Enter the Dungeon: An IRL Showdown with Mark Cuban on Kawhi-Gate

After tweeting 17,053 words in defense of his fellow billionaire NBA owner, the most polarizing member of Team Ballmer is back — in-studio — to confront all of Pablo's most burning questions: Why was Kawhi Leonard's deal kept so secret? When did the Clippers really know? Just how screwed was Aspiration? And what the hell do Cuban's Mavericks and the Knicks' Jalen Brunson have to do with this scandal? • Part I: The Richest Owner in Sports, the Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OwzYk6OCFM • Part II: Team Ballmer vs. Team Sh*tting Bricks — an Argument with Mark Cuban https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwXcEG5BA6U • Part III: The Mystery Investor, the No-Show Payday and the "Smoking Gun" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKJyKFdT8rQ • Part IV: Steve Ballmer, the Other Cuban and the $118 Million Infusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ow9i3obDE • Part V: Steve Ballmer's "Inconceivable" Donation, the $20 Million Guarantee and a Head on a Spike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab7k09CI9qI (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 going to find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Kudos to you for finding your sources. No issues there. The conclusions you came to, [BLEEP] on Steve Ballmer, and that was wrong.

• 0:17Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:20Speaker 02

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• 1:23Pablo Torre?

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• 2:07Pablo Torre?

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• 2:31Pablo Torre?

  Hey, there he is.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  It's a dungeon in here.

• 2:34Pablo Torre?

  There, welcome to the dungeon.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me.

• 2:37Pablo Torre?

  Thanks for coming in.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:39Pablo Torre?

  Um, water, bathroom, coffee.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  We got the bathroom.

• 2:43Pablo Torre?

  Smelling salts.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, hopefully not. Even though I haven't got much sleep, I'll take it.

• 2:49Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Good to see ya.

• 2:51Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, you're a wildly busy person, so this is a lot of fun for you to do this for us.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, Cost Plus has been driving you crazy.

• 2:57Pablo Torre?

  That's the pharmaceutical industry, you know?

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, just little things.

• 3:00Pablo Torre?

  Casually trying to upend the pharmaceutical industry.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Trying to change healthcare, why not?

• 3:03Pablo Torre?

  Test, test, test.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  That's where you want it lined?

• 3:05Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, if you could.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Here you are.

• 3:09Pablo Torre?

  Look at that.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Thank you. Double.

• 3:10Pablo Torre?

  Double fist.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Double-fisted.

• 3:11Pablo Torre?

  Double fist.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  It's the only way you roll, Pablo, I know.

• 3:14Pablo Torre?

  Just the finest. The most luxurious.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Just for reference before we start, this dial is for your own voice.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:23Speaker 04

  Um, and the second one is for Pablo's.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Turn down Pablo, turn up mine?

• 3:29Pablo Torre?

  Look, I promised over email this would be respectful. I totally.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Do your thing, yeah. I have no, go where you want to go. I'm easy-peasy.

• 3:37Pablo Torre?

  The thing I want to start with is to say thank you for giving me the line that now leads my resume.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Which is?

• 3:43Pablo Torre?

  A great podcast entertainer, great acting skills, but in terms of getting to the real, real, not so much.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  There you go, I'm here to oblige.

• 3:53Pablo Torre?

  I want to do this in a way that's probably, hopefully, a little different, a little more fun than like Frost Nixon.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:21Pablo Torre?

  I actually just want to understand, like, your life right now.

• 4:26Pablo Torre?

  I mean, you're in New York. Thank you for being here in studio formally. Why are you here? What's going on?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I just did a conference, a healthcare conference for 32BJ. It's a union and they work with a variety of unions and organizations. So I came in to talk about what we're doing with costplustdrugs.com to reduce the cost of pharmacy, to change healthcare, to help guide them as they negotiate new contracts, just the basic stuff. So I had it on the schedule for a couple of months already.

• 4:54Pablo Torre?

  Just the basic stuff?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:55Pablo Torre?

  I wasn't sure it was like, was this stop in New York part of your larger plan to eventually become the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. That was my goal all along, right?

• 5:05Pablo Torre?

  Have you won it?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  You got me. Pablo, yeah, Pablo finds out.

• 5:09Pablo Torre?

  Finding out. But you did want to be SEC Chair for a company.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  No, I had no, no interest in being SEC Chair.

• 5:14Pablo Torre?

  You said it at one point.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  No, that was me [BLEEP] with Gary Gensler because I thought he was an idiot.

• 5:17Pablo Torre?

  Oh. Well, this is why I asked the follow-up questions.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Right, that's what you do.

• 5:23Pablo Torre?

  But some of the bio for people who are, it's funny, again, for me to be like, by the way, I talk to Mark Cuban a lot these days, but for those who are not familiar with your oeuvre, minority owner now, oeuvre.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  What does that even mean?

• 5:36Pablo Torre?

  Your body of work.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Oh, my body of work, okay.

• 5:38Pablo Torre?

  It's a little French. I'm trying to, trying to class you up.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  There you go. I need all the help classing me up as I can get.

• 5:44Pablo Torre?

  No, look, you're the minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, 27%. We've established that. Also, you co-own a Major League Pickleball team.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:51Pablo Torre?

  The Dallas Flash.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, did they change the name to Flash?

• 5:54Pablo Torre?

  Are they Dallas Flash?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  I don't even know. I did it as a favor to a friend. But I like pickleball some. It's fun to watch.

• 6:02Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your Dallas Flash, that's right. And, you know, you mentioned great acting skills.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Great acting skills. You see me in Play Dirty here recently?

• 6:11Pablo Torre?

  I watched it this week.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  What?

• 6:19Speaker 05

  Uh, fine.

• 6:23Speaker 05

  Do I? The Lady Volantaro, how long? And you are? Impatient. Where is she?

• 6:31Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 6:32Pablo Torre?

  Just Mark Wahlberg, brandishing a firearm.

• 6:35Speaker 05

  Evans.

• 6:36Pablo Torre?

  At a white tablecloth restaurant in front of you. And an associate.

• 6:39Speaker 05

  Do you have any concept who the [bleep] you're talking to? You're not answering my question. I don't have to, moron. I'm one of the most important [bleep] people on the planet. This isn't some rat-infested alley. You're out of your league. You're dealing with a different class of people now.

• 6:55Pablo Torre?

  What a smirk.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  You know how long I've been?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  The best part was Mark Wahlberg was not there when we were shooting it.

• 7:08Pablo Torre?

  Oh, that was, uh...

• 7:08Speaker 01

  So that was all acting. That's just me putting myself in the moment.

• 7:12Pablo Torre?

  A method smirk.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Yes. The fear, the smirk.

• 7:16Pablo Torre?

  Um, there's just...

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Just shot.

• 7:18Pablo Torre?

  There's just a zillion things I actually do want to ask you about. I want to get to at some point, like Dallas and Mavs and Luca, if that's okay, at some point, at the end, maybe. But the reason, of course, you're here is because you remain by far the most devoted, most famous, most polarizing, most public member of Team Bomber.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 7:37Pablo Torre?

  As you have come to call it. Do you know how much you have tweeted about this story in my reporting?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Not really, no.

• 7:43Pablo Torre?

  You have sent 160 tweets.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Most of them were just little tiny responses. A couple of them were articles.

• 7:49Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  The one time, yeah, the one time was like the 4,000 words or whatever.

• 7:53Pablo Torre?

  You typed a total of 17,053 words in 36 days.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  A lot of that is ChatGPT-generated, but yes.

• 8:00Pablo Torre?

  I suspected that. I feel no less insulted by that. But nonetheless, I'm here to confront you and the robot.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Please do.

• 8:09Pablo Torre?

  And I just want to try to keep this accessible, as always, to like the general audience. So I guess the conversation, which I want to begin here, starts with a simple question. Why do you think the sheer existence of the aspiration sponsorship deal with Kawhi Leonard was never announced in any way through a press release or anything ever?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  The deal was signed, if I'm remembering correctly, April 4th of 22, but it was dated April 1st. March 30th was a much bigger announcement. And they didn't want to step on each other. Is the first reason. Do you know what that announcement is?

• 8:46Pablo Torre?

  Please.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought you would know.

• 8:49Pablo Torre?

  No, no, no. What announcement?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Oh, that's when they announced their deal with the Boston Red Sox, which was an $80 million deal. And that's where they were going to get their logo on the field, right by the batter's box, not by the on-deck circle, all that stuff. So it was an $80 million deal. Rule number one of marketing, when you're getting PR and you've signed a big deal, you don't step on it. And so, once I saw that they had done this big deal and realized how big it was, it made perfect sense why they didn't announce it then, right? And then, after that, the people who had done the deal, I shouldn't say the people, because Joe Sandberg did the deal, but they changed over the focus of their business. And as best we can tell, no one wanted him there and no one wanted to do the deal. And so, there was no reason to announce it. That's my perception.

• 9:35Pablo Torre?

  Well, so just the Red Sox deal, we mentioned that in episode one of the show. I'm glad you bring it into this context because it was another deal, another real sports team that Aspiration got into business with, of course. So, let's say that Aspiration didn't want to announce this, Kawhi didn't want to announce this, no one wanted to.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  No, no, now you're putting words into the system here, right? So, there's a difference between making the right marketing move, right? So, you just signed an $80 million deal with the Red Sox. And the Red Sox come out and say, like the Clippers did, September of '21, so that would be six months earlier, whatever, right? That how important the whole carbon credits thing was and conservation was to them, right? So, a big part of the Red Sox deal was very similar to the Clippers deal. In fact, they look, I'm going to use my bat. In fact, they look very similar to each other. I'm trying to remember.

• 10:29Pablo Torre?

  I am with you.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  So, they're very similar to each other.

• 10:34Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I've seen hundreds of emails with the Red Sox and Aspiration. The premise here, again, is we're zeroing out the carbon footprint.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Right, so it was very important to the Red Sox, like it was to Bomber, so nothing unusual there, right? So, the question becomes, right? Why did the marketing people not do anything with Kawhi? Well, on one hand, that's the question you asked me, right?

• 10:54Pablo Torre?

  No, no, the question actually was simpler. It was, why did no one ever say that this deal existed at all in any way, ever?

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, we don't know that for certain.

• 11:03Pablo Torre?

  I have never seen anything. I've said this for five episodes and no one's ever provided a counterargument or a factual correction or evidence.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Two ways to activate the deal. One is like you're expecting. Let's do the tweet. The things that were in the contract that he was never asked to do.

• 11:17Pablo Torre?

  I actually just want to be very clear and specific here. I just mean, they announced with celebrities all of the time. We signed Leo DiCaprio, and we signed Drake, and we signed Robert Downey Jr. and Orlando Bloom and Cindy Crawford, Cindy Crawford's daughter.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  When did they announce all those things?

• 11:32Pablo Torre?

  All in this time period.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  When did they announce those?

• 11:35Pablo Torre?

  Is your argument going to be that by the time they signed Kawhi Leonard to a deal that was four times larger than everyone else combined in that celebrity roster, they had decided to no longer care about celebrities?

• 11:47Speaker 01

  No. My point was, they were not profitable, but they were fully and well-funded in 2021. And they were run with the goal of having a consumer product, the credit card from Aspiration Bank. And what you do with a consumer product is night and day different than what you do with a B2B product, right? So making those announcements make perfect sense. Now come April of 22, they were in deep [BLEEP], right? And as you know, and I think you're, some of the folks have told you, that the conversation, because we know Uncle Dennis Incorporated KL2 Aspire, I think it was called, in November of 21. So they had been talking for a long time and it had been delayed, obviously for a considerable period of time. So the fact that it was delayed is one indicator. Because if they were really excited to sign

• 12:31Speaker 01

  the deal and use Kawhi, the marketing team would have been pushing. Let's get this done because we really have a lot of places for him to use.

• 12:38Pablo Torre?

  Right. The opposite, of course, happens, right? The marketing people, the CMO doesn't know who Kawhi Leonard is, even.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Right, right. So the question is, why was there a deal?

• 12:46Pablo Torre?

  No, no, I think the question is still, why, just to keep on the first question, why past April did no one mention that they had signed Kawhi Leonard at all?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Because they were in a different business at that point.

• 12:58Pablo Torre?

  Not as of that month.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you look at their numbers from September 30th of 2021, the last real numbers they had that they published.

• 13:08Pablo Torre?

  So I guess what I'm saying is what we agree on is this was a bad deal for Aspiration to sign as of April 2023.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Not necessarily, right? So here's what you haven't discussed at all yet, right? And that is activation. And I'm not talking about traditional marketing activation. So you've been to the Staples Center, right?

• 13:23Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Right? So you know, here's the court level seats. And then a lot of people go into the tunnel. And they have that club that's there, right? Where all the celebrities hang out and everything. And then the people who buy the court, the front row seats have access to that. Correct? And they see the players walking through. And it's not unusual because it's happened to me, I'm sure it's happened to you. Where people, fans, right there that have come from the court will stop you and take pictures, introduce you to customers, dah dah dah dah dah. We have no evidence one way or the other, but I'd be willing to bet that a dollar to a dime, right? That Joe Sandberg took full advantage of that. And was able to use Kawhi just to take a picture, to say hello. Just like I've done a thousand times with the Mavericks, right?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Oh, we signed a deal with this sponsor. Hey, Marcus, sponsor's in town. Or, hey, Marcus, sponsor's going to be at the game. Will you take pictures with them?

• 14:14Pablo Torre?

  Sure.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Sure. Easy peasy, right? Just have them in the tunnel before halftime or after the game. Easy access. So when I talked to people, the one person, two people I know, but one person I talked to at, that worked at Aspiration, they said, yeah.

• 14:26Pablo Torre?

