FanHouse

Peter Vecsey's column in the New York Post occasionally provides some interesting, albeit gossipy tales of what goes on behind the scenes in the NBA. Sometimes these little anecdotes seem a little too good to be true, and that's exactly what the case was in Vecsey's column that appeared this past Sunday.

Vecsey printed an anecdote about Raptors coach Sam Mitchell, where it appeared that he was absolutely clueless regarding who would be active for his team's game against the Lakers. The story went like this:

A few months ago, before the Raptors were to play the Lakers, he addressed the team by telling them, "We'll worry about the guy who got 81 in a second, but first I want to talk about Andrew Bynum and how he killed us last time." A hush engulfed the locker room. "Hey, coach," Chris Bosh interrupted. "Bynum's been out for weeks with an injury."

Now of course, if this were true, Mitchell would deserve to be on the hot seat where he currently sits after his team was unceremoniously bounced from the playoffs by Orlando. But it wasn't.

Vecsey retracted the entire thing today, but he only said he turned in an "improperly researched" project; he never mentioned specifically how he came up with such a crazy, damning story that was 100% false. He instead spent the entire article sucking up to Mitchell, printing quotes from him which affirm that he's not stupid, and finally admitting that he's simply "trying to regain some misplaced credibility by making amends."

I suppose it's a good thing that Vecsey devoted more than a couple of sentences to his admitted mistake. Although it would be nice if he simply didn't print things that were completely made up in the first place.