Searching for a "Good" Sports Billionaire, with Henry Abbott

Fans want a "smoking gun" with Kawhi Leonard. Portland doesn't want its new owner to move the team. Even Vegas is looking to fill a C-suite. TrueHoop's Henry Abbott — the skeptic-in-chief of NBA insiders — stops by for a reality check on the state of truth, big money and basketball scandal: Should you believe Adam Silver and his lawyers, who all answer to the 1 percent? Who gets to be in the most exclusive club in sports? And did an owner really have a threesome with the Larry O'Brien trophy? • Subscribe to TrueHoop by Henry Abbott https://www.truehoop.com/ • Previously on PTFO: RIFC, the Impossible Deal and Life After Aspiration https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE2YTYxMzMxN2Q3N2JmNzJhMjc3MWVm (Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  This is like Joe Lacob taking the trophy into his bed.

• 0:09Pablo Torre?

  Did that actually happen?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  He bragged about it, yeah.

• 0:12Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:15Speaker 02

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• 0:45Speaker 03

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• 1:11Pablo Torre?

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• 1:54Pablo Torre?

  While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards, fast free shipping, premium support, and financing with flexible payment options. Shop the winners now at dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 2:19Pablo Torre?

  Henry Abbott, thank you for doing this. What a straight-ahead introduction. No, no, just no small talk. How can I remind people of our pre-history here? Because you're kind of responsible for me.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  I remember we had a talk about you going to interview the head of the P.A.

• 2:38Pablo Torre?

  Michelle Roberts.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I feel like that was the first, like, meaningful back-and-forth we had.

• 2:42Pablo Torre?

  I had a big sit-down interview with Michelle Roberts, then the new executive director of the NBPA.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:48Pablo Torre?

  And I remember the headline was like, "The Woman Who Is Going to Change Sports."

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53Pablo Torre?

  And I regret to inform everybody that that did not quite happen.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Nobody changes sports, yeah.

• 2:59Pablo Torre?

  Labor did not defeat management. I don't think labor really got much of anything, actually, as a consequence of that regime. And then the one to two regimes that came after, at least track sometimes of the succession.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:13Pablo Torre?

  But it's been a couple of regimes since.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Now we have a de facto hard cap and team valuations through the roof, like, it's going great for the billionaires.

• 3:21Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is bringing us to the fact that we are talking on Thursday. This is the day after we published our latest sequel in our Clippers-Kawhi Leonard "Aspiration, But Now Beyond Aspiration" saga, as the NBA's investigation into that stuff has expanded into other sponsorship (s) deal (s). And I want to know what you thought of what me and Amin and David Sampson did on that episode, because I think it was complicated to the level of maybe needing to explain, like, why this stuff either demanded our time, 10 months of investigation, or felt

• 4:03Pablo Torre?

  like a vanity project to some people, and doesn't even matter even.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  You pulled on a thread of Kawhi and how he got to the Clippers and all this money that went through Aspiration, and it's fascinating stuff. But then it ends up with this other very strange thing, which is Kawhi and his former agent now, I guess, and his uncle owning LLCs that seem to have something to do with a soccer club in Rhode Island, right? So, A, people are curious, so we just have to understand it. But B, I do think it now becomes a very common sports story, which is shady stuff is happening, hard-to-follow stuff is happening, and a bunch of taxpayer money goes in, and a stadium is part of it, but so is a bunch of other stuff.

• 4:45Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  And it's hard to know who's winning and who's losing in that, but we're probably not getting affordable housing out of it, I guess is kind of where we land.

• 4:51Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I should say, I want everybody to watch it as the chefs, our production staff have intended, but it ends with the reveal that there have been zero units of affordable housing that have been built, as everybody involved is claiming that this is the real reason why your public taxpayer money in the state of Rhode Island, which has a legitimate housing crisis, why that was needed.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Which, to me, there's so much going on here. One of them is, you know, Aspiration guy was like the tree-planting guy, but did they actually plant trees?

• 5:20Pablo Torre?

  Not to the degree that they advertised, that nowhere close.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Right, just as this is now being led by the guy Brett Johnson.

• 5:26Pablo Torre?

  The head of Fortuitous Partners, which was running the RIFC Stadium deal in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:31Pablo Torre?

  And Benevolent Capital is his other entity, private equity real estate company, that all sort of adds to this aspiration-feeling sense that, "I'm a good guy doing good guy stuff. I'm here to save people, and all I need is your support."

• 5:50Speaker 01

  So Joe Sandberg turned out to be an appropriate red flag, that Aspiration was a little too... Somehow, it was like Silicon Valley, and it was trees, and it was huge ROI, like, it all fell apart, right? I'm not saying that this is true of Brett Johnson, too. I'm saying that he emerges as a similar-type character. 100% investment returns is the promise. 100%! You know how investments work? Like, they don't promise you that. So I'm not saying, I'm just saying, right? Like, he already emerges as the next kind of, like, "We better look into that" kind of figure, which is, I think, part of why we're here, right? It's like, what the hell's really going on with that guy?