  I love how you've been doing reporting, by the way.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, just because they reached out to me, right?

• 14:29Pablo Torre?

  I want to hear about them reaching out to you.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. And I know. And I said, I was fine with it, right?

• 14:32Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And likewise.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so it's just normal business, right? So the issue is that the guy that's going to, one of the guys going to jail, Joe Sandberg, right? He obviously was the one that did the deal. Because even in your tweet, it said Joe is, is slow rolling the deal. No, he said to Joe from Uncle Dennis, that Mike, the lawyer was slow.

• 14:53Pablo Torre?

  Mike Chekarell, the general counsel.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  General counsel was slow rolling the deal, right? And that it was obvious that Joe Sandberg had signed. So the value proposition here where we disagree, and we don't really have detail one way or the other. But where we disagree is the value proposition wasn't necessarily to the marketing. People at aspiration. It was to Joe Sandberg specifically.

• 15:14Pablo Torre?

  Why do we disagree about that?

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Well, because I think that's where he utilized Kawhi.

• 15:18Pablo Torre?

  Oh, but I-

• 15:18Speaker 01

  He got his money's worth.

• 15:19Pablo Torre?

  I fully agree that Joe Sandberg was the one to benefit from this deal. It wasn't the marketing of aspiration. The question is, what was the goal Joe Sandberg wanted to achieve? And you have this theory that Joe was using it to glad hand with Kawhi during the games that the Clippers were playing, or before or after, or whatever.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  No, I've even evolved that theory.

• 15:37Pablo Torre?

  Okay, but I guess what I'm saying is the reason Joe Sandberg wanted to do it was because, of course, he had a relationship with Steve Ballmer. And there was an agreement, hey, we're gonna do this deal that no one ever is gonna know about.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  You don't know that.

• 15:48Pablo Torre?

  But what I'm saying is, I know that based on-

• 15:50Speaker 01

  You're making that up.

• 15:50Pablo Torre?

  No, no, no, I have nine sources that told me that.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  No, nine sources that worked in the accounts payable department.

• 15:54Pablo Torre?

  Not all, not all finance, not all finance. Mark, Mark, Mark. So, look, what I want to make clear here is a couple of things. Because you're really good at talking and being shot by Mark Wahlberg. Incredible about those things. There is simply no evidence that this deal was ever announced in any way. And the reason I keep on harping on this is because at a certain point, if you are Joe Sandberg, selfish guy, who wants to boast and peacock about all the things he's done, you would want to say,

• 16:23Speaker 01

  No!

• 16:23Pablo Torre?

  We also have this deal with this guy!

• 16:26Speaker 01

  No, no, so you're not, you don't, so if you look at Joe Sandberg, right? What was his job at aspiration?

• 16:30Pablo Torre?

  I mean, so, this question-

• 16:32Speaker 01

  This matters.

• 16:33Pablo Torre?

  I have many ways that I can talk about this for a very long time. Joe Sandberg was not actually an employee of aspiration.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  No kidding!

• 16:40Pablo Torre?

  But what he was, was the co-founder, and they want to peacock about all of the celebrities, all of the sports teams. I have a deal with Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Orlando Bloom, Drake, The Crawfords, and Kawhi Leonard, who he paid for the price, by the way. The price of what you're saying, the glad handing theory. Forty-eight million dollars?

• 16:59Speaker 01

  No, he didn't, he paid him 3.5 million.

• 17:01Pablo Torre?

  The agreement, the contract says-

• 17:03Speaker 01

  But if you know you have no money to pay the agreement, it's meaningless.

• 17:07Pablo Torre?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  He knew he had no money to pay it.

• 17:10Pablo Torre?

  Mark.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Just like me saying Pablo, I'm gonna give you 200 million dollars right now.

• 17:15Pablo Torre?

  So what we need to establish here is that Joe Sandberg may know, right? At the time of the deal, he has no intention of paying the total term of the deal.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  He has no money.

• 17:24Pablo Torre?

  But Kawhi Leonard absolutely thinks it's a real deal.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:28Pablo Torre?

  It's a real contract.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:30Pablo Torre?

  So the point is, the intent of what we're doing here-

• 17:33Speaker 01

  No, the intent on Uncle Dennis's and Kawhi's side is obvious. The intent on Joe Sandberg's side is not, right?

• 17:40Pablo Torre?

  So why would-

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Uncle Dennis wants to get paid.

• 17:42Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so we established that there is no evidence at all that this deal was ever announced anywhere.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Unless, I mean, not publicly, no, we agree, not to a major audience.

• 17:51Pablo Torre?

  I've been waiting, man. I was hoping you might bring it in. I've been waiting for anyone to tell me.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  So moving on.

• 17:55Pablo Torre?

  Why was this a top-secret deal that they never talked about? My theory is, they wanted to keep it secret because it was a 48 million dollar no-show contract that circumvented the cap. Your theory is something that is not that.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, because-

• 18:07Pablo Torre?

  But let's move on, because we agree to disagree.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, not just we, let's just move on. Because what's at stake? Because at the exact same time the Kawhi deal was signed, right? Joe Sandberg was also trying to take over Blue Apron. And he didn't have the money to do that either. And so he was looking to do an acquisition that was, I don't know, I don't know the exact amount, but there's plenty of evidence on documentation out there. Where he effectively was lying to say he had the money in May of 22 or whenever the date was.

• 18:39Pablo Torre?

  The guy was eventually pleading guilty to wire fraud.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. But you've got to look at from here. So you want to know what the intent was. So you're asking the question. We agree that Joe Sandberg initiated the deal and negotiated the deal with Uncle Dennis and Mitch Franklin.

• 18:52Pablo Torre?

  The initiation, I'm not saying one way or the other. I'm merely saying what we know.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  So are you agreeing that Joe Sandberg was the one who negotiated this deal?

• 19:01Pablo Torre?

  I cannot tell you that he's the only one who was involved. Mark, I'm a journalist. I know that he was involved, but is he the only one in the room negotiating?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Okay, so most, but, fine. Right, so if he's the driving force, and he's taking responsibility for this, isn't it relevant what else was going on in his financial life?

• 19:20Pablo Torre?

  Oh, and absolutely. And so the timeline that I wanted to point us to is-

• 19:23Speaker 01

  So here we are, right? So here he is, he's committed to, um- A deal with Kawhi that pays 1.75 million dollars a quarter to be paid first in June, on June 30th, right, of 2022.

• 19:38Pablo Torre?

  That was the first payment.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Right, when it was due, right. So at the same time, at the same time, knows he doesn't have the money. Because we know from the September 30th, 2021 financials, which would have been after Ballmer put in his money, that they only had 13 million dollars left.

• 19:54Pablo Torre?

  So Ballmer puts in his money in September of 2021.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Right, so September 30th, so he put it in September 14th, or 17th, one of those two dates, of 2021. And as of September 30th of 2021, according to the S4 that was filed by InterPrivate because of the SPAC that they were trying to take.

• 20:10Pablo Torre?

  InterPrivate was the holding company that was going to absorb.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Make everybody all the money, right.

• 20:13Pablo Torre?

  Go SPAC at 2.3 billion dollars, which is a valuation that came up when, Mark, because Steve Ballmer and Oaktree Capital Management invested together and resulted in this valuation of, whoa!

• 20:25Speaker 01

  No, that's not how it works, that's not how it works.

• 20:26Pablo Torre?

  Of course it is, it's literally the timeline.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  That's not how a SPAC is valued, but that's besides the point, that's not really relevant at this point.

• 20:32Pablo Torre?

  I think it's deeply relevant, it speaks to why Joe Sandberg was doing the deal at all.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Well, that, okay, he wanted to get the payout, right, because that was the only thing that could save his ass.

• 20:38Pablo Torre?

  He wanted to be in business with Steve Ballmer, who gave him 50 million dollars personally alongside Oaktree, and guess what? The SPAC that wasn't over 2 billion dollars as a valuation was after that roughly 300 million dollar infusion came in.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  You're missing the point, because you're trying to just drive it just the one thing you know, okay? So.

• 20:55Pablo Torre?

  I'm talking about like sports washing, and I think you're trying to talk about lots of other things.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  No, no, you're not letting me finish, right?

• 21:01Pablo Torre?

  Please, please.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  All right, so now we know from Joe Sandberg's perspective, he's got Kawhi that this company owns 28 million dollars to.

• 21:09Pablo Torre?

  Plus 20 million dollars in an equity deal.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's coming from him personally, that's worthless, and so.

• 21:13Pablo Torre?

  But it's relevant, but I'll go with it.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Okay, that's fine, we're going with it, right? So that's one. Two, he also committed to the Red Sox to pay 7 million dollars a year, the exact same day, the day before, so that's another seven, right?

• 21:26Pablo Torre?

  They're collecting these sports deals.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Right, at the same time, he owes personally 145 million dollars that he is unable to pay, and he's hoping that he can figure all this out. But what we also know. Is that Balmer invested September fourteenth or seventeenth of twenty twenty one? And there are published financials that Interprivate put to the S E C that shows they only have thirteen million dollars. So at the time that long, long before, I should say, long before Joe Sandberg completed this deal, he knew they had no money.

• 21:57Pablo Torre?

  Oh, oh, oh, so we.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  He know, he knew he had. Cause all the money, think about it, all the money. And then when you had numbers after that.

• 22:03Pablo Torre?

  You know what happened to the money? They're not counting the marketing dollars against their valuation is because they're just spending it all.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Right, that special, I forget what they called it.

• 22:11Pablo Torre?

  It's amazing. They made up an acronym.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  An acronym, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:13Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the, the point being that I fully agree and have reported that the money goes in from Balmer and others, and the money goes out almost immediately.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Immediately, right?

• 22:22Pablo Torre?

  It's crazy.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  But think about that. Think about that, right? So if all of this.

• 22:25Pablo Torre?

  Which is to say that, of course, when it comes to Kawhi, right? The question is, okay, why did they?

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Why did they even do the deal?

• 22:33Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Why did they even do the deal?

• 22:34Pablo Torre?

  And I think we're, we're circling a question for which the only rational explanation is that it wasn't in Aspiration's interest to do it. It was in someone else's.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  That's, that's, this is where we disagree. None of this has anything to do with Aspiration's best interest.

• 22:49Pablo Torre?

  That's what I mean. That's what I'm saying.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  None of it. None of it. No, I'm taking.

• 22:51Pablo Torre?

  I agree. It's a terrible deal for Aspiration.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  No, Joe Sandberg only cares about Joe Sandberg.

• 22:55Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Joe Sandberg doesn't.

• 22:57Pablo Torre?

  Well, no, no, hold on. I want, so Joe Sandberg benefits if Aspiration goes public at a two plus billion valuation.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Of course, of course. But in order, but he also needs to survive because cash flow wise, he is toast. And he knows the company is toast because even his.

• 23:11Pablo Torre?

  Yes, he needs to raise money perpetually because the money is coming in and going out.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  That's what Churney said, right? He needs to make, raise money perpetually. And what did he say to Churney? I'm gonna kill you because you don't even know what I have to do to do all this stuff, right?

• 23:23Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:24Pablo Torre?

  And, and we're fast forwarding the timeline, but yes.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  This whole thing is only about Joe Sandberg and him trying to stay out of jail.

• 23:29Pablo Torre?

  It's about Joe Sandberg trying to get Aspiration to cash in on a two plus billion dollar SPAC.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:36Pablo Torre?

  That's his.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Right. And that's what I, that's what I wrote. That's what I've been writing.

• 23:41Pablo Torre?

  Oh, no, no. And, and by the way.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  And you didn't mention that at all in your first podcast.

• 23:43Pablo Torre?

  Episode one, episode one, we did all this.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  You mentioned the SPAC, you mentioned SPAC, but you didn't, you didn't tie it back to him just trying to stay out of jail, but it doesn't matter.

• 23:50Pablo Torre?

  No, no, no. I, I disagree. I think Chat G P T may be doing me a little bit of an injustice in terms of the summaries it's presented to you.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  I got the transcript somewhere, but anyways.

• 23:57Pablo Torre?

  And that's what I mean. But look, what I want to say is when they get to April, they sign Kawhi, he's due the first payment at the end of June, and they pay him in July.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  All of Balmer's money is gone.

• 24:07Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Gone, right? Now, you would think.

• 24:10Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  You would think if there was a deal that was made between Ballmer and anybody, anybody, anybody with half a brain would say, hey, look, we've got this deal with Ballmer. For whatever reason, I know what the reason is. You don't have to understand. This is Sandberg talking, right?

• 24:26Pablo Torre?

  Now, do you?

• 24:26Speaker 01

  You would set aside that money.

• 24:28Pablo Torre?

  No question.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Okay, there you go.

• 24:29Pablo Torre?

  But, but do you agree that Joe Sandberg is also somebody who maybe isn't as smart as he thought he was?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  I don't know or care. All I know.

• 24:36Pablo Torre?

  But I guess the point is there can be some mixture, as always, of cleverness and incompetence.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  There can be a lot of mixtures of a lot of things, but you don't have proof one way or the other.

• 24:45Pablo Torre?

  Hold on, hold on, hold on. We're gonna, we're gonna get there. The question here, I asked you, was, sir, why do they never announce this deal at all? And so we're now in the weeds and that's okay?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, because you're trying to make that a big deal to show it's a no-show job, right?

• 24:56Pablo Torre?

  It's just inexplicable.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  No, it's not relevant.

• 24:59Pablo Torre?

  It's inexplicable.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  It is.

• 25:00Pablo Torre?

  It's the most, why would?

• 25:00Speaker 01

  No, it's very explicable. If you've ever done marketing, if you've ever worked in a company that's.

• 25:05Pablo Torre?

