It has been far too long since we welcomed the one and only Darren Rovell into the great theater of Twitter Wars. Since his move from CNBC to ESPN, Rovell has dialed back his back and forths on Twitter, refusing to engage arch nemesis Richard Deitsch in protracted battle in spite of innumerable barbs from the SI stalwart.
But if there is one story Rovell has been engaged with critics on, it's the Kings' relocation saga that finally drew to a close recently. In spite of reports to the contrary early on, a new ownership will be keeping the Kings in Sacramento as opposed to moving them to Seattle. Rovell is not an especially popular man with Kings fans since he tweeted out an empty arena pic in Sacramento and has had it out with SB Nation Kings blogger Tom Ziller on multiple occasions.
While many in the national media reported the overwhelming narrative of the Kings' inevitable move to Seattle, NBC's Aaron Bruski was out front with serious questions about the move and the closeness of the competition between Seattle and Sacramento ownership groups. As far back as January, he had the Seattle move as far from a done deal.
Bruski and Rovell have a bit of a history too. Bruski fired a shot at Rovell back in March claiming a tweet about the Kings sale to be inaccurate. Today he fired another shot at Rovell and finaly drew ESPN's sports business reporter out of his corner. Once Yahoo's Kelly Dwyer stepped in, we returned to the days of yore when this brand of entertainment happened all the time.
A great champion of Twitter Wars gone by battles not one but two would be kings. Get your popcorn ready, here we go…
My heavens, did Bruski land some brutal blows. The condescending tone of those tweets is just remarkable. Otherwordly, even. It's not too often you see two people from two national outlets (ESPN and NBC) go head to head like this in public, especially when one is so adamant that he out-reported the other. The best tweet of this fight goes to Bruski's "I think you misspelled accurate since Day 1" sledgehammer.
The Dwyer conversation is an interesting postscript as Rovell remains civil, but manages to turn up the snark just a bit as he holds his ground on who he chooses to follow. This particular scrap shows why Rovell is such a worthy combatant though, in spite of all the punches Bruski and Dwyer threw his way, he still somehow refused to throw in the towel.
This is an instance where I can see both reporters having a point. As we've seen in the national news media, sources aren't always slam dunks. It could have been that Rovell thought he had the goods from his sources on the Kings sale just as many others did. Bruski most certainly felt the same way. It just so happens that in this case Bruski's reporting was ultimately vindicated and flew against public perception of the Kings moving to Seattle. At any rate, it's an interesting case study in reporting, especially with stories that demand much more than pressing the send button on Twitter.
With neither pugilist landing a knockout blow, this time we turn the final decision over to you on the scorecards…
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