• 6:26Pablo Torre?

  Right, why is there a trail when you follow the Clippers and their deals with Kawhi Leonard that lead you to wonder, okay, what are these LLCs Kawhi Leonard made?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:35Pablo Torre?

  And why are these deals he's made with these good guys coming out of Los Angeles, Brett Johnson and Joe Sandberg? Why are these deals kept secret from everybody?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:45Pablo Torre?

  Why can no one answer straight questions about them?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Doesn't make any sense.

• 7:06Pablo Torre?

  I want to acknowledge that there is a diversity of opinion about, like, what does this episode really mean? Why is it relevant? For instance, on one side of the spectrum, there's one former NBA general manager who has watched all 13 parts of the series, and God bless, God bless him. His quote was, "Last night at 11:08 PM, this whole thing is reminding me of the 'It Wasn't Me' song by Shaggy at this point."

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:32Pablo Torre?

  And so there's just that for people who are tracking everything. But then, for people who are wondering, "Aren't we supposed to get a smoking gun now?" I think there have been other people asking other questions.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  I heard from someone who was kind of like, "Boy, this just seems like a regular sports deal." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's exactly why it should be..." And the media, at least 1% of the media should cover this. It shouldn't be zero, right? I know it's like a little bit involved, but yeah, I honestly, Paul, maybe think about this guy, Rick Horo. Do you know that name, Rick Horo?

• 8:03Pablo Torre?

  Please explain.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Okay, so he has really bushy kind of sideburns, silver hair, but I saw him speak, and he has a book.

• 8:10Pablo Torre?

  This is the sports professor, Rick Horo.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:13Pablo Torre?

  He's written "Beyond the Scoreboard," "When the Game Is on the Line..."

• 8:17Speaker 01

  "When the Game Is on the Line."

• 8:18Pablo Torre?

  "...and the Sport Business Handbook: Forward by Mike Krzyzewski."

• 8:21Speaker 01

  So I'm pretty sure that if you read "When the Game Is on the Line," and by the way, if you read the book, it's his game. He's the one with the football, with the game on the line in that story, right?

• 8:31Pablo Torre?

  Subhead: "From the Man Who Brought the Heat to Miami and the Browns Back to Cleveland, Comma: An Inside Look at the High-Stakes World of Sports Deal-Making."

• 8:38Speaker 01

  So there was a decade or so when he was the guy to get a stadium built with public finance. And if you read that book and you look at the numbers, which I did 15 years ago, whenever it was, he brought in taxpayer money into the NBA. Over that decade, the NBA didn't have any other revenue stream that was close. Ticket sales and TV revenue, like, no, no, no. The biggest source of income for a big chunk of time was taxpayer dollars.

• 9:05Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  So like, it's the big thing. It's not the little side thing. It's the big thing, right?

• 9:11Pablo Torre?

  So this is from his About page on LinkedIn. "As CEO of Horo Sports Ventures, Rick Horo has been the architect of 100-plus deals worth more than $20 billion..."

• 9:20Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 9:20Pablo Torre?

  "...in sports, performing arts, and other urban infrastructure projects. Horo pioneered the public-private partnership..."

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:28Pablo Torre?

  "...and infrastructure branding concepts that, to date, has enticed more than $4 billion in corporate funding to cities and development projects." Which is all to say, and I am so glad we're having this conversation, I was not prepared for this, but I am now seeing that the public-private partnership started somewhere..."

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:43Pablo Torre?

  "...and this guy is saying, 'You should thank me.'"

• 9:46Speaker 01

  So hats off to Steve Ballmer for building that stadium in L.A. with his own money. That's great.

• 9:51Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  But what's happening with Rhode Island is a classic case of, like, Junior Rick Horo action, right? Where first, they're gonna get taxpayer money for the affordable housing component of their deal.

• 10:00Pablo Torre?

  Only private money to build the stadium.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Only private money. Again, this is a guy who's gone, this guy Brett Johnson goes to 10 million meetings just with love bomb, right? Just great news for everyone. And then, as it unfolds, there's a pandemic and things get tight, and now we need all that money just for the stadium, and we don't have any affordable housing. And even then, it's iffy if it's gonna pass. Rhode Island has a housing shortage. This guy's not solving it. And then everyone goes to a Clippers game together.

• 10:27Pablo Torre?