  So why for two years, let's give it two years, did they never mention it?

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Because they changed business and they brought in a new CEO.

• 25:11Pablo Torre?

  April, May, June, July?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  October, by October.

• 25:14Pablo Torre?

  October, November, December.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  So I, I gave you the first hit, right? First of all.

• 25:19Pablo Torre?

  I'm just saying that's a, that's a year.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Let's walk through it. Let's walk through it, right? Rule number one of marketing, if you're making one big announcement, you don't step on it with another announcement of any.

• 25:28Pablo Torre?

  How many months does it take for a bit of breathing room?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  You'd find out, right? By the time.

• 25:32Pablo Torre?

  Is it one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12?

• 25:35Speaker 01

  There's more. It's not about that. You're trying to game it, but it's not like that.

• 25:38Pablo Torre?

  That's a lot of months we're in.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  No, no, because April 30th, right? Uh, I'm sorry, March 30th, when they signed and announced the Red Sox deal, big deal, right? Da-da-da-da-da. So you don't step on that. Okay, so the question is how many months? By the time they got to, I'm trying to think when they actually changed their business model, but it was prior October, because that's when they let Churney go and that's when they brought in Olivia, right? But they had already.

• 26:02Pablo Torre?

  Olivia Obrecht, the follow-up CEO.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, the numbers were already there, as you saw in the, the S4, that they were making their money in business to business. They were getting killed, destroyed, had no upside whatsoever on their consumer business. So it wouldn't be the first time in the history of marketing where you sign somebody to do something, pivoted in your business and decided not to use.

• 26:26Pablo Torre?

  So I want to add a little bit of texture because. They signed him to a deal, again, that is four times larger than everyone else combined, who is like a zillion times more famous.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  You keep on going to that as if it's a reflection of some insidious, you know, effort. But it's not relevant at all. You keep using it, but it's not relevant at all.

• 26:44Pablo Torre?

  Because of course it is, Mark. Because it speaks to why exactly this deal was specifically the way it was constructed. It reflects an intent from someone.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  No, the businesses were different.

• 26:58Pablo Torre?

  So I just gotta jump in here to clarify something about the timeline here. Because the business of aspiration, which Mark was just alluding to, was not meaningfully different in April 2022, when Aspiration signed Kawhi Leonard to this top-secret $28 million no-show endorsement deal from what the business of aspiration was in September of 2021, when they signed this 300-plus-million-dollar founding sponsorship deal with the Clippers. In fact, that Clippers deal reflected this pivot that Mark is trying to say happened after the KL2 Aspire LLC deal was brokered.

• 27:38Pablo Torre?

  But that deal, the Clipper deal, was the embodiment, actually, of this pivot. It was the thing that was designed to draw attention to it, as Steve Ballmer himself announced at Clippers Media Day in September of 2021 with, you know, a French accent of his own.

• 27:58Speaker 06

  The pièce de résistance, as we went through this, is when we had a chance to really sit down and meet the folks from Aspiration. Joe Samberg, who runs Aspiration's here, will talk to you a little bit more about their company. We can talk about our partnership. But to have our first founding partner be a company that focuses in on providing services to consumers and businesses to reduce or even go negative on their own carbon footprints was a great thing.

• 28:32Pablo Torre?

  We played that clip in episode one, by the way. Which I do strongly encourage you to go back and listen to at some point. At least because we also established in that episode that the top secret no show $28 million endorsement deal with Kawhi Leonard was also about this pivot, the carbon offsets. As one particular deliverable in this very deliberately structured contract that we had read indicated.

• 28:59Speaker 07

  That Leonard has to be available and participate with company to create an annual program in support of the company's reforestation program.

• 29:07Pablo Torre?

  Oh, this one's good.

• 29:08Speaker 07

  With a tie to calculating Leonard's carbon footprint, given his annual schedule of events and travel. Boy, I'd love to see that.

• 29:16Pablo Torre?

  Well, it's hard because it didn't happen.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  I thought you were gonna say that was the one thing he did do.

• 29:23Pablo Torre?

  And so if you want even more of our analysis of Aspiration's carbon offsets business with the Clippers, and even more also on the flow of funds from Steve Ballmer to Aspiration, which was largely inspired by our first conversation on this show with Mark Cuban, that stuff happens to be in part four of this series, just in case you're curious. But I do want to return us now to the argument that I was in the middle of having with our special guest.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  When a business is thinking it's going to be profitable and it's operating like a normal business, it's one thing. And then when the owner, the main guy, goes and borrows money again fraudulently and all of a sudden their business is no longer a good operating business.

• 30:07Pablo Torre?

  Let's say you didn't like, you had immediate buyer's remorse and you were like, whoa, we just paid this guy four times more than the biggest stars in Hollywood combined and we don't want to use him anymore. Shouldn't you at least say, we did it, so you get something?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  No, because then you look like a [bleep] moron.

• 30:23Pablo Torre?

  I mean, I think and fear that that might have happened anyway.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but they're trying to survive, right? You don't announce that you signed a guy that you, and by the way.

• 30:33Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so can I?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  They ended up paying him less than they paid those celebrities.

• 30:38Pablo Torre?

  How do you know that?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Because he's only been paid, he only was paid twice.

• 30:42Pablo Torre?

  That I have reported so far.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  No, that anybody, that's anywhere, if you back, go back on the numbers.

• 30:47Pablo Torre?

  Do you have sources that tell you that he got paid more than what I've reported?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  At most, so let's just do the math.

• 30:51Pablo Torre?

  Well, the bankruptcy filing says he's owed 7 million.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:53Pablo Torre?

  The deal was 28.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:55Pablo Torre?

  And so somewhere between the 3.5 that I've reported in 2022, and that is a big gulf.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  No, right, so what happens is, the 28 million, when they, the day that they go bankrupt, anything past that, or the day they file.

• 31:09Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, so wipe off the last year.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  So wipe, so that's 21.

• 31:12Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Right, so that's 7, now that's down to 14, right? If there wasn't any other conversation or anything, so at most.

• 31:19Pablo Torre?

  Do you have information that there was conversation about that?

• 31:21Speaker 01

  About the remaining dollars, no.

• 31:24Pablo Torre?

  I just don't think we can definitively say, based on the evidence, that he got paid only 3.5 million dollars.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  But think of it this way, right? 16 potential payments. You only knew about 2 of them. And one of them, from your first reporting, right? You had tied specifically to Ballmer. But we know Ballmer's money was all gone by the time the agreement was even signed. So you went out and made this assertion about Ballmer without knowing that the money wasn't even available to pay.

• 31:54Pablo Torre?

  We had 7 sources, but I want to go past that because you don't believe the sources, that's okay.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  But the 7 sources was the guy with the, the, the, the, whatever, modulated voice, right?

• 32:02Pablo Torre?

  One of the finance department employees who was interviewed by the federal government, who's pointing me to documents that have been verified by every single other source and documentation.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  He works in the accounts payable department or in the finance department.

• 32:13Pablo Torre?

  I think it's easy to dismiss the sources and I can't possibly convince you otherwise, that's okay.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  But it's not even just about dismissing, it's just not enough. You just [BLEEP] on a guy's reputation by having some guy in the AP department who's tried to tie it.

• 32:26Pablo Torre?

  Mark, Mark, Mark, Mark.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Your guy said, your guy said, everybody knew, it was common knowledge that this was circumvent of the sour.

• 32:32Pablo Torre?

  In the department, in which they had to make payments to Kawhi Leonard, that no one could explain, there was talk about.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  It's the accounts payable department!

• 32:41Pablo Torre?

  Mark, you don't know who these people are and I wish you would stop, I just, it's, it's just, we can speculate.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  I can tell by the form that you showed in, in your first podcast.

• 32:49Pablo Torre?

  We have over 3,000 pages of documents, there are a lot of forms.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but what you showed, what you show was just an accounts payable ledger. That's all.

• 32:58Pablo Torre?

  We have documents that we can get to, and I want to.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  I see a folder.

• 33:01Pablo Torre?

  You see a folder. So we're, I want to get to the folder, Mark. You keep on preventing me from getting to the folder.

• 33:14Pablo Torre?

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• 34:53Pablo Torre?

  Have you talked to Steve Ballmer about this?

• 34:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 34:55Pablo Torre?

  The first piece of paper in this is something that people have pointed out to me a lot. I just want to make sure that because you're saying you're not just shilling for Steve Ballmer here, that you are not in fact this meme.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Oh, you busted me. Yes, that's me.

• 35:09Pablo Torre?

  Are you familiar with this meme?

• 35:10Speaker 01

  No, I'm not.

• 35:11Pablo Torre?

  You're familiar with a poo from The Simpsons jumping in front of another person behind a...

• 35:16Speaker 01

  No, I only know the episode that I did.

• 35:17Pablo Torre?

  And it says billionaires, jumping in front of other billionaires.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  I only know the episode I deal with.

• 35:21Pablo Torre?

  I'm the criminal with the gun.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  You gotta watch in season 20, the episode with the billionaires handshake. Oh, yeah, three points, big three and a big D for the big C, Mark Cuban, that's me. Who is that man? And why isn't his enthusiasm being punished?

• 35:37Pablo Torre?

  That's Mark Cuban, sir. He's the most flamboyant owner in the league.

• 35:42Pablo Torre?

  Do you think the Clippers knew that Kawhi had this deal with Aspiration?

• 35:46Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't, I don't know. I mean, it wasn't the first deal that he signed with a Clipper sponsor, so I don't know.

• 35:52Pablo Torre?

  Right. The Clippers knew about the previous one, the honey deal, which was the jersey patch. Why would they not know about this one?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  I don't know one way or the other.

• 36:01Pablo Torre?

  Would you have known? If you were the owner of a team and your most important player signed a deal with...

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Not necessarily, but probably.

• 36:07Pablo Torre?

  Probably, yeah.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Possibly.

• 36:09Pablo Torre?

  I think at some point, right? If you could just speculate, like, when would they have known, at the very least?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  That they had a deal? I don't know. I mean, maybe the CEO would know before Ballmer would know. Yeah, before Ballmer would know. Because that's typically how I would find out. I wouldn't get a list of deals or anything like that.

• 36:27Pablo Torre?

  Sure.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  I would find out when someone said, hey, you know, would you say hi and take a picture with so and so? We signed a deal with them. That's typically when I would know. Now, the bigger sponsor with Aspiration, I would know about, obviously.

• 36:37Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. Right. So we agree on that, I think. Yeah, so Steve Ballmer says that he introduced, of course...

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:43Pablo Torre?

  Kawhi's camp to Aspiration.

• 36:46Speaker 06

  The introduction got made, and then they were off to the races on their own.

• 36:51Pablo Torre?

  So at some point, the introduction is made, and then the question is, when does the curiosity arise? I wonder what happened to that?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Never.

• 37:00Pablo Torre?

  Never what?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  I've had sponsors that works with us, "Hey, can you connect me to Dirk's guy, to Luca's people?"

• 37:05Pablo Torre?

  But you said for the founding sponsor of this level?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  No, that's for me on a $300 million deal, I'm knowing about it. Like, when we did Chime, I know about it.

• 37:13Pablo Torre?

  Of course.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  But anything that came across, like, I couldn't tell you, like, Luca, Luca's people would, you know, talk about certain deals.

• 37:19Pablo Torre?

  So you think it's possible that Luca had a side deal with Chime and you wouldn't know about it?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would have no idea. I wouldn't care.

• 37:25Pablo Torre?

  You wouldn't care?

• 37:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 37:26Pablo Torre?

  What if you were aware that the camp of the guy who signed the deal had a history of allegedly asking for things that the rules don't allow?

• 37:33Speaker 01

  I don't care. I mean, I'm not involved in it at all.

• 37:36Pablo Torre?

  You don't care about that?

• 37:36Speaker 01

  I'm not involved in it at all.

• 37:37Pablo Torre?

  Well, I know that that's the position, but the question is personally, and in terms of just being honest, wouldn't you have curiosity, "I wonder if that deal is gonna help me or potentially humiliate me publicly?"

• 37:48Speaker 01

  No. The only time I really inserted myself in those types of situations was if I thought it was a product that was not good for Mavs fans. And our people would come to me and say, "Hey, we think you might have questions about this. You know, it's a supplement deal, or it's, you know, a sports drink deal that's doing something funky." That's the only time I'd get involved. And the salesperson would say, "Is it okay for us to go after these guys?" Do I follow up with that afterwards? No, we have a CEO who does all this stuff.

• 38:12Pablo Torre?

  Sure, but I'm curious, based on that, what you think about how Lawrence Frank, the Clippers president of basketball operations, answered this line of yes or no questions at Media Day?

• 38:21Speaker 03

  Has Dennis Robertson, Kawhi's uncle, ever asked for any extra benefits that wouldn't be allowable under the NBA seller cap directly to you? There's been a lot coming out about his asks. Yeah, look, Dennis knows the rules, Kawhi knows the rules, Mitch Frankel knows the rules,

• 38:36Speaker 01

  and we know the rules.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Is that a yes or a no, though? Yes, we all know the rules. Yeah, I mean, he's doing what he's supposed to do, right? Look, have I ever been asked for [BLEEP] that not legit? Yeah, of course. You know, do I do it? No, right? That's just the rule. But in terms of the business deals, that's why you have a CEO. Sid Marshall did 99% of the Chime deal.

• 39:01Pablo Torre?

  Oh, sure. Look, and I think there are, obviously, the reason the president of basketball ops is asked that is because, of course, it's not just Steve alone in an alley. This is a deal that, when I said, "Who negotiated this?", I'm like, "I think there are more than just Joe Sandberg and Steve Ballmer in the conversation."

