How did TMZ get the video of Draymond Green punching Jordan Poole at Warriors practice?
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Jordan Poole and Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors react after Poole made a 3-point basket against the Charlotte Hornets on Nov. 3, 2021.
LATEST Oct. 7, 1:30 p.m. ESPN reported that the Warriors are “aggressively investigating” who leaked the video of Draymond Green punching Jordan Poole at a team practice Wednesday. They are taking “every legal course of action” to find the source, per ESPN.
Oct. 7, 11:50 a.m. Fights at NBA practices are not horribly uncommon, but the recent incident in which Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green punched teammate Jordan Poole is unique in the fact that a video of the incident was released to the entire world by TMZ on Friday morning.
It’s easy to entertain conspiracy theories regarding who might have leaked the video and why (does Warriors ownership not want to give Green a contract extension, so they’re using this to prime the public for a divorce? Does the practice videographer have a personal vendetta against Green for some reason? Did Green himself want the world to know that his right hook could kill a small animal?). As of yet, there haven’t been any hints as to where the footage came from. But the likeliest scenario, based on historical precedent and common sense, is that TMZ paid a team employee a large sum of money for the video.
A New Yorker article from 2016 explored how TMZ usually obtains these videos, and also revealed how much the site paid for some of its most high-profile stories. According to the New Yorker, TMZ paid roughly $90,000 for the video of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee Janay Palmer inside of an elevator, and $80,000 for a video of a 14-year-old Justin Bieber using the N-word.
TMZ is not subtle about soliciting tips: The tip line is printed right at the top of the website with a big red banner asking if a reader has “Got a tip?”
When Fox News host Howard Kurtz pressed TMZ founder Harvey Levin on the ethics of paying for sources, which the Society for Professional Journalists says “calls into question the credibility of the information,” Levin replied with, “There’s nothing wrong with it,” and, “The video is still the video. So who cares whether you pay money for it?”
There aren’t many people who would have access to the Warriors’ practice footage, so it’s reasonable to guess that whoever did give TMZ the video was paid an amount of money that would make getting fired worth it.
“[TMZ’s] reputation is built up, people call and people know they’re going to get paid,” Nicholas Schmidle, the writer of the New Yorker story, told CBS in 2016 of how TMZ operates.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 3 p.m., Oct. 7, to correct information on reporting from the New Yorker and correct Justin Bieber’s age.