SUSPENSION LOOMING?

Important takeaways from Deshaun Watson's accusers appearing on Real Sports

Important takeaways from Deshaun Watson's accusers appearing on Real Sports
Watson's accusers appeared on Real Sports on Tuesday night. Photo by Nick Cammett/Getty Images.
Deshaun Watson was grilled by Cleveland media at Browns introductory press conference

HBO Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel’s heavily promoted and much anticipated examination of Deshaun Watson’s legal mess involving alleged sexual misconduct shed little new light and merely presented a summary of well worn he said/she (x22) said accusations and denials.

The episode debuted Tuesday night on the premium cable service and will be repeated dozens of times throughout the week on HBO’s platforms. Check your local listings for times and channel.

The segment was hosted by Soledad O’Brien who presented compelling face-to-face interviews with two of the quarterback’s accusers: massage therapists Ashley Solis and Kyla Hayes. Their stories were detailed and graphic. Both cried during the interviews.

Solis: “As I’m working, he deliberately grabs himself and put his penis on my hand. I pulled my hand away instantly and I started crying. I told that I’m done. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Solis said she felt threatened when Watson, before leaving the session, allegedly told her: “I know you have a career to protect, and I know that you don’t want anyone messing with it, just like I don’t want anyone messing with mine.”

Solis added, “That’s when I got really scared because that sounded like a threat to me.”

Hayes: “He wanted me to kind of make a V motion in his pelvic area. I just kept massaging and did what he asked, until his penis kept touching me repeatedly as I did it.”

Hayes said that Watson had an orgasm, which she said was “mortifying, embarrassing and disgusting.”

O’Brien asked Hayes why she continued to have contact via email with Watson after their encounter.

Hayes: "I wasn't sure what he was capable of. He could've physically assaulted me. He could've bashed my business, so I had to protect myself and my business the best way I saw fit. Did I ever see him again after that? No. Did I give him the runaround? Yes."

O’Brien pointed out that two separate grand juries in Texas heard criminal accusations against Watson and neither found enough evidence to indict him.

Solis and Hayes, and 20 other massage therapists have filed civil suits against Watson. The cases aren’t expected to reach a courtroom until next March. Both sides could reach a settlement before then which would effectively shut down any legal action against Watson. However, both sides say they aren’t interested in any pretrial settlements. That’s what they say now, anyway.

After being banished to the sidelines for the 2021 season by the Houston Texans, Watson signed a historic, 5-year fully guaranteed $230 million contract with the Cleveland Browns.

Hayes said she feels Watson “is being rewarded for bad behavior." Solis said, "It's just like a big screw you. That's what it feels like. That we (the Browns) don't care. He can run and throw, and that's what we care about.”

Watson currently is participating in preseason workouts with the Browns and, at the moment, is cleared to play the upcoming NFL season.

That is unless the NFL suspends Watson for some, most or all of the 2022 season. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has said the league is nearing completion of its independent investigation into Watson’s case and will reach a decision “shortly,” probably this summer. The NFL and NFL Players Association mutually agreed to have former U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson decide whether or not Watson violated the league’s Personal Conduct Policy and what discipline should be handed down if he did.

The Browns are scheduled to play the Texans on Dec. 4 at NRG Stadium in Houston.

O’Brien said, while producing the Real Sports piece, she tried to interview Watson, his attorneys and the Cleveland Browns for their side of the story. All declined.

During a press conference in March to announce his joining the Browns, Watson denied any inappropriate behavior with the massage therapists.

Watson: “I never assaulted any woman. I’ve never disrespected any woman. I was raised to be genuine and respect everyone around me. I’ve never done the thing that these people are alleging. My mom and my aunties didn’t raise me that way.”

Leah Graham, a member of Watson’s legal team, sat for an interview after O’Brien’s segment was complete.

Graham: "It's 22 women. It's one lawyer. There's only one lawyer who was willing to take these cases. And as we know from Ashley Solis’ deposition, Mr. (Houston attorney Tony) Buzbee was not the first, probably not the second or third lawyer she went to, but he was the only one to take her case. Why? Not because it had merit, but because he would use these cases to increase his social media following and quite frankly to get on shows like this one.”

My reaction after watching the Real Sports segment? We weren’t in the room when the massage therapists worked on Watson. We weren’t in the grand jury room when evidence against Watson was presented. We don’t know what happened. We don’t know what will happen if these cases go to trial.

Until then all we have is one big, lurid, embarrassing mess. In American courtrooms, defendants are presumed innocent. That’s often the opposite in the court of public opinion. We’ll just have to wait while the wheels of justice grind painfully slow.

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Houston defeats TCU, 60-45. Photo by Chris Gardner/Getty Images.

Kelvin Sampson knows how to win a Big 12 Tournament, leading Oklahoma to three straight titles in the early 2000s.

He has Houston two wins away from its own.

The Cougars ramped up their suffocating defense on TCU, Emanuel Sharp had 14 points and Big 12 player of the year Jamal Shead scored 12, and the No. 1 team in the nation rolled to a 60-45 victory on Thursday in the quarterfinal round of its first tournament in its new league.

“They're all good. All the teams are really good,” said Sampson, whose team was beaten soundly on the boards by the bigger Horned Frogs yet still won with ease. “You win by 15, you move on to the next one, man.”

In this case No. 25 Texas Tech, which romped to a victory over No. 20 BYU earlier in the day.

“Texas Tech is good enough to beat us,” Sampson said. “We're going to have to play a lot better than we did today.”

Hard to imagine it on the defensive end, where the No. 1 seed Cougars (29-3) held eighth-seeded TCU without a point for nearly 10 minutes to start the game and was never threatened the rest of the way in winning its 10th consecutive game.

Micah Peavy had 13 points and 11 rebounds to lead the Horned Frogs (21-12). Leading scorer Emanuel Miller followed up his 26-point performance in a second-round win over Oklahoma by scoring just three points on 1-for-10 shooting.

TCU wound up going 17 of 73 from the field (23.3%) and 2 of 20 from beyond the 3-point arc.

“It wasn't our day to make shots,” Horned Frogs coach Jamie Dixon said. “I don't know how many were tough shots. I thought there were layups, we had a couple of kickout 3s off rebounds. It's probably something to do with them, because you can't take away from what they've done game after game. Their numbers are off the charts.”

Longtime rivals in the old Southwest Conference, the Cougars and Horned Frogs were meeting for the first time in the Big 12 Tournament — otherwise known as a neutral floor, where Houston had never lost in eight other games with TCU.

The Cougars never left a doubt that it would be nine.

Fresh off a 30-point blowout of Kansas, the regular-season Big 12 champs scored the first 16 points of the game, shutting down Dixon's team with the kind of in-your-shorts defense that has become the Cougars' hallmark over the years.

TCU missed its first 16 field-goal attempts and did not score until Peavy's bucket with 10:25 left in the first half.

“That's a whole other level of not making shots,” Dixon said.

Even when Houston went through its own offensive dry spell in the first half, it continually hounded the Horned Frogs. They were 3 for 23 with six turnovers at one point, and during one possession, they missed four consecutive shots at the rim.

TCU trailed 31-15 at halftime, missed its first eight shots of the second half and never threatened the rest of the way.

“The past four years I've been here,” Shead said, “we've approached every game the same. We said at the beginning of the year the Big 12 was a lot harder competition at a consistent level, but our preparation is usually the same. It's just about going out there and executing what we work on.”

UP NEXT

TCU should be safely in the NCAA Tournament field for the third consecutive year.

Houston routed the Red Raiders 77-54 in January, when Shead poured in 29 points in the win.

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