• 39:16Speaker 01

  No chance.

• 39:17Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  No chance, none, zero.

• 39:20Pablo Torre?

  That what?

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Being involved in the negotiation of a contract for a player.

• 39:24Pablo Torre?

  No, no, no. Look, the theory of the case here, based on my reporting, is Steve Ballmer turns it over to people who get into the actual nuts and bolts of the deals. The reason I bring that up is because, of course, Steve Ballmer said the same thing to ESPN. So, since 2019, has Dennis Robinson asked you for any other benefits that would not be,

• 39:44Speaker 06

  that would be in violation of the league rules? They know the rules. They, meaning Kawhi and his representatives, including, including his uncle. We know the rules. And if anything's not clear, we remind ourselves what the rules are. And we make absolutely clear, we're going to abide by those rules. And they understand them as well. And it's important for them to abide by them, which they have.

• 40:08Pablo Torre?

  But can you translate what is not being said here? It means what? What is Lawrence Frank not willing to say that you are personally?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  All I said was there have been players, not even agents, normally somebody affiliated with the player, a relative or whatever, that asked for something, something, right?

• 40:25Pablo Torre?

  No doubt, no doubt, no doubt. And now, look, I want to-

• 40:26Speaker 01

  But to be clear, to be clear.

• 40:28Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not saying that, you don't have knowledge that you're admitting to about that.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  No, I'm just saying, I didn't really-

• 40:33Pablo Torre?

  I'm merely translating the-

• 40:33Speaker 01

  The business people do their business, right?

• 40:35Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  There's no reason for basketball to get involved. I tell them not to get involved.

• 40:39Pablo Torre?

  Of course. But according to the reporting, and this is out of Toronto, and the Lakers, of course, Kawhi's camp was explicitly asking for things.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then, go back to the honey deal.

• 40:47Pablo Torre?

  No-show deals, equity in companies.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  So why wasn't the honey deal a no-show deal?

• 40:50Pablo Torre?

  Because that was, they're, they're, by the way, they signed some deals that passed muster. The reason it wasn't a no-show deal was Kawhi did ads, Kawhi was announced as a honey sponsor. And?

• 41:02Speaker 01

  What? That's it? But they asked him to do all that. You have no proof that he was even asked to do anything.

• 41:09Pablo Torre?

  So, so, just to clarify here, what does it matter? If Kawhi was asked by aspiration to do anything.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  It's everything, right?

• 41:18Pablo Torre?

  But is it, but whose side does it help if they never asked? Just out of curiosity.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  It doesn't help either side. It's a failure on the part of aspiration. That's all.

• 41:26Pablo Torre?

  Certainly.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  But that's it.

• 41:28Pablo Torre?

  But why wouldn't?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  So you, there are multiple deals that Kawhi did that.

• 41:33Pablo Torre?

  He did stuff and they announced it. This is why I keep on asking the beginning of this episode, what the question is. Why was this one a deal where it was never announced and he never did anything?

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Because aspiration is a [bleep] up company.

• 41:42Pablo Torre?

  Okay, great.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  And, and they were turning over people left and right. And their founder, the money guy, the guy who kept on bringing in the money, was a huge Clippers fan. He sat front row all the time.

• 41:55Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  He would bring his girlfriend. He would do all this stuff. He would get all the accoutrements. Is that French?

• 42:00Pablo Torre?

  Well, he and Steve.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Is that the right French word?

• 42:02Pablo Torre?

  That's a great French. And there is a certain je ne sais quoi about the dynamic between Steve and Joe.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  It's not, no, put aside, put aside Steve. It has nothing to do with Steve.

• 42:13Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so, so I wanna, I wanna sort of advance the ball here a bit because aspiration, which is a team sponsor and a company that Ballmer personally invested $50 million into, that established and not in dispute. I wanna go back to the team sponsor dynamic because you mentioned Honey and Chime. And another one that came up brings us back to this story about how, you know, the Clippers famously ended up keeping DeAndre Jordan, the center that they had, from you. This is 2015 and it turns out, and this is just me going through the time machine here, it turns out that in 2015, you were asked about this in a very funny setting.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 42:50Pablo Torre?

  It was onstage during a talk you gave at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 42:55Pablo Torre?

  This was the day after. This is July 9, 2015, and it sounded like this.

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Now, the, the sports fans among us, and I know there's a bunch here, know that you had kind of a tough, tough night last night with, uh... So this week on Shark Tank.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Without going, without rehashing all the details of the DeAndre Jordan commitment. Oh, you had to say his name, okay. From a, from a leadership standpoint, when you have a setback, when you have a tough day, what do you say to your people? What do you say to the fans? The conversations we've had today, that it's over. You know, there's nothing you can do about it. You, you think for a second, is there anything I can change? You think for another second, what have I learned so I can do it differently next time? Um, and then you move forward and say, what are our options? You know, I'm, I'm a big believer, you have to re-earn your business every single day. You have to look to see whether or not.

• 43:45Pablo Torre?

  I just like that you were talking about DeAndre Jordan in front of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who were in the audience at the Presidential Center there in Dallas. Why do you think I'm bringing this up now?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  No idea.

• 43:54Pablo Torre?

  Okay. I'm bringing it up because Steve Ballmer was fined $250,000 for caps or convention.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Right, you mentioned to me, yeah.

• 43:59Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. Reportedly because his team offered a marketing side deal for DeAndre Jordan through Lexus. Would it be surprising for you to learn that Lexus was not only a team sponsor, but also, like Aspiration, a founding partner of the Intuit Dome?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:12Pablo Torre?

  So I'm just saying, like, team sponsors being used in these attempted ways to circumvent the cap against people like you, his competitors, he's done it before.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  So, but why, you're trying to make it sound like it's something he does all the time.

• 44:24Pablo Torre?

  Well, he's been caught doing it in 2015.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Right, so why didn't he do it with all the other sponsors?

• 44:28Pablo Torre?

  Investigated 2019.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  How many sponsors do you think they have?

• 44:30Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I just think he does it for the ones that he really cares about.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, so the big ones, but he didn't care enough about Kawhi with Honey in 2020, before then, when he could have taken care of all of this.

• 44:40Pablo Torre?

  Oh, so, so let me, let me just do some basic math here, because you raised a really good question about like, why this now in the timeline? So, the Raptors, during 2019 free agency, I'm just looking at the numbers here, right? So, they can offer a max of $190 million over five years. The Clippers and the Lakers could only offer $141 million.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  What was the year?

• 45:01Pablo Torre?

  Over four years, 2019.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  2019, okay.

• 45:03Pablo Torre?

  This is the big, Kawhi just won the title, free agency. The thing that got investigated by the NBA.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:08Pablo Torre?

  Because the Raptors and Lakers groups complained. 190, 141. Do you know what 190 minus 141 is?

• 45:15Speaker 01

  With taxes, no.

• 45:18Pablo Torre?

  A very Texan answer. 190 minus 141 is 49?

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. You're trying to say the numbers match up.

• 45:24Pablo Torre?

  The number, the deal is 48. It's 48.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, okay, let's just go right there, right?

• 45:30Pablo Torre?

  Please.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  So, when you did episode one,

• 45:33Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  you thought it was 28. You didn't know it was 48, right?

• 45:36Pablo Torre?

  I didn't have the evidence that I have now for the 20 million dollars.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. So now you're backtracking to try to make those numbers fill, right? But that's not the point.

• 45:43Pablo Torre?

  No, no, no.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  The point, the point is when you went in episode one,

• 45:47Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  and you thought it was 28 million dollars.

• 45:50Pablo Torre?

  It is, on the endorsement deal, 28 million dollars.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Okay, that's not where I'm going, right?

• 45:53Pablo Torre?

  You got the paperwork, yeah.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Right, you got the paperwork, right? So it's 28 million dollars, and you tied the 50 million dollars from Ballmer to say this is what was being used to, to pay the 28, correct?

• 46:05Pablo Torre?

  I was saying Ballmer put in 50,

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:07Pablo Torre?

  Kawhi was getting out 28.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  So, I don't know the French word. So, eras whatever, right? Then, that one must be connected to the other.

• 46:18Pablo Torre?

  No, I'm saying that based on the-

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Otherwise, what was the whole point of the episode?

• 46:21Pablo Torre?

  Well, the whole point of the episode is that we connected-

• 46:23Speaker 01

  If Ballmer wasn't paying that 50 million in order to pay Kawhi, what's the point of the episode?

• 46:29Pablo Torre?

  We just gotta remember that we had so much more evidence in the episode.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  But you made the point, did you not?

• 46:33Pablo Torre?

  I'm trying to simplify it down in the conversation that we're having now.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  I'm just going back to episode one, when all this started.

• 46:39Pablo Torre?

  In episode one, it was 28. I had not mentioned the 20.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Because you didn't know about it at the time?

• 46:43Pablo Torre?

  I could not report it, absolutely.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Besides-

• 46:45Pablo Torre?

  But, but the point being that now, we have the proof, it was-

• 46:48Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, not the point. Right, the point is you tied-

• 46:51Pablo Torre?

  49 to 48.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  You tied, no-

• 46:52Pablo Torre?

  Is that a coincidence to you? Is it, yes or no? Is it a coincidence?

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:56Pablo Torre?

  It is?

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:57Pablo Torre?

  That's a hell of a physical-

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Because you do, no one looks at the gross delta as the number when it comes to choosing between one team versus another if it's based off of economics. Nobody. So, Texas teams know, Florida teams know, that you have, Oklahoma teams know, you have a state tax advantage.

• 47:14Pablo Torre?

  I get the difference that these are not, of course, what the take-home pay is gonna be, depending on where your team is based.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Is that what matters?

• 47:20Pablo Torre?

  Of course it does, but I'm saying, in terms of how this got roughed out, I just, I'm pointing to the question of, there is a difference of 40- Forty-nine, the deal was very coincidentally forty-eight, and it was also in the way that Kawhi's camp was asking. No-show deals and also equity.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, no, you're putting words in their, in their mouth.

• 47:38Pablo Torre?

  That's according to the reporting from Toronto Star.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  No, no, no, that's in Toronto. That has nothing to do with LA.

• 47:43Pablo Torre?

  But Kawhi's camp asked the Raptors that in 2019. The Raptors were like, we're not doing that. He asked that of the Lakers reportedly. Lakers were like, we're not doing that. And in 2021, guess what happens? Forty-eight billion dollars, a million off from the forty-nine in exactly that fashion.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  It's okay. Let's, let's segregate two different things here. Like I said when I first came on, I don't care if Steve is guilty or not, right? It's better for the Mavericks if he is, right? My issue is when you came out with podcast one, you had nothing.

• 48:11Pablo Torre?

  That's not true.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  It's very true, right? And you tied the things you tried to get, the things you tried to tie together.

• 48:17Pablo Torre?

  Plus three thousand pages of documents.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Can sources be wrong?

• 48:20Pablo Torre?

  One hundred percent. In this case, they've been, but they've been, but they've been proven right for now six episodes.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. You want, you make them appear to be right. Okay, but let's just go back, let's just go back to what caught my attention.

• 48:33Pablo Torre?

  Even from you, you're not even factually correcting me. You're just bringing out other stuff.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  No, no, I am factually correcting you because you tied specifically the fifty million dollar investment.

• 48:42Pablo Torre?

  Fifty million in.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  To twenty-eight million.

• 48:44Pablo Torre?

  Twenty-eight million out.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Right, but they weren't tied at all. They were not connected in the least bit.

• 48:49Pablo Torre?

  Of course they were.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:51Pablo Torre?

  I had seven sources saying this was for salary caps or convention. That is what.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Then why was the money not paid to him?

• 48:58Pablo Torre?

  It was a company run by a clever, but ultimately criminal co-founder.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Oh, so when it comes to supporting your facts, you can use the fact that he's a criminal.

• 49:07Pablo Torre?

  I've been using that from the start. It's the fact.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  No, but it's not. You're using it only to subs, to, to.

• 49:13Pablo Torre?

  It's just reality. I'm merely describing reality.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Your first podcast was very clear.

• 49:18Pablo Torre?

  We have to agree to disagree, I think, on what the first podcast was, but I'm happy to.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Let me just finish and tell me if I'm wrong, right? The first podcast, podcast said fifty million dollars, which was earmarked specifically.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  For the 28 million of quiet, yes or no?

• 49:34Pablo Torre?

  Ear mark specifically? No, I said 50 in, 28 out.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Right, so isn't that saying earmark?

• 49:41Pablo Torre?

  I mean, look, Mark, I can refer you, generally speaking, out of journalistic caution, to the definition of how one does provide a pass through.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Because it's fungible now, but why would, so the point is, you're coming out with this thing that's really, you know, just destroying a man's credibility and integrity.

• 49:57Pablo Torre?

  It's reporting based on-

• 49:58Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. You knew what was at stake for Ballmer. You knew what was-

• 50:02Pablo Torre?

  100%, we made it very clear.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Right, but you said 50 in, 28 out.

• 50:08Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  That looks like you're tying-

• 50:10Pablo Torre?

  In a deal that never got announced.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Of course not- Put aside, put aside-

• 50:12Pablo Torre?

  The dots were connected by the seven sources that I have.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  You, if the sources, okay-

• 50:19Pablo Torre?

  I'm just saying, we can, we can, we have to disagree that the sources are meaningful.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Mark, even a criminal, criminal, would know, pay the 50, if you're getting the 50 to keep this guy happy, for a circumvention that he needs for his business, make sure he gets paid on time, at least the first time.

• 50:37Pablo Torre?

  Well, I just want to make clear that like what I am reporting is that Steve Ballmer did not know at the outset that he was gonna get victimized by Joe Samper.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  No, of course, that's not the point. That's not the point. The point is-

• 50:47Pablo Torre?