  Spoiler alert. It winds up privately funded Intuit Dome with the governor of Rhode Island and Brett Johnson, the head of the stadium build out deal. And by the way, on the hook now is the state of Rhode Island over the next three decades for $116.6 million in public money. That's what the deal was. It's you guys don't need to pay for this. Surprise, you're paying for this.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  I know another guy who I think he would appreciate me not saying his name now, but he's a very, very plugged in sports lawyer who went on to become a team executive. And at one point I was like, what's the deal with these? Like, it's just so hard to get a stadium built and they go to all these meetings, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, it's so much work. And he was like, well, like privately, like you can get really rich doing this.

• 11:12Pablo Torre?

  So explain how.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  I don't, that's what I said. And, you know, we're in some little cafe in some airport or whatever. And he's basically like, well, you know, there's some tax advantages that are underappreciated. And there's like, you know, being involved in the real estate component and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, like, you know, and I don't really understand it, but I'll tell you that guy now did lead a stadium project in a major American city and he's fucking rich now.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  And like, so I just will accept that that's part of it.

• 11:37Pablo Torre?

  So this is a story about a second tier professional soccer team in Rhode Island, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:44Pablo Torre?

  This does not seem like a cash machine.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:47Pablo Torre?

  But when you realize that the actual sales pitch that Brett Johnson made to the state of Rhode Island and one might presume was making to his investors.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:57Pablo Torre?

  And in fact, we have him on tape making this pitch in public, which is this is not just a stadium deal. This is housing. This is jobs. This is the entertainment. I'll quote from Rick Horro's bio that we just had. This is the urban infrastructure and quote, performing arts and convention centers and schools and libraries and transit projects and tourist destinations. It is revitalizing a downtrodden American city like Pawtucket.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:23Pablo Torre?

  And so the whole notion is Brett Johnson is saying this can be a billion dollar

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Billion dollars.

• 12:30Pablo Torre?

  Development and he says it.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:31Pablo Torre?

  And so the money.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Give me 30 million, somehow a billion will appear.

• 12:35Pablo Torre?

  Well, and the upside that we can all share in is in the real estate. And so when, when the question is asked like, so how do people really make money off of this? It's in everything in that package deal.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  I don't know what's happening here. I'm learning from listening to your show, right? But the question that occurs to me while listening was if you were Steve Ballmer and if you had a handshake deal with Kawhi and Uncle Dennis to pay them more than the salary cap would allow, like, and if aspiration went out of business, so that mechanism was closed.

• 13:05Pablo Torre?

  And you had to now figure out, okay, we want Kawhi Leonard to take a sub max extension.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Right. He's feeling owed presumably all the money that was supposed to come to him from the now out of business aspiration and he takes less than he could, right? Somebody, I'm, you know, board man gets paid, right?

• 13:23Pablo Torre?

  Take all of our reporting about cap or convention out of it. You have a deal in which this dude was introduced to this sponsor, the team founding sponsor of the Intuit Dome, and they could not pay him what he was owed. And so now he has to figure out, okay, I'm going to re up with you guys and give you a discount now. And along this timeline, the week before he signs the extension are the RIFC LLCs.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And so now just like hypothetically, I mean, if I go to some high end lawyer and say, hey, you know, I'm very wealthy. Is there any way I can funnel some money untraceably into this real estate project in Rhode Island? Like, I think there are a lot of ways. You know, I don't, I'm not saying that's what's happening. I'm just saying that like, it presents a vehicle, right? You need a bunch of, we've all seen the like Ozark or whatever, you know, money laundering thing, right? We got all the LLCs and everything in place, right?

• 14:15Pablo Torre?

  We unfortunately here at Pablo Torre finds out are not discovering how to funnel money for the first time.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:23Pablo Torre?

  We are trying to look at what is possible, given various truly time worn practices.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:31Pablo Torre?

  And saying to ourselves, when would the signed confession show up?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not part of it. It's never part of it.

• 14:40Pablo Torre?

  I just think it's really important to not infantilize literally the richest people on the planet who are the best at making money such that they would not be aware of how to avoid leaving a signed confession for something that they know they should not be doing.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  It's not even part of it. Like, it's never going to be part of it. Like, it's not.

• 15:01Pablo Torre?

  You don't need it.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  It's not how the law works. You don't only break the law if you have, if you signed a confession, then you broke the law. Like, it's nothing to do with it.

• 15:08Pablo Torre?

  Sitting in that chair once upon a time was the former federal prosecutor who launched the aspiration investigation that led to the sentencing and the conviction of Joe Sandberg, the same, as I always say, I'm like a wind up toy at this point, the same investigation that had a roadmap initially provided by the two whistleblowers who alleged cap or convention, Kawhi Leonard and aspiration in the spring of 2023. And what Lou Manzo said to me was, in a real court of law, you often don't have the signed confession.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:42Pablo Torre?

