Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman recently purchased a new home in Seattle, a $2.31 million estate previously owned by NBA star Jamal Crawford. The local media — specifically the Seattle Times and seattlepi.com — published information about the transaction, including the address of the home.
Now, CBS Seattle reports that Sherman is refusing to speak to the local media. He’s not happy that fans are showing up at his house seeking autographs.
Curtis Crabtree of KJR Radio, who moonlights weeknights for PFT, says that the CBS Seattle story is premature at best, inaccurate at worst. According to Crabtree, no blanket refusal to speak to the local press has been issued.
But Sherman indeed is upset that his address was published by two publications in Seattle. For now, there’s no indication that Sherman will hold that decision against the full local media.
It would be unfair if he held the decisions of seattlepi.com, which listed the address in its story, and the Seattle Times, which linked in an online version of the story to the real estate website containing the address, against all local media. It’s arguably unfair for him to even boycott seattlepi.com and the Times, since they were merely sharing publicly available information.
No league rule forces Sherman to give access to any specific publication. The situation could get interesting if Sherman refuses during mandatory media availability to not answer questions posed by accredited representatives of seattlepi.com, the Seattle Times, or any other media outlet.
For now, it’s simply too early to know what Sherman specifically will or won’t be doing in the aftermath of the editorial decision to share with the citizens of Seattle information that any of them could have found by taking a trip to the proper office of the King County courthouse.