  The question is, why was it that the payments were late? Right?

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Or not prepaid, or not prepaid, or not done something-

• 50:54Pablo Torre?

  And the carbon credit stuff we did in the episode before.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you didn't do the margin dollars, but anyways, it's okay.

• 50:59Pablo Torre?

  I want to get to this thing, okay?

• 51:03Pablo Torre?

  Oh, Mark, Mark, Mark.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Papa, papa, papa.

• 51:06Pablo Torre?

  Um, I am enjoying this, by the way.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 51:08Pablo Torre?

  Okay, good. The thing that I'm trying to get to here, though, is that Aspiration truly was like horrifically run. Financially, they were toast, and I want to show you actually just like, so this other document in here, you know so much more about business and forms than me. So this is a series of disclosures that Aspiration had to present to potential investors, and it lists a number of very real problems.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you talked about this before.

• 51:34Pablo Torre?

  If you can just like-

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, these are all in Schedule 310, yeah.

• 51:38Pablo Torre?

  So the company is in default, is what this is on the first page?

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is all the [BLEEP] that are false.

• 51:41Pablo Torre?

  What does default mean? Just for people who don't know what that means. Seriously?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  I'll let you define it.

• 51:45Pablo Torre?

  Okay, it means they're broke. KPMG-

• 51:47Speaker 01

  It doesn't mean they're broke, right? It just means they're late and there's a good chance that they won't be able to-

• 51:51Pablo Torre?

  That's why I asked. Broke ass is the more colloquial.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  So like, but here's a good example of what you were trying to.

• 51:58Pablo Torre?

  No, I want to list what it is.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Right, but here's.

• 52:02Pablo Torre?

  Pick whatever you want.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  KPMG resigned as the company's independent auditor. So while on one hand, that's a red flag, right?

• 52:08Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, the independent auditor was like.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  They didn't give why, yeah, they didn't say why, right? And that's.

• 52:12Pablo Torre?

  Why do you think in retrospect, they might have done that?

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they couldn't, because Joe Samper was doing all these round trip deals and they couldn't.

• 52:19Pablo Torre?

  Because the company was in default and otherwise facing litigation and probes by the government.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  They couldn't confirm all the.

• 52:25Pablo Torre?

  It was fishy, it was all fishy.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Whatever reasons they had.

• 52:28Pablo Torre?

  Whatever reasons KPMG had, yes.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  From an investor standpoint.

• 52:31Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  They just changed auditors.

• 52:33Pablo Torre?

  Okay, but it resigned, it didn't.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Again.

• 52:36Pablo Torre?

  They didn't change it.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  They resigned for.

• 52:38Pablo Torre?

  They lost their independent auditor.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  They didn't give a reason.

• 52:40Pablo Torre?

  So, so the company is in default, KPMG resigned as the company's independent auditor. The next page, schedule 3.11.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  The company is default, but let's say what it is. Inherent notes, inherent ends up being the company that acquired them after it was all said and done.

• 52:51Pablo Torre?

  They were this inherent was the senior lender.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:54Pablo Torre?

  Mark's reading. It's pretty bad, man.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  It does, this doesn't really say anything.

• 53:00Pablo Torre?

  The deep company is in default, I believe, I'll just back to it. There's some stuff on here that's pretty good.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I read this in the SEC.

• 53:07Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the company is in default.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Look, I get your point there. Why would somebody invest in a company that shows you this?

• 53:14Pablo Torre?

  Litigation, 8.7 million in damages alleged by Nanobank.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  There must be some ancillary thing, right?

• 53:18Pablo Torre?

  Claims of breach of loan, breach of the implied covenant of good faith.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  But you have to ask the same question.

• 53:23Pablo Torre?

  FINRA is conducting five inquiries.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 53:26Pablo Torre?

  SEC is conducting a review of the ESG representations, it's just.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  And what was the date, what was the date on these?

• 53:31Pablo Torre?

  Well, so, let me ask you this, because.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  What was the date, because it's important.

• 53:35Pablo Torre?

  No, it's in there, it's in there. If you were pitched to invest in this company at a $2 billion plus valuation.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't, first of all, they weren't, the investment wasn't at a $2 billion valuation. So there's.

• 53:45Pablo Torre?

  This one, this one, I'm saying, if you were, hypothetically, if you were presented with this at a $2 billion plus valuation.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  It wasn't a $2 billion valuation, you're pivoting, so here, if I was selling it on Shark Tank, right?

• 53:57Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  I would say, look, we went, we were aspiration bank and we screwed up. We were in the. Consumer business, we screwed up. We even paid money to endorsers that we didn't even use. That's how screwed up we were. But now I'm going to show you the P and L for our B to B business where we're selling carbon credits, higher margin, bigger deals, right? Which are the things that they

• 54:17Pablo Torre?

  Regime change, new CEO, getting rid of the old execs.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Right, so now let me show you a pro forma based off of just this business and excluding all the other business. The 2.3 billion dollar number is very misleading because that's only realized if it goes public with the SPAC.

• 54:34Pablo Torre?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  And if it doesn't go public, which is all about, all Churney cares about, right? That's why, not Churney, Samberg cares about, that's why he's lying. They do, but Churney's gone in a minute, right? Right, so this SPAC isn't going to happen, right?

• 54:50Pablo Torre?

  Oh yeah.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Joe knows it's not going to happen unless he pulls a rabbit.

• 54:53Pablo Torre?

  Well, at a certain point, it does. Well, but in this case, in this timeline, it's absolutely still what the goal is.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  You're right, no, the goal is still right because it's 21.

• 55:01Pablo Torre?

  Raise the money, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  It's 21, it's still, but the investment that they're making at that point in time isn't at the valuation of 2.3 until it converts.

• 55:10Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  And that was the point you missed before in your podcast, right?

• 55:12Pablo Torre?

  Okay, I know, I'm trying.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  So let me explain to you, right?

• 55:14Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  You're buying it lower, right? And you're getting a price, they had rolling closes all the time. That's why they would have a C1, C2, C4, C, you know, series closed, right? And that's why it was like confusing that Ballmer put in in September and Dennis Wong put in in December of 22 and then Ballmer puts in in March 23 because they had these things called rolling closes, right? So at that point, so there's basically two businesses here. Two businesses that are being sold, Shark Tank approach, right? The two businesses are, at the beginning, at this point in time, when everybody thinks the aspiration bank itself is going to happen and there's this SPAC merger going to happen. You're only going to invest if it's considerably lower than the 2.3 billion dollars.

• 56:00Pablo Torre?

  I see what you're saying.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Because you see that as the grand prize.

• 56:03Pablo Torre?

  But this is, but this thing, the reason I'm jumping in here is because this presentation, these disclosures were made to outside investors, 19 of them, according to court documents, who heard this pitch like you and said, "No, no, no." You would say to, to, to this Series of disclosures, no thanks.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't necessarily say that. I don't know what the pitch is. Companies pivot every day.

• 56:25Pablo Torre?

  So, so, so, let me put this in the timeline specifically because this was the raise in Q4 of 2022.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:34Pablo Torre?

  And so all that stuff is disclosed.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  So what happened in October of 2022?

• 56:37Pablo Torre?

  A lot of bad shit for aspiration, man.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  No, a lot of good shit for aspiration. A lot of good stuff.

• 56:43Pablo Torre?

  What was good about a company going into default that was losing its entire executive structure as employees were saying, are we gonna make payroll ever?

• 56:49Speaker 01

  They went to Katana.

• 56:50Pablo Torre?

  Katana?

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Katana, right?

• 56:52Pablo Torre?

  Katana.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  So, December 22, they changed and they were able to show a P and L based only off their B to B. They did, again, the, the execs that were pitching.

• 57:03Pablo Torre?

  But, but, but Mark, the, the reason why they were pivoting was because, um, the company as it existed was, of course, pardon my French, totally fucked. And so they were figuring out, okay.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 57:16Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I'm sorry. Now you're a big aspiration fan.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  No, I'm, you know, the more I got to know about Katana, the more I liked it. Katana, right? The more I liked it, right? So I could see.

• 57:25Pablo Torre?

  You liked, okay, very good.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Cause when you, look, the base numbers going back to September 30th of 2021 show their B to B business where they didn't waste all that money on marketing, right? Was, had a chance, had a chance.

• 57:38Pablo Torre?

  So for that reason, you're in?

• 57:40Speaker 01

  I at least would look at it, right?

• 57:42Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  But, not, not that I would invest in that business, but it's not unheard of for a company to pivot to a new business, have multiple lines of business.

• 57:51Pablo Torre?

  It's in fact the only thing left for this company to do is pivot. But the reason I'm saying is that because 19 outside investors looked at this and said, as aforementioned, hell no.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but.

• 58:02Pablo Torre?

  And so the question I have now is, since.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  You know how many people said no to Airbnb?

• 58:07Pablo Torre?

  Okay, but, but I guess.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Everybody, Federal Express, everybody.

• 58:10Pablo Torre?

  Of course, that's of course, an insane comparison to aspiration which went bankrupt and is embroiled in lots of fraud and humiliation. Airbnb, FedEx and so forth. But in this case, the question I have is just since my, since the first podcast, which you hated, came out on September 3rd. Have you communicated at all with the vice chairman of the Clippers, Dennis Wong?

• 58:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 58:31Pablo Torre?

  Okay. Dennis Wong is Steve Ballmer's close friend and college roommate, the one and only co-owner that Ballmer trusted of Equity and the Team. He also wound up being the only person who did not have money in aspiration, who saw these disclosures that I presented to you in December 22.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Not the only person.

• 58:46Pablo Torre?

  The only person who had never put in money into aspiration before.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Oh, that put in money in aspiration before.

• 58:51Pablo Torre?

  And said, you know what? I want a piece of this. This is the signature page for Dennis Wong that's attached to the same disclosures that I just handed you. That's what he saw. What you just saw is what he saw.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  But to your point, right? Now, let's think this through.

• 59:03Pablo Torre?

  Please.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  There were other investors, because we got to see the pictures.

• 59:07Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, they were all previously.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  The point is, right? The point is, those other two investors that invested around the same time as Dennis Wong, right? They, as best I can remember, so they also said, you know what? I like what I'm seeing in this pivot.

• 59:28Pablo Torre?

  But I do need to just take a quick beat here to clarify something that we had reported previously on the show.

• 59:35Pablo Torre?

  When it comes to the identities of the only other investors, the two other entities who gave aspiration money in December 2022 in that same Series C5 round, having been presented with that same exact set of disclosures and all of their bleakness as Clippers co-owner Dennis Wong. Because one of those two investors was aspiration board member Ibrahim Al-Hussein. The same guy who pleaded guilty to wire fraud in March 2025. The same guy who was the alleged co-conspirator of aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg. And the other investor was, yes, Joe Sandberg himself,

• 1:00:17Pablo Torre?

  who of course pleaded guilty to wire fraud in August of 2025.

• 1:00:24Pablo Torre?

  So the question I have is, those disclosures are the things that Dennis Wong signed off on, and Aspiration's quarterly payment to Kawhi Leonard was, at this point, more than two months late. Dennis Wong put in $1.99 million. He acquired 0.072% of the company in default, facing those problems, as aforementioned. Why do you think he put in that little money for that little equity?

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Maybe to make his daughter happy, his daughter worked there, right? Maybe to keep him alive, maybe to keep him, give him one more month, maybe they said...

• 1:01:00Pablo Torre?

  Do you think that that would save the balance sheets of Aspiration, $2 million? And by the way, lots of people came in and out of the company. I'm not here to interrogate them at the moment.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  So the people who went back to work there.

• 1:01:13Pablo Torre?

  But why would Dennis Wong put in specifically that little amount of money after $300 million had already been raised the year before?

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Because maybe that was a bridge loan.

• 1:01:21Pablo Torre?

  0.02.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Maybe it was a bridge amount, maybe they said, you know what, we gotta make this one payroll, right? And we have more money coming in. We have more money coming in after that, which turned out to be true. I get asked all the time...

• 1:01:33Pablo Torre?

  But this wasn't a loan, this was an investment.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Whatever it was, a bridge...

• 1:01:36Pablo Torre?

  It was an actual purchase agreement. It was a Series C5 preferred stock purchase agreement.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Right, I can't tell you how often I hear, right? Hey, we're close, right? We have this other money coming in, which turned out to be true, right? Because they ended up raising 68 million... Kind of, they raised 68...

• 1:01:53Pablo Torre?

  Just spoiler alert, the company is [bleeped].

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Well, no.

• 1:01:56Pablo Torre?

  We're getting to relive decisions with the benefit of hindsight, I admit.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Joe Sandberg is [bleeped]. Joe Sandberg is [bleeped].

• 1:02:04Pablo Torre?

  The company, literally, is in default at the time that this payment is made.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Joe Sandberg is the one...

• 1:02:08Pablo Torre?

  And Aspiration needs to pivot to a totally different business.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what companies do, Pablo.

• 1:02:13Pablo Torre?

  But that is also a synonym for being [bleeped]. They filed for bankruptcy.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  So, okay. Why would a new CEO take the job of CEO?

• 1:02:21Pablo Torre?

  That's a great question for Olivia Albright. Great question.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Right. Why did she stay there for an extended period of time?

• 1:02:27Pablo Torre?

  But I want to ask about Dennis Wong. I don't care about Olivia at the moment.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we do care about Olivia.

• 1:02:30Pablo Torre?

  No, I get, but lots of people, lots of people either fell for or went eyes wide open in for a [BLEEP] scenario as described.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  But no, but see, no, no, no, no, no.

• 1:02:40Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Our mutual friend has been very clear that he didn't know that they were...

