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A story on the doings of LeBron James while he and other NBA players were in Las Vegas last weekend will not run on ESPN.com because the reporter did not identify himself as a reporter, an ESPN executive said Thursday.Rob King, vice president and editor in chief of ESPN Digital Media, said in a statement issued by the company that Arash Markazi, a Los Angeles-based columnist, did not "properly identify himself as a reporter or clearly state his intentions to write a story."
"As a result, we are not comfortable with the content, even in an edited version, because of the manner in which the story was reported," King said in the statement.
King stressed that the piece, which detailed a weekend where James, his personal friends and marketing partners, as well as Nike employees and other NBA players, were served champagne by flying waiters and partied around go-go dancers and scantily clad women, was not quashed at the behest of James or other outside sources.
"To be clear, the decisions to pull the prematurely published story and then not to run it were made completely by ESPN editorial staff without influence from any outside party," King said.
Markazi, in a statement distributed by ESPN, said he understands "their decision not to run the story," while noting that he stands by the accuracy of the piece. Nonetheless, Markazi says he "should have been clearer in representing my intent to write about the events I observed."
ESPN has been heavily criticized for its recent relationship with James, as it granted the star a one-hour platform to make his announcement that he would leave Cleveland for Miami.
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