ESPN apologizes for fake Ja Morant quote from Ballsack Sports

ESPN’s “This Just In” suffered a low blow after playing an entire clip on a fake Ja Morant quote, apologizing for the mistake on air on Tuesday.

In the false statement, which originated from the satirical Twitter account Polsack SportsMorant claimed that Michael Jordan would be seen as “just another star” if he were to play in the NBA today.

“If you put MJ in today’s game he’s just another star,” this fake quote, which has been liked more than 25,000 times on Twitter. “We got me, Steve, Luca, Dam, Trey – then guys like Bron, KD, Giannis, Kohi – it’s not just one star and a bunch of you know, normal guys, do you feel?”

The quote was a play Taylor Rocks’ real interview with Morantwhere the Memphis Grizzlies’ guard claimed he “would have cooked” Jordan, later asserting that he would “never go and say no one’s going to beat me 1 on 1.”

However, ESPN decided not just to deal with it, but to dedicate an entire segment to it. After Monday’s “This Just In” clip, Rooks and Morant quickly hit the network with their misreporting and demanded that they be corrected.

“He never said this in the interview,” crows chirp. “And I can’t believe it was aired like it did. There must have been a patch released for that,” she wrote, an ESPN instructor.

Morant responded to Rox’s tweet by writing “These people are crazy” with a laughing, crying emoji.

David Jacoby issued a live apology for “This Just In” the following day.

“We made a mistake,” Jacobi said. “We attributed a quote to Ja Morant’s appearance on Taylor Rooks’ show on Bleacher Report that simply didn’t say it. On behalf of the network, the show’s staff and myself, I’d like to apologize to Ja and Taylor for our mistake. We’ll work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”