• 1:02:43Pablo Torre?

  He's not my friend. He is a source and I appreciate the distinction. Um, with the point being, and I, and I want to leave him to the side for a second. Because what Dennis Wong decided to do nine days before KL2 Aspire LLC finally, after months of delay, got paid 1.75, are you suggesting that is another coincidence?

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Look, there were 16 contractual payments. You have one payment that was in proximity to an investment.

• 1:03:11Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, the week before, after months of delay.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  After months of delay.

• 1:03:15Pablo Torre?

  I asked you the question, why would he put in 1.99 specifically? And your only response was, maybe he wanted to save the company, which doesn't add up.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:22Pablo Torre?

  Maybe he wanted to make his daughter happy. By the way, his daughter, according to people who worked with her, quote, "She 100% knew that the company was a sinking ship," end quote. Kawhi got paid 1.75 the day they laid off 20% of the staff.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's because they were pivoting. Of course, you're going to lay off staff. Look, you're trying to put everything in. Joe Sandberg is his own unique entity. Aspiration to people doing the work, the people that came every day believing. Yeah, they believed in the mission.

• 1:03:49Pablo Torre?

  And those are my sources for the record.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  But, and that's great, but they had no idea or understanding of why Joe Sandberg did what he did.

• 1:03:56Pablo Torre?

  I mean, what they did, though, was see, wire in and wire out knowledge in the finance department. Like, this is Dennis Wong's wire in, this is KL2's wire [BLEEP] the week before.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  This is bookkeeping [BLEEP].

• 1:04:07Pablo Torre?

  It's booking [BLEEP] literally the flow of funds. The question I have, though...

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Let me say this again, Paul.

• 1:04:13Pablo Torre?

  No, I, I hear you.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  16 payments.

• 1:04:16Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  16 contractual...

• 1:04:17Pablo Torre?

  But why this one?

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  16 contractual payments.

• 1:04:20Pablo Torre?

  Why this one, though? But I want to focus on...

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  You have one payment.

• 1:04:22Pablo Torre?

  But why is this one the one that Dennis Wong put in money nine days before to a degree that is inexplicable to everybody?

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Any, look, any payment that's going to be made is going to be within some X number of days.

• 1:04:37Pablo Torre?

  This was months late, Mark.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 1:04:38Pablo Torre?

  This payment to Kawhi was months late.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't know, maybe the...

• 1:04:41Pablo Torre?

  And nine days later, it got paid magically.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Who benefits the most from that payment?

• 1:04:47Pablo Torre?

  Anyone who wants Kawhi to finally get paid.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Uncle Dennis?

• 1:04:51Pablo Torre?

  Kawhi's camp, the Clippers are the two parties that I am constantly trying to-

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  So, as a-

• 1:05:00Pablo Torre?

  Link to the logic here in your brain.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  As someone who's had companies that have done well and poorly for a period and fortunately turned around, right, when you have a vendor that is calling you all the time, right? The squeaky wheel moves to the top. Did it cross your mind that the guy was just so annoying that they want-

• 1:05:21Pablo Torre?

  Yes, but lots of people weren't getting paid. Lots of clients were getting screwed, right? And they were all calling. And the question is, why did this guy get prioritized?

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Because maybe he was the squeakiest wheel, maybe because Joe Sandberg's a Clippers fan, maybe because Joe Sandberg would see Kawhi at games that he would go to, sitting on the front row or right on the court, wherever, I don't know exactly where he was sitting, right? And maybe he already had a relationship with Kawhi and he would be embarrassed next time because maybe Kawhi would say something. Uncle Dennis was going to those games, maybe Uncle Dennis was saying something specifically to Joe Sandberg. And that guy is saying, okay, we gotta pay this guy, you know? I'm the one raising money, I got more money coming in.

• 1:05:59Pablo Torre?

  It's just a very funny thing for the number one priority, according to my sources here, to be pay the guy doing nothing for us in a deal we've never announced.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  He's driving everything, he's the one raising all the money. He who raises money gets control.

• 1:06:14Pablo Torre?

  What does he benefit from in terms of this deal existing? And my theory has been consistent throughout, which is that he benefits because he preserves a relationship with Steve Ballmer in which his obligation-

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  So, the more I learned, so when I did the first podcast, I didn't really know all that much about Joe. So, it was interesting and thank you, deep research, right?

• 1:06:32Pablo Torre?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  So, it was interesting. This is a guy, what else was on Joe Sandberg's plate? What else was he doing?

• 1:06:39Pablo Torre?

  Please educate me.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  He was actively involved in politics.

• 1:06:43Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  He was one of the largest.

• 1:06:45Pablo Torre?

  These are the good guys, Mark. These are the Democrat donors, the biggest in California, some have said.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  Biggest in California, right? He's on the court. He's got a famous girlfriend, right, who's taken to games.

• 1:06:56Pablo Torre?

  She's a media personality.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And so his, his whole spiel, his only, if he collapses, if his image collapses.

• 1:07:05Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  His whole thing, taking over Blue Apron.

• 1:07:08Pablo Torre?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Like, all that stuff collapses.

• 1:07:10Pablo Torre?

  But it's so weird to prioritize the deal that no one knows about amid all the public pressure you're feeling.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  No, no, no, you're missing the whole point then. I'm not doing a good job explaining it.

• 1:07:18Pablo Torre?

  No, no, he has lots of things that he's trying to keep the plate spinning simultaneously.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  It's not just spinning, it's his whole image.

• 1:07:24Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  He's selling, that's what criminals do. They sell their image.

• 1:07:28Pablo Torre?

  But I suppose what I'm pointing out to.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  And if the one guy that you see in a uniform or at that point in time in 21, well, I guess he didn't sign it till 22.

• 1:07:36Pablo Torre?

  Well, he didn't play in 21, 22.

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  Right. No, that's what I said. He didn't sign, and they didn't sign it till 22, right?

• 1:07:41Pablo Torre?

  April.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  And they signed April of 22, right? And so that season starts in November, right, of, or October, November.

• 1:07:49Pablo Torre?

  Yes, the 22 play three season.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Because we're talking about him getting paid in December, right? And so now he's seeing him at the games again. The guys got from, they've got a big suite where they entertain.

• 1:07:58Pablo Torre?

  Yes, they do. This is at Staples at the time.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Right. They've got the, the seats on the floor.

• 1:08:02Pablo Torre?

  Yep.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  He's probably seen him in the tunnel before and or after every game.

• 1:08:07Pablo Torre?

  Sure.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  And he's seeing Uncle Dennis, and I'm sure Uncle Dennis is in his ear, and Uncle Dennis is.

• 1:08:12Pablo Torre?

  I fully agree that Joe Sandberg was essential to the story of why Kawhi was getting paid.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  So let me just ask you a question.

• 1:08:19Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, please.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  If you're Joe Sandberg, which is more impactful to your life? Paying Kawhi Leonard or paying some random vendor?

• 1:08:28Pablo Torre?

  I would say that making sure that I paid Kawhi above and beyond, not a random vendor, but my other financial obligations is insane because he's returning zero ROI to my company.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  No, no, he's

• 1:08:42Pablo Torre?

  No, he's literally doing nothing. He's actually just net negative.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  You've got the wrong hat on, Pablo.

• 1:08:46Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I know, I know. You're talking about public pressure and I know you're talking about who's bothering me day to day.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, I'm talking about-

• 1:08:53Pablo Torre?

  If I'm Joe Sandberg about what is the actual health of my company? Why am I prioritizing somebody?

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:09:00Pablo Torre?

  Mark, the goal is to get to SPAC.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Right, right, but okay, by 2022-

• 1:09:04Pablo Torre?

  And so you need a functional company.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  So he's spiraling in 2022.

• 1:09:06Pablo Torre?

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  You gotta have a functioning company. So paying Kawhi 1.75 isn't going to change in functioning company. The 1.99 is not going to change whether it's functioning or not.

• 1:09:15Pablo Torre?

  You know what it would do, though? It would keep Uncle Dennis Robertson and Kawhi's camp happy.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  And it keeps, it keeps him from bothering Joe Sandberg.

• 1:09:22Pablo Torre?

  Who else might be bothered if there were payments that were late?

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Joe Sandberg.

• 1:09:27Pablo Torre?

  What about, I don't know, potentially, according to my reporting, the Los Angeles Clippers? You think that could be a pressure?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  I mean, it's possible that Uncle Dennis pressured whoever there and said-

• 1:09:37Pablo Torre?

  Like Lawrence Frank saying that he heard, or rather, wouldn't say no to whether he heard.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you can't, I mean, look, that's ridiculous to even bring that up.

• 1:09:45Pablo Torre?

  Using his words. You got the yes or no questions.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  But what do you think he's going to do? You don't think he's got a prepared statement? He knows exactly what he's going to say before he responds?

• 1:09:53Pablo Torre?

  I'm just saying it's a terrible way to convince me that-

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  No, you think he gives a [BLEEP]. Look, it's a big deal-

• 1:09:57Pablo Torre?

  He just doesn't want to be caught lying.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  It's not even about that. There's no point. There's no point. Kawhi addressed it. So think about this. Andrew Churney says it wasn't a work, a no work deal.

• 1:10:09Pablo Torre?

  You trust that guy? So the three names, Mike Shaker, the general counsel, Roger Evans, Izzy, and the CMO, and Eric Anderson, who was the CTO, they came out with a signed statement provided to me saying, Andre Churney, in so many words, is not representing our experience.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you're proving my point and you don't even know it. You're making my point and you don't even know it.

• 1:10:32Pablo Torre?

  Those three named sources are corroborating what my seven anonymous sources were telling me. And Andre Churney is on an island as the co-founder and friend of Joe Sandberg, who's now trying to say, according to his public statements, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this was a normal deal. The Kawhi thing was a normal deal.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  No, he said the contract was normal.

• 1:10:51Pablo Torre?

  So look, what I want to get to here.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  He said, because he even agreed, like, because the Joe Samberg email to everybody in May of 22, where he said he would provide the stock.

• 1:11:00Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah, Joe wanted it.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  He even said in the email.

• 1:11:02Pablo Torre?

  So Andre signed it. Andre signed the contract?

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, that's not where I'm going.

• 1:11:05Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I know. Joe said that Andre didn't want this either.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  And all the marketing team didn't want it either.

• 1:11:10Pablo Torre?

  Nobody, so.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Nobody, which was par for the course for Joe Samberg.

• 1:11:14Pablo Torre?

  He rammed it through. He rammed it through.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  That 29.5, did you read the lawsuit, the 29.5 million dollar lawsuit?

• 1:11:20Pablo Torre?

  Mark, I've read so many lawsuits.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  I bet you have. I bet you have. So you know that that's where you brought up the, they brought up the, not the audit committee, the investment committee, right?

• 1:11:28Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  The investment committee said no. And then the general counsel said, we want escrow. Guy sends an email to Joe Samberg and the next day it's all changed. The next day, that's how he did business.

• 1:11:41Pablo Torre?

  The whole thing here is that he was and is, according to his own guilty plea, a fraudster. The question is why he wanted to do this. And so for me, what I'm getting to is also, as you foreshadowed, March 9, 2023, those same disclosures Dennis Wong saw. Steve Ballmer is like, you know what? I want in $10 million more.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you exactly how that goes.

• 1:12:03Pablo Torre?

  Please.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Okay. Guy comes to you, Pablo, we've had problems, right? We're pivoting. And I've got my GC coming back, right? I've got people that I think are going to do great. I've got a new CEO. And Pablo, let me just show you this, this information, these numbers. This business-to-business stuff, this enterprise business is good.

• 1:12:26Pablo Torre?

  The carbon credits business.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, carbon credits. We have Meta lined up. We have, you know, Bank of America lined up. And you know what, Pablo? This is so good. I'm going to put in 40, you're putting in 10, Steve. I'm going to go four times that amount and I'm going to put my own cash in. That's how committed I am to this business. Mark, you're putting in 40 million, whatever it was, dollars in yourself? All right, I can see the numbers. My marginal cost is 10 million of already in 50. So the marginal value of this, and remember, this is March of 23 when he invested. And by that point-

• 1:13:04Pablo Torre?

  This is the same round as Dennis Wong, it was the long round?

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, which is not unusual.

• 1:13:08Pablo Torre?

  December to March?

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, they keep it open, right, right. And that was also the time when Sandberg was paying InterPrivate two $5 million payments to extend the outside date, which is the drop dead date for the SPAC.

• 1:13:24Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  Right? So, so he's going, so it wouldn't be the first time.

• 1:13:27Pablo Torre?

  Oh, no, no, but, but-

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  So, the idea that he's doing this, how stupid is he? Because he reads this, well, he's so stupid that the guy who he still trusts, that he doesn't know is a fraudster, is putting in four times as much cash as he is. 20 times as much cash as Dennis Wong.

• 1:13:42Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  That's why he's doing it.

• 1:13:43Pablo Torre?

  Right, so I guess it's worth pointing out, though, that at this point, when you go to December, before Steve Ballmer made that decision, the SPAC as a premise had basically collapsed.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:13:53Pablo Torre?

  No?

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:13:54Pablo Torre?

  There was a meeting held in which 90% of the investors were like, "We're cashing out."

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Right, but it still was alive, that's why-

• 1:14:00Pablo Torre?

  But 90% said we're out.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  You can, yeah, but you can, it's, it's, um-

• 1:14:04Pablo Torre?

  What, 90%?

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you can go replenish-

• 1:14:09Pablo Torre?

  This is documented.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  You can replenish those investors.

• 1:14:11Pablo Torre?

  Okay, but how big an uphill climb is all of this in context?

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  But you're, in context, you have to look-

• 1:14:17Pablo Torre?