  You have though, the ability to convict based on mountains of circumstantial evidence, otherwise known in the real world as evidence.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  So I know that it's easy for this group of lawyers that work for billionaires, which is what the NBA is, right? To, to just tell a story, right? To CYA. And in that, I am happy to tell you, I will not believe their version of events here unless they have to tell me what did happen. Why did Steve Ballmer's college roommate invest in aspiration so far after the fact? Like, why do Kawhi and his agent and his uncle have these LLCs with this Rhode Island football club? Like, I don't want just a negative version of it. I want to, like, what really happened? Get somebody on the mic, NBA, who can explain like, oh my God, I'll never forget the day that I got the opportunity to invest in the Rhode Island football club.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  It's like, fuck you, that didn't happen. You are, I don't buy it, like.

• 16:38Pablo Torre?

  Well, it's also that when the Clippers say initially in response to our reporting, this is provably false.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Go on then.

• 16:45Pablo Torre?

  Please, it's been a year.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got nothing.

• 16:48Pablo Torre?

  Why isn't it being proven or leaked? Where is your anti-smoking gun?

• 17:01Pablo Torre?

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• 17:34Speaker 03

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• 18:36Pablo Torre?

  So I should explain, and I've done a bad job of like truly, fully giving you your fair due here. You were one of the original NBA internet journalists.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  I think I was the 12th blogger, 12th NBA blogger.

• 18:49Pablo Torre?

  You're like the, that weird rat that was there with the dinosaurs. It's like, where is that mammal there?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  And Jay Skeets was like maybe number 10.

• 18:56Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:57Pablo Torre?

  And you grew up loving the Blazers?

• 19:00Speaker 01

  I did, yeah.

• 19:01Pablo Torre?

  And so as a proprietor of True Hoop, I know that you have been a Blazers fan for a really long time, but only now in this news cycle have I been thinking of that part of your bio.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  It's kind of a bummer.

• 19:13Pablo Torre?

  As relevant to this conversation.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  It is, it is. Yeah, so I, you, you nicely reminded me as we were sitting down that I wrote a thing, kind of a sunny thing about Tom Dundon's arrival and I don't remember exactly what I said, but.

• 19:26Pablo Torre?

  I'll remind you.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Okay, good. Let's marinate in that for a while.

• 19:29Pablo Torre?

  Well, for people who think that Henry Abbott is just the most cynical person you will ever meet and is defaulting to assuming the worst in every billionaire, here is a post on True Hoop, which is a fantastic newsletter you just subscribed to. Quote, "It's hard to know who'll make a good NBA billionaire. Subhead, but people will like working for Tom Dundon."

• 19:54Speaker 01

  That's the dumbest thing I've ever written. People won't work for him.

• 19:58Pablo Torre?

  August 13th, 2025. And so this is at the outset of Dundon's introduction into this, this boardroom of billionaires.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. My inner little like three year old is like filling up balloons for a party, you know, or just like, it's going to be so fun. And like, it's not fun.

• 20:16Pablo Torre?

  Why did you think that?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  I just looked at all this stuff from his hockey days, you know? He was someone who was on video talking about, we want to reduce the time from when you park your car to when you get to the bathrooms, when you get to your seat.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  I never, I didn't grow up set out or intend to be in this position. So I want everybody to understand how I know how lucky I am. It's the responsibility to make sure fans and the community are proud of what we do. And like I say, part of that's winning, but it's also how you treat, how you treat your fans, how long it takes to get in the building, what the food tastes like. All these things are important and I probably think about them more than most. And we won't stop thinking about it ever. We will continue to try to make the experience here great while we're expecting to win. And hopefully you'll see that over time.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Also, he seemed amazing at letting the basketball people do the basketball things. And, you know, and he's kind of aw shucks. He's got a really good, some people use their southern twang in a way that makes you love them. You know, A plus work from Tom.

• 21:17Pablo Torre?

  You fell for the folksiness.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  I did a bit.

• 21:19Pablo Torre?

  Oh, boy.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  I did a bit, yeah.

• 21:21Pablo Torre?

  But, and also maybe for the Stanley Cup. This year, he just won the Stanley Cup with the Carolina Hurricanes.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, he hadn't when I wrote that. But, but yeah, that's very kind of you.

• 21:30Pablo Torre?

  Some parts have aged fantastically.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  And then he engraved his entire family's name on this.

• 21:34Pablo Torre?

  That was so funny. Sometimes, sometimes when you search, when you search for supporting evidence.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  You don't.

• 21:41Pablo Torre?

  You don't need to do better than the literal championship trophy. And we'll show a photo of it here, but he had at the very top, him and his family's names above everyone else.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  That's all I need to know.

• 21:55Pablo Torre?

  The kids, the kids are there.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  There was, actually, to be honest, the first time I got nervous was there was a little video of him having newly purchased the Blazers, wearing headphones and shooting around on their stadium court. And that's, I know that Mark Cuban does this, I know it's not, but I'm like.

