NEW YORK — The morning of Tom Brady's court date began, for one man, with a stroll along a quiet Pearl Street in lower Manhattan, his yellow Labrador at his side and a towering granite courthouse just a few strides to his right.
On the opposite side of the building, news trucks and cameramen had already marked their turf before 7 a.m., prompting the man to ask a nearby police officer for the rundown.
"It's Tom Brady," the officer said. "The Deflategate thing."
And then came the cop's Deflate-take: "They don't have any evidence, even though he did it.