  It's insane.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  No, you have to look at what's happening with SPACs at the same point in time.

• 1:14:20Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, and by, and over time, SPACs were revealed to be a giant illusion.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Not necessarily, but they weren't doing as well, right? But they're, they're not doing as well.

• 1:14:29Pablo Torre?

  I mean, yeah, but the point being-

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  No, you're using this as some type of indicator-

• 1:14:32Pablo Torre?

  No, I'm just giving you like-

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  It's not an indication of anything, Pablo.

• 1:14:35Pablo Torre?

  The company we're talking about is documented to be-

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Pablo, it's not in-

• 1:14:37Pablo Torre?

  Losing its appendages, its identity, its employees, its very basic thesis.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  No!

• 1:14:43Pablo Torre?

  The SPAC as a thesis-

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Just look at Katona's website, Twitter feed, right?

• 1:14:47Pablo Torre?

  That's the, so I'm giving you 90% of the investors are cashing out within InterPrivate, and you're saying, "Look at the Twitter feed"?

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Pablo-

• 1:14:54Pablo Torre?

  Because they got posts? Because they're, because they dared to post?

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  It's a blank check, a spot, yeah. A blank check SPAC, right? And so they have the option to extract their money. They have the option to get more money to put in there in a variety of ways. They have to come up with a total of $400 million at some point. The fact that these investors pulled out- Could be a thousand different reasons. What data did they have available to them to make a determination if it was a good?

• 1:15:22Pablo Torre?

  What if they saw that everybody who was in the executive structure was fired?

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  They didn't have any data.

• 1:15:29Pablo Torre?

  Okay, but as an investor, would it be concerning to you if they were having massive layoffs? And needed to pivot the entire premise of the company?

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  It depends on where they were pivoting. A lot of companies have pivoted.

• 1:15:39Pablo Torre?

  What they're saying is, hey, you guys are pivoting. This is most generously. You guys are pivoting. We think that we're best.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  I'm saying, no, no, I'm saying you're coming to a conclusion. Pablo, you're coming to the conclusion that these people left, 90% left, because it's obvious that it was a fraud or there's something wrong.

• 1:15:54Pablo Torre?

  They smelled that it was a bad deal.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm saying you have no idea that that's the case. None, not even a smidgen of them.

• 1:16:01Pablo Torre?

  I have a sense.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's all you have.

• 1:16:04Pablo Torre?

  No, no, no, I have a sense based on nine sources who are telling me this is why this is happening. Here is the flow of funds. Here are the 3,000 pages of documents.

• 1:16:22Speaker 03

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• 1:17:00Pablo Torre?

  Can I just get to the whole thing of like, the Clippers say to us, we saw this deal was fishy in the 22-23 season and we terminated it.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. For the end of the 23 season.

• 1:17:12Pablo Torre?

  So, you know how the NBA season works. So Bomber puts in 10 in March, March 9th. So that's pretty close to the end of the season.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:20Pablo Torre?

  So when do you think the Clippers would have said, oh no, we should terminate this?

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  I don't know if they told him at all or when they told him or what was going on. I'm sure they mentioned, I would say they mentioned to it because you're closing a big deal, right? So. You know, and when did he start the investment process and when did he close it? You know, he closed it in March of 23, right? We don't know when they determined that they were going to shut off the aspiration. We do know they tweeted happy birthday to Kawhi.

• 1:17:46Pablo Torre?

  In June?

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, in June, so, you know, because the NBA dates are June 30th, right?

• 1:17:52Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  That's when the season officially financially ends.

• 1:17:55Pablo Torre?

  Oh, the league year.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  For the, yeah, for the business.

• 1:17:57Pablo Torre?

  For the CBA. I guess what I'm saying is, when Steve Ballmer says, and I believe him on some key level, that he is a victim of Joe Sandberg, and there is no disagreement from me.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, we both agreed there.

• 1:18:06Pablo Torre?

  Of course he was. The question is whether he was deceived by a guy he was entrusting to help him deceive the NBA.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:18:13Pablo Torre?

  And you firmly push back, Team Ballmer. So the question I have now is, look, you're a businessman who has said over and over again that like, we are not immune to mistakes, we are fallible, we are smart.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been scammed, yeah, I've been scammed.

• 1:18:27Pablo Torre?

  But we've been scammed. Genuinely, this is just me like doing a bit of just, I imagine to be that rich and to lose money from someone you trust, that sucks.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:18:38Pablo Torre?

  You must feel like, because you're supposed to be the smart guy, you're humiliated.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  It's not even that, it's not even that, right? It's because you trusted somebody.

• 1:18:43Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:18:45Speaker 06

  This is not a fun thing to be through. I was personally defrauded. Remember, they defrauded me, they defrauded many other investors. These were guys who committed fraud. How would I be able, look, they conned me.

• 1:19:03Pablo Torre?

  You're one of the richest men in America.

• 1:19:04Speaker 06

  They conned me. I made an investment in these guys, thinking it was on the up and up, and they conned me.

• 1:19:10Pablo Torre?

  Why did Steve Ballmer donate 1.875 million dollars to the charity Joe Sandberg personally founded and was still the board chair of in December 2024?

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  And when did he start donating the money? When was the first time he donated?

• 1:19:21Pablo Torre?

  2018.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Okay, so you think that he said, hey, I want to keep you on the line because you have this business and I'm going to use you at some point in the future, and so I'm going to keep on.

• 1:19:33Pablo Torre?

  I don't know why this happened. I'm just wondering, how could you feel like your trust was so broken and yet donate 1.875 million dollars? To the dude's charity.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  How much does his foundation, you, you looked up his foundation and you looked at the nine niners, right?

• 1:19:47Pablo Torre?

  At last check, one of the 10 richest people in the world.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Put that aside.

• 1:19:50Pablo Torre?

  Oh, he has a zillion donations to zillions of places.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Right, and you really, really think he checked?

• 1:19:56Pablo Torre?

  I would say that if I was embroiled in this giant scheme.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  No, right? I wouldn't know, like, if one of the guys who scam me, my foundation was giving them money, and we had an overall deal, I would have no clue, it's not worth my time.

• 1:20:08Pablo Torre?

  Mark.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  It's not worth my time.

• 1:20:10Pablo Torre?

  If you had made a series of, of donations to Joe Sandberg's charity since 2018, meaning you knew this guy since at least 2017.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Do we know that he knew him?

• 1:20:21Pablo Torre?

  He was the chair, and it's a tiny charity.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  So, was it specified by Ballmer to give to him? Or was it the foundation that found it and it aligned with Ballmer's goals?

• 1:20:31Pablo Torre?

  So, according to 60 Minutes interviews, of course, Steve and Connie, his wife, go through grant by grant their donations.

• 1:20:39Speaker 06

  It really is kind of grant by grant. You can't look back and say, well, people's economic mobility this year was a two, and next year it's going to be a 2.3.

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, now, we, we can't do population level measurement. But place by place, you know, grant by grant, we can do that.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  Right, it's a list. I get the same [BLEEP]. It's a list. When the Mavs did their, with, of their foundation, I'd get the list. And I'd be like, you guys like this? Done.

• 1:21:06Pablo Torre?

  Okay, there's a lot of like, you have no idea what your money does when the money does bad stuff. But when it does good stuff, you know exactly what it is.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, not true at all. It goes the same way.

• 1:21:15Pablo Torre?

  I don't want to bring up the Simpsons meme again, I apologize. The thing I'm saying is, if you were making the series of escalating investments into a charity, and the charity was run by, in this hypothetical, Bernie Madoff, wouldn't you think to yourself, man, that guy, Bernie Madoff, who's been [BLEEP] my entire life, that guy, do I want to keep donating to the thing I keep on signing off on? I probably don't, is what I would imagine. And he's like, you know what? I'm back for more, December 24.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  What was the name of the charity?

• 1:21:48Pablo Torre?

  Golden State Opportunity Foundation.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  And he started it, but was he the president that ran it and filled out the applications?

• 1:21:54Pablo Torre?

  He's, when it started, right?

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  When he first started, okay.

• 1:21:58Pablo Torre?

  He is the founder, the sole founder. It is in his image. It is his life story. He is the board chair through this time period.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  And there's somebody who operates it. He doesn't operate it, right?

• 1:22:09Pablo Torre?

  Over time, he appointed a president.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:13Pablo Torre?

  Mark.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Right. That person fills out the forms every year.

• 1:22:17Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  And every year they submit it. And unless there's a reason that someone brings it.

• 1:22:21Pablo Torre?

  But Joe Sandberg was the only person other than that president who had the title of president according to their 990s.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  So what? I give money to organizations.

• 1:22:31Pablo Torre?

  It's just federal documents, I guess.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  So like, I give money to different organizations and if somebody goes rogue in one of those organizations, I'm not gonna know.

• 1:22:38Pablo Torre?

  If you were donating to a guy as central in your suffering as Joe Sandberg has been presented to be.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Okay, no. So here's the presumption that you're making.

• 1:22:47Pablo Torre?

  I'm saying December 24th, the federal government has been announced as investigating.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  The reason I'm in this chair right now.

• 1:22:55Pablo Torre?

  You ended this deal with the Clippers.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  I'm one of the few people that has experienced all of these things.

• 1:22:58Pablo Torre?

  And that's why I love that you're here.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  Right. Cause I can, I've been there, done that, every single piece of these things, right?

• 1:23:03Pablo Torre?

  Well, I hope not every single piece.

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  Well, no, I've been fatted, no, not, well, no, because I don't think he did anything, so, right? So, but at the same time, there are charities I've made, I've given money to. And if somebody at that charity, even the founder, even the original chairman goes rogue.

• 1:23:19Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  The chances of me knowing unless somebody at the foundation catches it are minimal.

• 1:23:25Pablo Torre?

  Even if the guy was the guy who was around your games, sitting in the front row.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Even if the guy was the guy around my games.

• 1:23:30Pablo Torre?

  Even he's the guy who that you gave 50 million dollars to.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  There could be a guy who sits two seats down for me at the Mavs games.

• 1:23:34Pablo Torre?

  300 million dollar partnership. Signage all over the building that you built with your bare hands, this founding sponsor.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Yes, because you're.

• 1:23:41Pablo Torre?

  It's not any guy, it's the guy.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  No, you're trying, that's right. That's the whole, that's what you do, Pablo. You're trying to put all this on, you know, if there's a connection, the connection.

• 1:23:50Pablo Torre?

  I'm trying to hold adults accountable for the decisions they make that are documented.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Look, if the guy decided to give to the charity, you're presuming now, he's saying, "Oh, this guy [bleep] me." Go, somebody go look up to make sure that I'm not involved with him anywhere, any shape.

• 1:24:04Pablo Torre?

  If you say that you were victimized, that your trust was broken, humiliated, this was a guy that you did not trust, that you only met in this one way.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he probably has no idea that his charity is giving money to Sandberg's charity. Probably has zero idea.

• 1:24:17Pablo Torre?

  His public commentary about how they'd make decisions about donations say otherwise.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  Right, so, no, no, no, it does not. No, it does not.

• 1:24:23Pablo Torre?

  They go grant by grants.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  How much time, how much time do you think that would take?

• 1:24:27Pablo Torre?

  I assume that if you are sincerely somebody who cares about charity, as they present themselves to be, you would have some awareness that this person, who is in business with you so many different ways, and has been embroiled in this same year, by the way. It's not like any year, it's the same year when the feds-

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  No, you're presuming, you're presuming-

• 1:24:45Pablo Torre?

  No, no, no, this is- Bloomberg in January reports that the federal government is investigating-

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  Let's go back to my point.

• 1:24:50Pablo Torre?

  Into a dome is the picture of the article.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Let's just say Pablo gives to 20 charities, okay? Do you go back and review the applications? Because the way the rules work is if you give the 20, there's probably 100 plus, because they have to be-

• 1:25:04Pablo Torre?

  I assume they're a bunch.

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  They have to be independent, right, there's a bunch. The thought that, when they're going through, I never read the detailed application.

• 1:25:12Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  Not one single time.

• 1:25:14Pablo Torre?

  I just, I just wanna-

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  Not one single time.

• 1:25:16Pablo Torre?

  That's what you would do, and I wanna, I wanna agree on, on that perspective. Why don't you think the Clippers or anyone else associated with them have like made any of these arguments that you've been making?

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  There's no upside. There's no upside, you gotta deal with the NBA. Look, what happens on Twitter-

• 1:25:34Pablo Torre?

  It just feels like they should want someone, but no one's even leaked it.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  There's only downside.

• 1:25:37Pablo Torre?

  But no one's leaked it, Mark.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  There's only downside, that means they have a good organization, no one leaked it. There's only downside. There's only downside to somebody misspeaks.

• 1:25:47Pablo Torre?

  You're making arguments and I'm just wondering why they don't anyway.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Cause they're gonna have to tell everything to the NBA anyway.

• 1:25:53Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so, look, if we get to the Mavs for a sec.

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:25:57Pablo Torre?

  So, the Mavs of it, because.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  But, but wait, wait, again, I want to make my point.

• 1:26:01Pablo Torre?

  Oh, no, and we can, we can keep on, this is not me trying to get you out of here, I'm just saying, I got another question.

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  Right, what got me mad.

• 1:26:07Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Is that you didn't have anything concrete, you had conjecture.

• 1:26:11Pablo Torre?

  I had seven sources and 3,000 documents.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  No, that, those are physical, in, in, you know.

• 1:26:16Pablo Torre?

  I had the contract, that was never announced.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:26:19Pablo Torre?

  He did nothing for ever.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:26:21Pablo Torre?

  And we had.

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  That has nothing to do with whether or not Ballmer violated the CBA.

