Why isn’t is more of a controversy that ESPN, which has massive contracts with the NBA, was clearly favoring one team and owner above all others?

There’s plenty of public outrage over them carrying water for Ballmer, but most of it just seems focused on the fact that he was guilty, but guilty or not, they still shouldn’t be favoring one owner like they have been.

Adam Silver gave them the biggest punishment in NBA history, since he works at the pleasure of the owners, we can only assume that all or most of the other owners supported the punishment. So why was an official NBA affiliate taking the side of the richest owner against the league as a whole?

In my opinion, this should be its own big scandal totally separate from the cap circumvention scandal. The biggest sports network in the world should not be giving the richest NBA owner preferential treatment for any reason, much less in order to defend them against credible and substantiated accusations of cap circumvention.