• 22:09Pablo Torre?

  Robert Para.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Do you know how many gyms there are in Portland? And that wouldn't be interfering with your team of super high achieving professionals who could probably use that court? You know, I just like, it's a move.

• 22:21Pablo Torre?

  That's why you buy it, though.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  So you can urinate on it.

• 22:24Pablo Torre?

  This is, this is your trophy. This is your court. This is your asset.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  This is like Joe Lacob taking the trophy into his bed.

• 22:31Pablo Torre?

  Did that actually happen?

• 22:32Speaker 01

  He bragged about it, yeah.

• 22:34Pablo Torre?

  Did Joe Lacob [BLEEP] the Larry?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  That's not what, that's not what I said. That's not, that's not what I said.

• 22:40Pablo Torre?

  That's not showing up. I'm not fact checking. That's not, oh, no, here we go, here we go. Joe Lacob told Hot Living in 2015 that he made a promise to himself to sleep with the trophy, adding, quote, Nicole and I did sleep with it. So, you know.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  And now, okay, and Steph Curry.

• 22:58Pablo Torre?

  That's his longtime fiance at the time.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  At the moment of that, Steph Curry was famously underpaid, did do the work to earn that trophy and is devoutly Christian. Like, you think he wants Lacob [BLEEP] on his?

• 23:13Pablo Torre?

  Alleged, purely hypothetical, perhaps simply figurative.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:20Pablo Torre?

  No, but, but this is, but it's in line with.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Bad people.

• 23:23Pablo Torre?

  Well, well, these, it's in line with billionaires buy team, billionaires hold trophy first, right? Every ceremony.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:33Pablo Torre?

  Jim Dolan, we saw that just, just in June.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:37Pablo Torre?

  Adam hands the trophy to the owner and everyone stands around and then they wait for it to be passed to them so they can.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:44Pablo Torre?

  Figuratively engrave their names.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  It's a myth. I mean, it's a myth. Like, it's just a, you know, Mark Cuban, God bless him, he went on a roadshow and pumped up the value of this broadcast.com thing, found some suckers at Yahoo, they shut it down within a year. That's the reason that he owns the Dallas Mavericks. It's the only reason.

• 24:01Pablo Torre?

  Broadcast.com.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  I don't know that he's good at anything else. He did that, that one time, and he was an, he's openly talking, he was an uncool guy. He didn't get to invite, he didn't get invited to the cool parties. And then he did this and now he gets to be on Shark Tank and he gets invited to the cool parties.

• 24:14Pablo Torre?

  As a master of business.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  As a master of business.

• 24:16Pablo Torre?

  And podcast guest on this very show.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  And someone who, actually, I've had a sideline argument with him about your show.

• 24:22Pablo Torre?

  I love arguing with Mark about my show.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a mess. But, um, but yeah, he gets the trophy. To me, he hasn't earned it. Like, maybe there was once a world where none of this would happen without Mark, but I'm like, no, they are in line to replace Mark. In fact, they got another one.

• 24:38Pablo Torre?

  They already did for the Mavericks, right? So this is interesting because it brings us back to Tom Dundon.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:43Pablo Torre?

  Because in sports, of course, there's this notion, there's this analytic, this statistic, value over replacement player.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:51Pablo Torre?

  And it's like, what happens if you sub in the next guy? And for Steph Curry, enormous delta.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:58Pablo Torre?

  Like, really hard to replace Steph Curry.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:00Pablo Torre?

  But the question of like, Tom Dundon's voro value over replacement.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Owner, okay.

• 25:09Pablo Torre?

  I do want to explain who he is.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:12Pablo Torre?

  How would you explain Tom Dundon's general deal heading into all of this?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  The reason he's a billionaire is because of like subprime auto lending.

• 25:24Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  That's, that seems like the repo man kind of thing, right?

• 25:29Pablo Torre?

  The NBA has done this thing recently where Matt Ishbia comes in.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:33Pablo Torre?

  And by the way, these guys need to be voted in, approved. This is like, kind of one of the most important things the league office and the board of governors do.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:43Pablo Torre?

  Is who gets to join us in here. And they've chosen in Matt Ishbia, America's mortgage king.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:49Pablo Torre?

  And also in Dundon, yes, a subprime car loan guy.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the reason, I mean, like, how do you win at that? It's like, well, you win by getting people who can barely afford cars to pay you a little more than they would the other guy. That's nasty business.

• 26:05Pablo Torre?

  When you put it like that, it's not great.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  I'm a little worried about it, but he seems very nice. He's got the twang, you know?

• 26:12Pablo Torre?

  Your honor, he had the twang.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  It's all relative. I mean, I, you know, a kind of deeply personal, honest part of this is like, I do love sports and I love athletes and like, all the work that goes into it, I don't take for granted. And I think that I want the league, part of the reason I'm animated here is because I want the league to be a safe place for Steph Curry to deposit his best work and feel like it's going to be well taken care of.