• 1:26:27Pablo Torre?

  But, but, with, with the whole, okay, we're gonna, we're in circles here and I.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Look, if you would come up, if you find a smoking gun, even if you had more.

• 1:26:33Pablo Torre?

  Change your mind, then, if that was in episode one, you'd be like, oh, that makes more sense.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:26:38Pablo Torre?

  A little bit?

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  No, because I learned more between episode one and two, as I dug in more.

• 1:26:41Pablo Torre?

  But the Dennis Wong thing is exactly what we're talking about. Nine days separation between money in, money out.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  Okay, let's start, going back to the beginning, where I was, what got me mad, if you will, not mad, but.

• 1:26:52Pablo Torre?

  That's okay, I'm not, I'm not here to be mad if you're mad.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, made me interested, is you shit on somebody's reputation without having any real fact.

• 1:26:59Pablo Torre?

  That was a deeply sourced, documented.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  The fact that it's deeply sourced is irrelevant. No, kudos to you for finding your sources, no, no issues there. The conclusions you came to, shit on Steve Ballmer, and that was wrong. Because you didn't have enough information to make that connection.

• 1:27:20Pablo Torre?

  I totally respect that you feel that way, I do. And I, and I, I want you to have said it, so, nothing.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Okay, moving on.

• 1:27:28Pablo Torre?

  Nothing about that, that I want to disagree with, I think it's okay for you to feel that way. The Mavs, so, part of the reason why it's funny to be in this eternal conversation with you is because people are like, are you ever gonna ask him about the Mavs and the Dirk Nowitzki sweetheart deal in 2014 to stay in Dallas, where he resigned for about eight million a year, when, of course, he had max offers on the table that I have confirmed. There's a conspiracy theory out there, and by the way, this is just me asking, this is like, I don't have.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  I'm here to confess.

• 1:27:56Pablo Torre?

  So, so.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  I gave him 48 million dollars.

• 1:28:00Pablo Torre?

  That is not Sora, that is actual Mark. The conspiracy out there, you know, is that why would he take so much less?

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  He wanted Tim Duncan money. He was at his age, and remember, the cap, I went back and looked, was $58 million, three years in a row, right? It wasn't going up at all. And it was, how do you manage your cap? And Tim Duncan had done a three-for-30 deal, and I vividly remember having the conversation. And then he's like, I'd like to get Tim Duncan money. I'm like, Dirk, you know, cap stayed flat. Here's what we want to do. And he was like, okay. And then the next year, 2016, when the cap went up, we were able to pay a lot more.

• 1:28:38Pablo Torre?

  But the money he left on the table, the question is like-

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  No, you presume, okay.

• 1:28:41Pablo Torre?

  He had max offers.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  I don't even know that they spoke to him. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I don't know. But, look, if he had-

• 1:28:48Pablo Torre?

  I can tell you that he did, from those other teams.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Who'd you talk to? Daryl and who else?

• 1:28:53Pablo Torre?

  I can tell you that there were max offers on the table.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  Daryl would have come to me and said, let's make a trade. I can pay Dirk, I want to pay Dirk more.

• 1:29:01Pablo Torre?

  So you're saying that he didn't get max offers at that time, in 2014?

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  I'm saying it's highly unlikely for the, at the age he was, and the fact that they knew that he wanted to stay, that is highly unlikely.

• 1:29:11Pablo Torre?

  Look, Dirk wanting to stay in Dallas is so clear to me.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  I'm not saying he's getting offers, not getting offers. The cap was $58 million at the time, right? So 35% of, right?

• 1:29:20Pablo Torre?

  So the question is, and this is truly like not my reporting, so, but the conspiracy out there, Reddit, our buddy Bill Simmons- When Dirk had that documentary and Cuban's company bought it, and I would- Is this documentary?

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:29:35Pablo Torre?

  So, the theory here is that Magnolia Pictures-

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  Uh huh. My company, they don't have offers.

• 1:29:41Pablo Torre?

  That's right. Circumvented the cap by, you know, overpaying to distribute a documentary about Dirk. How he spent like Iron Man level money on the Dirk doc.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  Here's 48 million for your, like, who knows what he spent, but. How much you think we paid?

• 1:29:55Pablo Torre?

  Well, what we did was we checked with the producers of the film. And to your credit, they poured cold water on the whole conspiracy. The head of the production company told us that your company did a $100,000 deal for US distribution rights.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  For how many years?

• 1:30:07Pablo Torre?

  10. So, yeah, I'm just, look, I'm not here to, like, say, "Gotcha." I'm just here to legitimately say, "I..."

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  No, no, I appreciate you looking. You know what, and I thank you. I thank you for just dispelling all the nonsense.

• 1:30:19Pablo Torre?

  I called the producer. And I, and so, just to confirm, did the Mavericks circumvent the salary cap with Dirk Nowitzki in 2014?

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:30:26Pablo Torre?

  Very good. Do you think the Knicks may have circumvented the cap in taking Jalen Brunson from your Mavericks?

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:30:32Pablo Torre?

  A different answer.

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. Okay, I just think there was a lot of play there.

• 1:30:36Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. Luka.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:30:38Pablo Torre?

  I want to get to the Luka Doncic thing, because your first public comments on that trade were kind of incredible.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:30:43Pablo Torre?

  They were very funny. February 2025 of this year.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Funny to me.

• 1:30:47Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I mean, it was hilarious, the setting. I mean, you had sold your majority stake of the Mavs by then. Do you remember where you were?

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 1:30:55Pablo Torre?

  Let's play the video.

• 1:30:56Speaker 01

  And so I wanted to start off with a question, because you've been in, you know, in unique situations, and maybe you can help.

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  If after you left Microsoft,

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  you found out that Steve Ballmer traded

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  Windows 11, like, the new hot operating system, for Windows 10, the Hall of Fame, but older operating system?

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  What would you do?

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  I might have to hide from the press.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  I know a couple other people that are in that situation.

• 1:31:44Pablo Torre?

  So can you now refresh our memory?

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate you showing that. That was fun.

• 1:31:47Pablo Torre?

  Who are you onstage with?

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  Thank you. Um, Bill Gates.

• 1:31:49Pablo Torre?

  You remember where it was?

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  It was in Dallas. I forget what the venue was.

• 1:31:53Pablo Torre?

  Dallas Museum of Art?

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:31:56Pablo Torre?

  And so I bring this all up because what Dallas is like when that comment is made and the organizations you support.

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  I thought you were gonna tie it to Bill Gates, to Steve Ballmer.

• 1:32:04Pablo Torre?

  Oh, so, I mean, it was available for me. But actually, like, what I've been doing is I'm like, okay, here are the organizations that Mark's involved with, the networks he moves in. And we've mentioned a number of them in the conversation already. We've mentioned your Major League Pickleball team, the George W. Bush Presidential Center, where you gave a talk. I asked about DeAndre Jordan.

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  We're not rehashing all the details of the DeAndre Jordan commitment. Oh, he had to say his name, okay.

• 1:32:29Pablo Torre?

  The Dallas Museum of Art, where you joked about Luca with Bill Gates, of course, close to Steve Ballmer. And even, I was looking at some other causes. By the way, you do, your charitable work is like real. Like, the Mavs, under your administration, like, the Southwestern Medical Foundation, like, did really good [BLEEP]. But there is something that I realize that you've not volunteered with me in these back and forths that we've had. And I wonder if you know what it is, now that I've built up to this question?

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 1:32:57Pablo Torre?

  It turns out that Dennis Wong lives in Dallas.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  Oh, he does?

• 1:33:02Pablo Torre?

  It also turns out that Dennis Wong is involved with every one of those exact same organizations that you are that I just mentioned.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:33:08Pablo Torre?

  Dennis Wong also owns a Major League Pickleball team based in Texas called the Texas Ranchers. He's a first face listed on the website's ownership group page.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  Of the Ranchers?

• 1:33:16Pablo Torre?

  Dennis Wong serves, he owns the Ranchers.

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I know that.

• 1:33:19Pablo Torre?

  Dennis Wong serves on the Executive Advisory Council of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  I did not know that.

• 1:33:24Pablo Torre?

  Dennis Wong's on the Board of Trustees of the Dallas Museum of Art.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  I did not know that.

• 1:33:28Pablo Torre?

  Where his best friend's old business partner, Microsoft, Bill Gates, their old Harvard classmate, was invited to give a talk this year with you.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Did not know that. Let me just say, on this, that was the first time I had met Bill Gates. And so his PR people called me and said, would you be interested, he's doing a book tour. Would you be interested in interviewing Bill? He's had different people interview him at all the different stops. I'm like, I'd never met Bill, and it sounds interesting. So that was the first time I had met him.

• 1:33:54Pablo Torre?

  When was the first time you met Dennis?

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  He came to a Mavs game, probably towards the end of last season. And there's probably, I think there's a picture of him being close to me in proximity. So somebody introduced me to him and said, yeah, he's Steve Ballmer's partner.

• 1:34:08Pablo Torre?

  Right. He's also, you know, the alternate governor. Of the Clippers.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:34:13Pablo Torre?

  Has been, according to LinkedIn, since April 2017.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:34:17Pablo Torre?

  So I'm just saying, like, did you guys ever encounter each other at the Board of Governors meetings for like a half dozen years and when you were there together?

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  I don't know that I have.

• 1:34:24Pablo Torre?

  Like as an Asian dude?

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's possible.

• 1:34:26Pablo Torre?

  Not exactly looking like the other owners?

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, because Ballmer, as best I remember, he was there every meeting.

• 1:34:31Pablo Torre?

  But the alternate governor also can, you know?

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, but, yeah.

• 1:34:34Pablo Torre?

  Attend, tag along.

• 1:34:35Speaker 01

  But Ballmer, like, to his credit.

• 1:34:37Pablo Torre?

  That's what they did this year, by the way.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 1:34:38Pablo Torre?

  This year, Steve and Dennis both were in attendance at the Board of Governors.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  Okay, I don't recall. I may have met Dennis, but I do remember meeting him at a game. Yeah.

• 1:34:46Pablo Torre?

  So just to reiterate, he's not somebody that you talk to or anything like that?

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  Never.

• 1:34:50Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  I've never had a conversation with him outside of being face to face.

• 1:34:55Pablo Torre?

  Not even at pickleball?

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Not even at pickleball.

• 1:34:57Pablo Torre?

  Not even when the ranchers are playing the Flash?

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  The, never. I have, I've yet to be, I'm sorry to admit, at a Flash game, or match, or whatever they call them. But I root for him.

• 1:35:08Pablo Torre?

  I can tell. I can tell. So I guess, uh,

• 1:35:14Pablo Torre?

  we're near the end.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  No, don't let it end.

• 1:35:17Pablo Torre?

  I know, I know. Um, so I just want to reiterate, you haven't talked to Steve Ballmer, you haven't talked to Dennis Wong.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  Haven't talked to the NBA, haven't talked to Adam Silver, haven't talked to anybody associated with him.

• 1:35:26Pablo Torre?

  How do you think they feel about you?

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't care.

• 1:35:28Pablo Torre?

  Being in studio with me?

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  They're probably like annoyed by it, knowing Adam, they're annoyed.

• 1:35:32Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  You know, but they know that I take, you know, this is what I do. I like doing this stuff.

• 1:35:36Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  I like the challenge.

• 1:35:37Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  And, and I've been there, right? I've been accused. I've been accused by people who did no [BLEEP]. And, you know, I was under the, in the firestorm.

• 1:35:45Pablo Torre?

  Oh, and?

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  And so I've been there.

• 1:35:47Pablo Torre?

  And I just want to make clear, billionaires are people too.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not like we all hang out, the whole billionaire meme thing.

• 1:35:53Pablo Torre?

  I don't know, yeah.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  My friends are still my friends from high school, from college, from rugby. Those are my guys.

• 1:35:58Pablo Torre?

  I'm merely saying that I am trying to understand the networks and how the money flows, because I'm not one of you guys. Um, I give opportunity to comment and fact-check and push back at every opportunity for every episode.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And you deserve credit for that.

• 1:36:12Pablo Torre?

  And no, and I appreciate that. I'm not looking for, you know, a pat on the head, but I just want to make clear that none of this is a bad faith effort. It's why you're here.

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:19Pablo Torre?

  It's because I want to.

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  No, and I appreciate it.

• 1:36:21Pablo Torre?

  Steel manning, as they call it, right?

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  Steel manning, right.

• 1:36:23Pablo Torre?

  I want, not straw men, but steel men, even those that get shot by Mark Wahlberg on, you know, Amazon Prime. Do you think the Knicks at the end here should be worried about an upcoming episode of Mark Cuban finds out?

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  You know, that's behind me. You know, more power to JB, more power to everything. Was I happy that they only got dinged for a second round pick? No. No, it should have been far worse, but is what it is.

• 1:36:48Pablo Torre?

  Do you remain, Mark Cuban, at the end here, Team Bomber?

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, 16 contractual payments, one investment that's within nine days of one of the payments is not enough to [BLEEP] with Steve Ballmer. I think that was wrong. But thank you for letting me say my piece. I appreciate that. You deserve a lot of respect for that, and I appreciate that. And there's no personal animosity at all.

• 1:37:11Pablo Torre?

  Not at all. At the risk of being my own greatest enemy, I might even want to do this again.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  We'll see what comes up next, right?

• 1:37:19Pablo Torre?

  I mean-

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  My disappointment is only one folder access.

• 1:37:24Pablo Torre?

  Hold on, do we have anything else?

• 1:37:26Speaker 01

  I seriously thought about bringing my own folder.

• 1:37:30Pablo Torre?

  Mark, I will simply say, be careful what you wish for.

• 1:37:44Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

• 1:37:50Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.