On Wednesday, to no one’s surprise, National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver formally rejected David Zaslav’s attempt to exercise Warner Bros. Discovery’s matching rights for a package of games that had been claimed by Amazon. Minutes later, the league announced that it would proceed with its deals with Amazon, Disney, and NBCUniversal—a $77 billion win for the NBA over 11 years—while WBD’s lawyers began finalizing a breach-of-contract lawsuit they would eventually file on Friday. The insider consensus was that Zaz’s failure to keep the NBA on TNT was yet another example of hapless mismanagement, and his decision to sue the league would only make matters worse. What better way to appeal to other potential partners than signaling that, in addition to being saddled with debt and tethered to a declining linear business, you can also be a litigious sore loser?

Shortly after the NBA’s announcement, however, civil rights leaders, influential Black public figures, and some of the league’s current and former players got pitched on a different narrative. Over the last 48 hours, representatives from Edelman, the white shoe P.R. firm, have called and texted these people on behalf of WBD, seeking to persuade them that the NBA’s decision to side with a streaming service instead of a linear partner, like TNT, will disenfranchise Black and other minority viewers. “Who’s thinking about Uncle Bob?” one Edelman rep wrote in one text. “Nearly half of TNT viewers are Black. 2 in 5 NBA fans are non-white. 42 million rural Americans lack access to reliable high-speed internet—and for millions more in America’s cities and suburbs, it’s available but too costly.”