• 26:36Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  My business partner, Trump, is David Thorpe, who personally trains a really outstanding list of NBA players, big names that you know. They call him every day.

• 26:44Pablo Torre?

  Thorpe is, again, an OG trainer.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Depending on who you ask, he maybe kind of founded this, like, pro players having their own.

• 26:51Pablo Torre?

  He is the Henry Abbott of private basketball trading.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Has a lot better head of hair than I do. But, you know, so I have firsthand reports from Thorpe of just the earnest, personal effort of just, you know how many things you have to not go to, to be an elite athlete? Like, you have to just love this game. Most of them now don't have a single sip of alcohol all season. Like, it used to be they have a beer. No, it's just the game is too hard. And so to me, the, the thing I'm already aware of is that for many of them, the biggest limitation in their career is that their team is very poorly run. Just their team, NBA, the typical, the Spurs are an exception, the Thunder's an exception, I guess the Knicks now are an exception, but mostly, like, the reason Victor Wembanyama signs for less than the max is because he would hate to play for the Pelicans.

• 27:36Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  His whole life would suck, right? Because they're just, mostly they're very poorly run organizations. And so this is what we have. This is the product of these kind of 30 god kings that vote each other in and police each other through Wachtel Lipton, right? And they just, they just [BLEEP] around and they have sex with the trophy. Like, you know, like, like, it's not a professionally run thing. Like, if you were merely, like, I can't decide as, Sam Presti is seen as like a absolute wizard genius, right?

• 28:02Pablo Torre?

  Running the Thunder.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Running the Thunder. I can't decide if he really is, or he's just the only one that's run like a regular business.

• 28:12Pablo Torre?

  Well, so, but this is where it's interesting because how a regular business is run is also something that over time, one should be cynical about. I have been generally unimpressed by the how, when it comes to how did people get rich? How are they maintaining their wealth? How is it that sports is shooting up in value? Like, what did you guys do to profit from the, from one of the few green arrows that we have left in the US economy?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:46Pablo Torre?

  And, well, it's because, spoiler alert, you have a fan base that loves it so much that the demand seems inelastic. Like, you can do anything. Out of their own pockets comes taxpayer money to keep a building, hopefully, like the Moda Center, in all its dustiness in Portland.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:10Pablo Torre?

  Right? And so you have Tom Dundon, the subprime car loan guy that, and I should say this too, according to ProPublica, this was after he wrote that post, in fairness to you, but in 2026, in March, ProPublica reports that internal documents revealed that as CEO of Santander Consumer USA in 2013, Dundon pushed to drop proof of income requirements on subprime car loans to drive loan volume. And Santander charged higher fees to offset those risks. The default rates, as you alluded to, went up, repossession went up, and the practice led to a settlement, this multi-state settlement with state attorneys general, organs included in 2020, to the tune of $550 million.

• 29:53Pablo Torre?

  And Dundon, for the record, did not respond to ProPublica's written questions, their reporting, the summaries thereof, the copies of internal emails sent to his investment firm, PR staff or legal counsel. ProPublica, again, a masterful journalistic entity that thrives, given documentation. But historically, he has defended subprime car loan strategy in media interviews. After he left Santander Consumer in 2015, this is after all of this stuff was being alleged, he told the Dallas Morning News that his business provided essential access to transportation for people overlooked by traditional banks, stating, quote, "Just because someone has bad credit doesn't mean they are a bad person," end quote. And so we are back to the language of. We're the good guys.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Finance is really backwards right now. It's really dirty. There aren't... I asked a friend of mine who works at finance, like, who are the players who are bragging about being clean? Like, to me, it's kind of like doping. In track and field, there's a clean movement in that sport. Is there a clean movement in banking? And he was like, he's like, "I don't even understand what you're talking about." He was like, "If legal signs off, like, you're good." And I'm like, and, you know, I don't want to impugn Ballmer, but like, if we're asking ourselves, like, you know, is it possible Ballmer's aware of the seamy or side of finance? You know, he's just this guy who just has Microsoft stock, right? It's like an honest way to make it.

• 31:14Pablo Torre?

  Do we not remember what Microsoft is or was?

• 31:17Speaker 01

  But like, the thing I'm obsessed with, and this is like, I'm forcing into the conversation here improperly, because I want everyone to know, like, A.B. Buzzy Krongard was the banker who took Microsoft public. He was a weird choice, but he's the one. He's the guy who made them super duper rich. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, this is where they made their money. And then, boy, two out of three of them had really credible connections to Epstein, while A.B. Buzzy Krongard went to be, A, the number three at the CIA, and then he went on the board of Apollo Global.

