Report: NBA investigating Blazers for potentially misleading Dubs originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
Questions surrounding the Warriors’ trade for Gary Payton II still remain, but it looks as if some of them could be answered soon.
The NBA has launched a review of potential misleading by the Portland Trail Blazers regarding Payton’s status after receiving a complaint from Golden State, The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported Sunday, citing sources.
Sources confirmed to NBC Sports Bay Area that Payton failed his physical Thursday, after arriving in the Bay as part of a four-team trade between the Warriors, Blazers, Atlanta Hawks and Detroit Pistons.
Charania and Anthony Slater, also of The Athletic, reported Friday, citing sources, that Portland pushed Payton to play through a core muscle injury and administered Toradol shots to help him manage the pain.
Payton’s agent denied a key part of that report, however, telling Bleacher Report’s Chris Haynes on Saturday that Payton “never took Toradol shots to be available for games during his time in Portland.”
Blazers general manager Joe Cronin responded to the accusations while talking to Portland media Friday.
“Player safety is super important to us,” Cronin said. “I mean, it’s a super important thing around the league. We were playing him. He was playing and he had been cleared and we were confident that he was healthy when he was playing. We would not have brought him back if we thought he wasn’t healthy or if he was at risk.
“So, you trust that we did the right thing, we trust that our process was correct, and these reports, I think … the clearance process was proper, so I’ll have to rely on that.”
Still, the Warriors shared with the league office they believe the Trail Blazers withheld relevant medical information before the trade was agreed upon, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported Saturday, citing sources.
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The NBA could hit Portland with a fine and take away draft picks should an investigation discover “a failure to disclose relevant information” on Payton’s abdominal injury, per Wojnarowski, which caused the guard to miss the first 35 games of…
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