Pat Riley comment on Adebayo, Dragic injuries creates social media kerfuffle

During his Friday afternoon presser, Pat Riley discussed the Miami Heat’s loss to the Los Angeles Lakers. He said that “they have the greatest player in the game today in LeBron, and Anthony Davis.” He added, “They beat us fair and square, they were the best team.” But then he said, “There’s always going to be that asterisk, that caveat” about the injuries to Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragic and the potential of forcing a Game 7.

Because he uttered the word “asterisk,” people on Twitter seized on the comment and took it out of context. Even the official ESPN Twitter account included two ellipses in an image of the edited quote, erasing that Riley said “that asterisk, that caveat.”

For what it’s worth, Riley clarified his comment Sunday.

This controversy reveals how media actors on Twitter take a quote wholly out of context and use it to drum up stories and clicks. It was even worse that the official ESPN account ran with it. Anytime you see two ellipses in a quote that short, red flags should go up in your head.