• 31:51Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  And when Apollo Global founder Leon Black was Jeffrey Epstein's greatest source of income. So to me, like, that's how even Ballmer, who's generally seen as like, the kind of cleanest billionaire, the cleanest path to the billions, even he has this guy hanging over his first big dollar. And I'm like, I don't think you can make a case there's a single billionaire, even though I tried last summer, who's like, the good guy, right? It's like, I think to get that amount of money, I've yet to see a case of you just ran a really good business that had great ROI.

• 32:22Pablo Torre?

  Well, it's interesting, because we can go to Bill Gates. Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, which has done real, important work over time, helping address malaria and global disease all across this planet, right? It will maybe not shock you, if you've been following at all the Jeffrey Epstein news cycle, to learn that Bill Gates is up in that.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 32:48Pablo Torre?

  A lot.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:49Pablo Torre?

  To the point of having to then apologize to the employees of the Gates Foundation, slash clarify, "This is why I'm in these photos. This is nothing to see here, but I am embarrassed by my associations."

• 33:02Speaker 01

  And Melinda on the record saying it's a part of the reason for their divorce.

• 33:05Pablo Torre?

  And, oopsie, as a related matter, perhaps, his first appearance after the Epstein files news cycle is sitting in between Steve Ballmer and Dennis Wong at a Clipper game, courtside.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  What's going on with the Clippers?

• 33:17Pablo Torre?

  He went to Harvard guys, hanging out. But this is all to say that Bill Gates was the paragon of the good billionaire, because he was giving away all his money.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:26Pablo Torre?

  And helping others. And in the background, there is all of this context. And so I am not saying that there aren't billionaires who want to do good things. What I am saying is that everything I have learned by studying finance and sports, and meeting these people, and trying to pressure test my own cynicism, it leads me to understand that the game that they win is set up for the public interest to be diminished to their benefit. And this is not the product of any one individual who designed it that way, but it is certainly a system that has been supported by all of the people who have profited from it.

• 34:11Pablo Torre?

  And that's where it's like, yeah, a billionaire as a concept is a hard thing to justify philosophically. And this brings us to the next question for Tom Dundon, right? So he's threatening, effectively, "I'm gonna move this team out of here." And Bill Oram at the Oregonian, who's been covering this closely, one of the lines from his reporting is that Tom Dundon is a first-class bully. And again, certainly, there are people in his life who really like him. Perhaps their names are inscribed on a Stanley Cup trophy. But the point being that he sees, frankly, an asset. This heirloom is an asset that's portable.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Maybe, yeah.

• 34:55Pablo Torre?

  "You're not gonna give me your public taxpayer money to revitalize the building that I need? Well, then, I'm getting out of here." And so the question, given that Tom Dundon has lots of money, thanks to the subprime car loan biz, is, when is it enough?

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:15Pablo Torre?

  When is it ever, for any of these people?

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:17Pablo Torre?

  What does enough even look like?

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Either he's playing hardball with the city, which I believe could be true, still, and in that, he would have the league's backing, right? The league doesn't actually want, like, the stuff this city council president was saying is a little bit like, "Hey, is sports a sensible use of our precious money?" Like, that's not, that's why Seattle's been punished for these decades, is because they deigned to ask that question, right?

• 35:44Pablo Torre?

  That's what happened in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:47Pablo Torre?

  They lost the Pawsox because they didn't want to give the Pawsox public money for a new stadium.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  They do want to, like, they, you know, because of Rick Horo and his public-private model and all, you know, they do really want to publish these city councils. And there's always, like, the Kansas City people are raring to go, right? There's always like this, they just have to have one more city that's willing to just dump money on an NBA team, right? And they always do. And, you know, Dundon has a stadium in North Carolina. I have a little theory about, you know, the Mavericks. Dundon lives in Dallas. The Mavericks are owned by an organization that is headquartered in Las Vegas. There's gonna be an NBA team in Las Vegas soon.

• 36:23Pablo Torre?

  This is Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, that purchased a team.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Everyone would be happy.

• 36:29Pablo Torre?

  Famously clean sheet, by the way. Don't Wikipedia the Adelsons.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fine.

• 36:34Pablo Torre?

  Nothing to see there.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Those are the good billionaires. But yeah, conceivably, Dundon could have a team in Dallas. Adelson could have a team in Las Vegas, and he could have a special teams in Portland and Seattle. I don't think it's gonna happen, but it would be tidy for everybody if that happened. Those are good markets. But yeah, he could be playing hardball, in which case, I could actually come around on him. If this is just a period, you know, and then we're gonna win the Stanley Cup, and he can put all his kids' names on it, but it's the NBA trophy, I'll, yeah, go ahead. I'm fine with that. But I, I fear that in fact, it's a lot more like how the, how Clay Bennett, wrangled the Sonics to become the Thunder. And that was all lies. It was all just stupid lies, right? It's just a perfect example of this kind of Joe Sandberg model of like, "Just say whatever you gotta say to get the deal done, and later we'll get the money," you know?

