Spurs Fire Announcer Jacob Tobey After Cheating Allegations Involving Lindy Waters III’s Sister
The San Antonio Spurs are looking for a new play-by-play voice after the fallout from one of the ugliest scandals to hit an NBA broadcast booth in recent memory. Jacob Tobey has been dismissed from his role as the Spurs’ play-by-play announcer, according to Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports.
Tobey had been calling Spurs games since 2024, and he had just recently signed a contract extension to keep the job long term. That extension is now worthless. San Antonio moved quickly once the allegations became public and did not want any part of a prolonged scandal in what should be a very exciting era for the franchise.
Here is what happened. Earlier this week, Tobey’s girlfriend posted a series of accusations on his own Instagram story. The posts went viral almost immediately. The claim was that the 29-year-old Tobey had been cheating on his girlfriend with Loren Waters, who happens to be the sister of Spurs guard Lindy Waters III.
That is a nightmare for any organization. Whether or not the allegations were true, the story alone made it impossible for Tobey to keep working closely with a Spurs player whose sister was at the center of it. And it appears the Spurs decided pretty quickly that the allegations had enough substance to warrant firing him.
Team executives clearly saw enough evidence to conclude that firing Tobey was the only reasonable path forward. An undisclosed relationship with a player’s sister crosses ethical lines that any professional sports organization draws pretty firmly. The team could not risk the appearance of a broadcast crew member being personally entangled with a player’s family.
The consequences here are staggering when you think about what Tobey walked away from. He was going to be the voice of Victor Wembanyama for the next several years. The Spurs are coming off a Finals appearance and are considered one of the ascending franchises in the entire league. Whoever replaces Tobey is stepping into what might be the best play-by-play job in the NBA.
Front Office Sports had been tracking the story since the allegations broke, and their reporting suggested internal frustration inside the organization from the moment the posts went public. Executives at the top of the Spurs hierarchy did not want the distraction. Fair or not, this was always going to end with someone losing a job.
For Tobey, the fall is enormous. He had climbed the ranks of NBA broadcasting quickly and was seen as one of the up-and-coming voices in the sport. That resume is now overshadowed by a personal scandal that will follow him wherever he goes next. It is unclear if any other franchise will want to touch him in the near future.
For Lindy Waters III, the whole thing is deeply unfair. He did nothing wrong, and now his family situation has been dragged through the mud in one of the loudest sports gossip stories of the summer. The Spurs have not commented publicly on how the situation is affecting Waters or the locker room dynamic.
The team will presumably move quickly to find a replacement. There will be no shortage of candidates. Being the play-by-play voice for a Wembanyama-led Spurs team is close to a dream job in professional broadcasting. But this is not the way anyone wanted the search to start.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
