Fake news and Facebook trolls have come for Kawhi Leonard and the Spurs

Fake news and Facebook trolling has become inescapable. Now the meme-slingers have come for the Kawhi Leonard injury saga.

For the past year, it’s been pretty hard to escape coverage of toxic stew of memes and and fake stories on social media driving political discourse off a cliff. In the basketball world, it’s been hard to avoid coverage of the Spurs and Kawhi Leonard’s strange injury-related absence. Kawhi has missed all but nine games this season and drama has been perpetuated by the news that the Spurs have deemed him healthy enough to play but his own medical team has not.

For all the attention that has been paid to this saga, there hasn’t been much in the way of actual information, other than conflicting reports about a player’s only meeting and vague insinuations that communications between Kawhi and his teammates. Whenever uncertainty exists, there is an opportunity for disinformation to step in and fill the void. Which explains how we ended up with this quote making the rounds today.

First of all, this quote is fake. You can tell because Kawhi doesn’t use this many words and also the entire premise is absurd on its face. The post is obviously a wedge designed to push on the sore spots opened yesterday by a Washington Post story about how some Spurs fans are feeling alienated by Gregg Popovich’s liberal politics and his willingness to discuss them early, often and loudly.

Next: The 20 different emotions of Gregg Popovich

The truth is no one really knows why things appear to be breaking down between the Spurs and Kawhi right now, or what the future holds for the franchise and one of the best players in the entire league. Still, no matter what Facebook tells you, this is situation is not about politics.