• 37:19Pablo Torre?

  I do like, though, that what you tried to sneak in just then is like, "Maybe my take isn't gonna be as bad."

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Exactly right, Paul. Exactly right. We don't have all the evidence yet.

• 37:39Pablo Torre?

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• 38:24Pablo Torre?

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• 40:01Pablo Torre?

  In all these stories, we can wring our hands about this is what billionaires do. This is how they operate. This is a system that props them up. And this is why the NBA needs to pretend like it's not just a bunch of these guys in a room together.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:17Pablo Torre?

  Treating you, the public, as fungible. But in the end, the only thing, I mean, it's so interesting. Like, I have been wondering, like, what is the line beyond which the NBA must change how it operates? Where is it? And it's just hard to think that there is something short of literally taking the team out of your city that they feel like they can't tolerate.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:53Pablo Torre?

  Their pain threshold feels remarkably high.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Well, and you have talked a little bit about the antitrust exemption, which I think is coming into play here a little bit. That was a brilliant episode of you guys. I loved that Demaryius Smith episode. So they negotiated between the labor and management, essentially. They didn't negotiate in the rights of the third party, which is the public.

• 41:14Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Right? And so, and that feels, I'm gonna teach a college class this fall, and I've been calling pro sports teams to try to, like, get the students in the sports journalism class some access to teams.

• 41:25Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  One of the teams told me that they have deals with some local universities who are sponsors of the team, and they let those undergrads go to practice. But to protect that investment, they don't let other undergrads go to practice.

• 41:40Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  And so I was like, well, just out of curiosity, how much does it cost? And they were like, oh. But to me, I'm like, the [bleep] public trust? You know what I mean? Like, you are milking for profit, even just to, like, which 17-year-olds get to bring a microphone and go, excuse me, Mr. Leonard? You know, blah, blah. Like, even that has been sold.

• 42:01Pablo Torre?

  No, Henry, Henry, these microphones have been reserved.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  I know.

• 42:06Pablo Torre?

  They're not for you.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  And the players can only talk with their friggin' Gatorade bottle there. You know what I mean? Like, they have milked every single, like, I've peed in urinals that were the urinal-sponsored in stadiums, right? Like, they have milked it, and that money's not going to the public, right? Like, like, these are the same people, right now, Tom Dundon's going to the, I guess they're, you know, meeting today and saying, you know, oh, we couldn't possibly function without you guys providing X, Y, and Z. The Portland City Council decision here is, I think they speak for all of us. It's very reasonable. They're keeping an eye on the schools and the roads and the garbage collection.

• 42:38Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  And so they should.

• 42:40Pablo Torre?

  The everyday struggling Americans that have shown up as the victims in these stories that we exhaustively try to cover, they're trying, at least right now, with the city council meeting, it seems, to prioritize the public interest.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Or just have it.

• 42:56Pablo Torre?

  Or even acknowledge it. Make a gesture towards it.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:03Pablo Torre?

  And I feel like, right now, I guess I'll take that as a win?

• 43:06Speaker 01

  The way this is supposed to work is that we are supposed to supply the information to the public that gets people to those meetings so that the meeting turns a little bit, right? And it's been a tough time for sports journalism, right? And a lot of people have the time to do this kind of research. And so by and large, I think, you know, regular folks are like, well, you know, it's confusing what's happening. Everyone's mad, but I do like having the Blazers in town.

• 43:31Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  You know, and that's an important way to get reelected if you run city council in Portland, right?

• 43:38Pablo Torre?

  It reminds me of, like, what are the brass tacks with this Kawhi Leonard trade that's been frozen?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:43Pablo Torre?

  As he is in limbo between Toronto and the Clippers.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:48Pablo Torre?

  And this investigation, according to ESPN, this is on Wednesday, it may stretch into 2027 if there is a fight. If Steve Ballmer says, I have the most money of anybody. I'm going to make this so that I fight longer and harder in ways that you've never experienced before. Well, what happens if this stretches into the season and beyond? And so the brass tacks, to me, as always, is like, are the fans of these teams gonna demand something?

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:21Pablo Torre?

  And I guess what we are wondering, what we will find out as time goes on, is do they want the truth?

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:28Pablo Torre?

  Or do they want the asset?

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:32Pablo Torre?

  Henry, thank you for reminding me how we first got to know each other and for giving me a couple of visual images that I wish I could forget.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  I have done my job.

• 44:53Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Averoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Studio engineering by RG Systems. Sound design by Andrew Bersick. Digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern. Theme song, as always, by John Bravo.

• 45:15Pablo Torre?

  And we'll talk to you next time.

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