Is ESPN.com smearing Sebastian Telfair?

Here are the first paragraphs of a story on ESPN.com at this hour titled, "Celts' Telfair denies role in shooting of rapper Fabolous":

Boston Celtics guard Sebastian Telfair denied Friday that he is under investigation for the shooting of rapper Skylar John Jackson -- also known as Fabolous -- but the police are singing a different tune.

"I wasn't being investigated for any shooting," Telfair told reporters on Friday at the Celtics' practice facility in Waltham, Mass. "My necklace was snatched from my neck." However, the New York police say Telfair is being investigated.

"We're investigating whether there's a connection between the reported robbery and the shooting," New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne told The Associated Press earlier this week.

The 21-year-old Telfair had a $50,000 chain ripped off his neck early Tuesday morning outside Justin's, a Manhattan club owned by hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs. Twenty minutes later, Jackson, 28, was shot and wounded in the left thigh outside of the club. The New York Daily News reported that surveillance video captured two members of Fabolous' entourage robbing Telfair. The paper's sources claim Telfair saw the men inside the club and made a cell phone call. The security camera reportedly captured the shooter leaving in a grey car.

According to Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg, several witnesses heard gunshots outside the East 22nd Street restaurant at about 12:30 a.m. There were a number of calls to 911, and one witness took down the make and license plate of a sport utility vehicle leaving the scene, she said.

After the incident, four men, including Fabolous, were arrested and charged with having unregistered, loaded weapons in their SUV.

Telfair left Tuesday night's Celtics game against the Knicks after halftime to view lineups, which contained Fabolous and members of his entourage. The 21-year-old Telfair was unable to identify the suspect.

"I was in an unfortunate situation, if you want to say I'm a bad person because I was out with my fiance, then that's what it is. I know who I am, my teammates and this organization know who I am," Telfair told reporters.

Go back and look at the first three paragraphs. The story starts with Telfair's denial. Then it contradicts him: "However, the New York police say Telfair is being investigated." But the story lacks a single sentence or source to support this statement. The next paragraph quotes a NYPD spokesman as saying that the police were "investigating whether there's a connection between the reported robbery and the shooting." This hardly means that Telfair is a suspect. Perhaps Telfair was robbed by people later involved in the shooting. If so, Telfair had some bad luck, but did nothing wrong.

Either ESPN.com knows more than it is saying here, in which case this is bad journalism, or they are dragging his name through the mud, in which case it is bad journalism at Sebastian Telfair's expense.