NBA player suspected of inappropriate relationship with minor is the kind of headline that usually stops the press. But little about this curious case involving Josh Giddey goes by the book.
To drop a hint, it was the league itself — and not one of its sleepless sniffer hounds — that broke the news last week over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend that it was investigating allegations of an inappropriate relationship between the Oklahoma City Thunder swingman and an underage girl. In a social media post, a user said a girl prominently featured in photos and videos with Giddey was only 15 years old. Giddey turned 21 last month. “I’m dating Josh!” she shouts in one clip. “We don’t have to talk about it!”
But even as the league office appears to be treating the matter with the utmost seriousness and local police are also launching their own investigation, the reaction across the league has been strangely restrained – perhaps because Giddey has yet to miss a start as a result. Giddey barely addressed the issue when the news broke. “I understand you want to know more about it,” he said last week, “but right now I just don’t have anything to say.” Thunder coach Mike Daigneault was equally reluctant to comment on the allegations or to remove Giddey – a leading scorer, rebounder and assist man – from the OKC lineup, filing it under “personal matter.”
Former NFL star Dez Bryant – whose bad behavior was thoroughly chronicled during his heyday with the Dallas Cowboys – spoke on behalf of the many basketball fans when he criticized ESPN and NBA host Malika Andrews for failing to maintain the same energy for Giddey, a white Australian, they do that when they speculate on black players or coaches getting into trouble. “You have done your utmost to crucify [Charlotte Hornets guard] Brandon Miller on draft day for something he didn’t even do, ‘Bryant wrote on X. ‘Why didn’t you say anything about Josh Giddey? … Your parents really raised you wrong. …You’re just a puppet. … I don’t know how any former or current NBA player could sit there across from you and look at you with any kind of respect.
He apologized, and Andrews eventually delivered a sober account of the Giddey story — one that her detractors nevertheless said stood in stark contrast to her impassioned condemnation of Ime Udoka’s inappropriate relationships as coach of the Boston Celtics.
That does not mean that there is no reason to handle this with caution. The Smoking Gun is a since-deleted post from an anonymous user whose account has been deactivated. The teen in question and her parents have flatly refused to cooperate with officials. A member of Giddey’s family called it a “royal stabbing” – an Australian Manti Te’o-style catfish scandal. Furthermore, the sports media industrial complex, as currently constructed, is still not quite built to handle thorny stories like these – which are only becoming more common in this tawdry social media age. This week, it was the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks who shot down rumors that they had cut Corey Perry, Stanley Cup winner and former Most Valuable Player, because he had an affair with the mother of the team’s top draft pick.
When reporters asked Sam Presti for his takeaway on Giddey late last year, the Thunder GM hesitated for an eternal fifteen seconds before saying, “Age is a number” — a cryptic addition that many fans have taken as confirmation that the league and the Thunder are been aware of this situation for some time. When Oklahoma City played Minnesota on Tuesday, Giddey was booed virtually every time he touched the ball.
The NBA is not particularly adept at judging inappropriate relationships. It still honors Karl Malone, who got a 13-year-old pregnant when he was a 20-year-old sophomore at Louisiana Tech and still enjoyed a Hall of Fame career. Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, 53, is reportedly divorcing his wife of seven years, whom he met when she was an 18-year-old team cheerleader. Kobe Bryant was 21 when he started dating his wife Vanessa, who was 17 at the time, but California is also weird when it comes to this kind of thing. On the one hand, the age of consent (18) is the highest in the country. On the other hand, it is the rare situation where a minor, regardless of age, can get married with the approval of a guardian and a court order. California is where the girl in question Giddey’s case comes from; in Oklahoma, where Giddey works, the age of consent is 16.
It’s a huge gray area on the law books that will likely be exacerbated by the NBA’s increasing reliance on underage talent. Expecting their young prodigies to not be on campus for one minute, but being strongly discouraged from talking to the same girls they did weeks ago is a big ask, but part of being a professional. Black athletes in particular have been taken down for less. Genarlow Wilson, a bright football player with multiple scholarship offers, was convicted of aggravated child molestation at age 17 for having consensual sex with a 15-year-old. The sentence carried a 10-year prison sentence due to Georgia’s historic reluctance to apply Romeo and Juliet-style exceptions to teenagers and young adults of about the same age who engage in sexual activities, especially in cases involving interracial relationships between black boys and white girls. (Wilson spent more than three years behind bars before his sentence was overturned; his case is among the most controversial and expensive in American history.)
That Giddey is already being given the benefit of the doubt by fans who are inclined to believe that these types of relationships might be accepted in Australia, where the age of consent is between 16 and 17, speaks to the level of privilege Giddey enjoys over his black peers . “Because we don’t know the facts and we represent a network, we have to make sure we dot the i’s and cross the t’s,” ESPN’s Stephen A Smith said before defending his colleague. “It’s not about protecting Malika Andrews. It’s about protecting the industry. It’s about understanding and creating you understand what is involved in this job.” That is, Smith had more energy for Andrews’ opponents than for the subject at hand.
Even more than Bryant’s main point, the circumstances of Ja Morant’s high-profile case were also murky. We have yet to see conclusive evidence that the infrared laser that scared the Pacers was attached to a gun or that he was even pointing it, that the gun he flashed at the Denver strip club was real or even his, or that it gun he flashed the Jeep carrying his best friend was real or even his – or whether he was carrying that second gun in native South Carolina, where gun laws are relatively lax.
The only accusation against Morant that is remotely concrete is that Morant assaulted a teenager during a pickup game — and given Draymond Green’s combative history, that hardly seems like an excommunicable offense. And yet Morant was hit with a 25-game ban and lost key endorsements for the crime of jeopardizing his status as the league’s most high-profile young American player at the time, and his Memphis Grizzlies – a four-win team after a finishing second in last year’s Western Conference standings – pay a high price for it.
The Thunder are this year’s Grizzlies – an eager, explosive team flying high in the West and with the right stuff to make their deepest playoff run since Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were on the roster. Until last week, their biggest problem was dividing the minutes among their young players. Giddey is a big adult who should know better. If the NBA considers the glorification of gun culture a cardinal sin that has the potential to negatively impact child fans, then a player entering into a relationship with a minor can’t be much better. The league should treat Giddey no differently than any other player who compromises its values and ethics and acts quickly and decisively. Otherwise they’re just playing by the same old double standard.