris Sheridan that LeBron was going back to Cleveland. Seriously , I'm actually annoyed with that person. Id felt good about writing off Chris Sheridan years ago. It's annoying.

Haha I remember listening to Sheridan saying he would put his career on the line that Lebron was going to Cleveland, waaaaaay before anyone else was going with it.

I kept thinking, this guy is NEVER right on these, he's going to look like an idiot. But his conviction was unbreakable. I still wasn't 100% convinced until it I saw the Lebron 'coming home' SI article.

[MBunge]

I don't believe it's absolutely, positively, 110% true, because I don't know the true context of Jackie Mac's quote.

We know EXACTLY what the context is for Jackie Mac's quote because we saw the frickin' video of her saying it.  We know what she said, what the context was and we know how what she said has been misrepresented and mischaracterized in this thread.

What we don't know is what, if anything, was said to her and how accurately she paraphrased it in her statement.  And given how few are willing to discuss what she actually said, not what you think she may have possibly meant but what she actually said, this thread can't die out fast enough.

Mike