Last week Friday, Belize Hurricanes basketball player Kirk Smith Junior set social media abuzz with a lengthy post claiming he'd been set up by Jacob Leslie, the co-owner of the Belize Defenders franchise to make it seem like he had signed a contract with that team when he actually hadn't.
Smith's Facebook post said, quote, "Jacob Leslie (better known as "Snake") has been blatantly lying to the public and the owners of the teams in this league on my behalf…Jacob went to the local news and submitted photos of me in which I appeared to be signing a contract. What Mr. Leslie failed to include was audio of him essentially begging me to "pretend" and "fake sign" a contract for marketing purposes as he claimed it would be used for. I was holding college chemistry homework and a pen" - end quote.
And from there, the allegations only got worse. It was a very damning post - and what made it worse was that there was no response from Jacob Leslie. He was traveling at the time - to a FIBA meeting in Miami. He said a Facebook clap-back is not his style so he waited until he returned to the country which was yesterday to first speak to the BEBL league commissioner - and when that answer wasn't what he wanted, he came to our studio t speak to Jules Vasquez. We asked him for his reaction to the post:
So, to get to the heart of the accusation, did Leslie send Kirk Smith Junior a voice message telling him to pretend he had signed a contact he didn't? Here's the voice note and Leslie's explanation:
And while Leslie has been stung by the allegations, the attacks, and the comments, did he set himself up for it by putting on two hats that don't go together? First he's the Federation commissioner and then he's also a team co-owner for the Belize Defenders - in a bitter dispute with his cross town rivals the Hurricanes. We asked about that:
WE'll have the final part of this interview tomorrow.
