On Monday, ESPN postponed its new 30 for 30 documentary Down In The Valley, a recounting of the years-long fight by the city of Sacramento to keep its NBA team from moving to a different city, a fight led by its mayor, the former NBA star Kevin Johnson, that had been set to air on October 20. But when I asked for a screener of the new Kevin Johnson film from ESPN, I was corrected by a spokesperson, who told me it was not, as early critics had leveled, a heroic depiction of the efforts of the city’s now-embattled mayor, but rather told the story of “the power of sports to inspire a city and revitalize a struggling community.”

Last Friday, ESPN pulled the media screener of the documentary, citing piracy concerns. But before it was pulled, I was able to see the film in its entirety. And despite the best efforts of ESPN’s PR apparatus to try to convince the media otherwise, the film goes well beyond portraying Kevin Johnson in a positive light. Down In The Valley amounts to a 77-minute political advertisement for Johnson, a man who in 1995 paid a 15-year-old over $230,000 to keep quiet after she alleged that he had sexually abused her.

Johnson’s more recent exploits, some as mayor, include intentionally bankrupting a historic black mayor’s conference, flagrant misuse of federal funds, and the installation within his city hall of paid staff members of an aggressively pro-charter school organization, who often failed to disclose their other employer. These revelations, as well as his long history of alleged sexual abuse, have been brought to the nation’s attention by the veteran sportswriter Dave McKenna, who has been meticulously detailing the dealings of Johnson for Deadspin. But even before that, thanks to the dogged reporting of the Sacramento News and Review, a paper Johnson has battled with recently, as well as recent coverage by the larger Sacramento Bee, ESPN had to be well aware that the protagonist of its film was not even close to the near-messianic figure he was being made out to be.

The film starts out in the standard sentimental style of ESPN Films, with a strange and ill-fitting quote by Joan Didion—“They have been to Los Angeles or to San Francisco, have driven through a giant redwood and have seen the Pacific glazed by the afternoon sun off Big Sur, and they naturally tend to believe that they have in fact been to California. They have not been, and they probably never will be”—followed by overexposed shots of Sacramento and its surrounding areas. A narrator explains that this often-overlooked city would soon need to call on one of its own to save it. Cut to pictures of a young Kevin Johnson, playing baseball and basketball, and growing up on the rough side of town before developing into a world-famous basketball star. Johnson is front and center from the very beginning of the film, and his mother and his former chief of staff Kunal Merchant are leaned on heavily to provide commentary about his love for the city, as well as his heroism in keeping the team from moving elsewhere. After a brief detour explaining the history of the team and its troubled former owners, the Maloofs, the film focuses solely on Johnson for its final hour, letting him provide the play-by-play of the procedures involved in convincing the NBA to not let any new ownership move the team. In convincing the NBA to stay, Johnson pushed through the city council a new stadium plan, even though the voters of Sacramento had only years before voted 80-20 against a proposal that would have involved the public funding of the new stadium.

Completely missing from the film is any meaningful information about the cost of that new basketball arena. Johnson intentionally crafted the bill approving the arena to be immune to any public referendums, even though the public is on the hook for $226 million, almost half of the cost. Johnson, in his desire to keep the team in the city, convinced software tycoon Vivek Ranadivé to lead up an ownership group to buy out the Maloofs for a then-record $534 million. Johnson then got the city council to pass a spending bill that would avoid a public vote to pay for a new arena for the team, now assured that they would be staying. Down in the Valley mentions none of this.