Clippers Judgment Day, the NBA's Hammer and the Investigation That Never Ends: Kawhi-Gate, Part XV

As Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard face historic punishments, Pablo reacts live with Amin Elhassan and David Samson to the NBA's findings — new C-suite emails, Aspiration texts, secret sponsors... and rational explanations, at long last. Previously on PTFO: • Part I: The Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhiN2IxMTNkNmUyY2RhYTI2MmQzNWI1 • Part II: An Argument with Mark Cuban https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhiYTg1ZTkyZDkxM2JkMzMwODFhODBi • Part III: The Mystery Investor, the No-Show Payday and the "Smoking Gun" https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhjMjVlMzJhY2EzNTIxYzc2MzhiZjNi • Part IV: Steve Ballmer, the Other Cuban and the $118 Million Infusion https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhjYjcxNzVkYzYyZjBlMWQ2NjdjMzYy • Part V: Steve Ballmer's "Inconceivable" Donation, the $20 Million Guarantee and a Head on a Spike https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhkOWU1ZmIyNTUyYjcyYzIwZWQ1NTQ1 • Part VI: An IRL Showdown with Mark Cuban https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhlZDk2ODM4ODU1MjdhNDM2ZGJjNDU2 • Part VII: The Briefcase, Ballmer's Social Network and Aspiration's House of Cards https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/Njk2MDc1MzMxMTA3M2E2MWJkOTM5Yzg1 • Part VIII: Uncle Dennis, Ballmer's $50 Million Sprint and the Side Deal That Wouldn't Die https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/Njk4YjhmZjdiYTgwY2YxZWNiMTdmZTBl • Part IX: Ballmer's Tree Money, the Whistle-Blowers and the Document You've Been Waiting For https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjlhYjA0ODliNDllZWNjMGI3YjU1Mzhh • Part X: Steve Ballmer's Victim Impact, the Man Who Prosecuted Aspiration and the Abacus of Incarceration https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjlmOTFjOWY5YjE1MDdmYmRkZTAxZjc4 • Part XI: Ballmer's Secret I. O. U., Aspiration's "Web of Lies" and the Zenith of Fraud https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmEyMjI5NmFiMGYyOTYyYmU0ODEwOTAx • Part XII: RIFC, the Impossible Deal and Life After Aspiration https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE2YTYxMzMxN2Q3N2JmNzJhMjc3MWVm • Part XIII: The Halo, Ballmer's Bowl and a New Crisis in the Super-System https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE3NGI5YjRmM2I4Nzc5ZDllN2QyODNh • Part XIV: The Jumbotron Emails, the Courtside Cabana and Ballmer's "Highest Integrity" https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE3ZTZjMGRlNzU2OGU0MmU0NjYwODY5 (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.

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• 1:28Pablo Torre?

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• 2:12Pablo Torre?

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• 2:35Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 2:38Pablo Torre?

  I think we need to start, David Sampson and Amin Elhassan, by saying that I have missed you. I've missed you both. And my phone is basically a non-functioning object at this point. Holy shit. We've made it to 364 days. And good to see you guys.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Pablo, we figured it would be at some point. Adam kept saying it's imminent. It's imminent. And I guess imminent was one year shy of the first show that we all did together on September 3rd, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Edward Murrel Award-winning show that we did starting September 3rd. And I think people are expecting us to be doing the Snoopy Dance right now. But I think it's important to note that there's 35 pages to go through, that there's a lot of both nuance and sledgehammer contained in the report that Wachtel released in full through the NBA. There's press statements already from the Clippers. So I think we needed to go live and wanted to go live. But wow, I'm still digesting.

• 3:50Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. Amin, how are you feeling, man? Before we get into all of this?

• 3:54Speaker 04

  I mean, in many ways overwhelmed, but at the same time, kind of, yeah, it's what I expected. I go back to the very first episode that we did, as David mentioned, the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning, Pulitzer Prize-winning episode, where I read from Article 13 of the collective bargaining agreement. And it said, "The words cannot rationally be explained." It was that and the part where "there is compensation for services rendered that is not commensurate with fair market value." Those two statements right there. I said to myself, "Oh, I mean, there you go." And so we, in many ways, we spent a whole year compiling information

• 4:38Speaker 04

  and testimony and kind of, just kind of the nuts and bolts of all the different things that were allegedly happening behind the scenes. But at the end of the day, it's all kind of superfluous. You know, in a weird way, you know, that all that matters is those two lines.

• 4:57Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  If you can't explain it, if you can't explain to me why Drake, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robert Downey Jr. make more than Kawhi Leonard does rationally, then I feel like, oh, there it is. That's the whole case right there.

• 5:12Pablo Torre?

  So David, before we get into any of this, I want to now acknowledge, we've been letting people sort of trickle in. We've been on for about three minutes, I think. And I want to get to what I've been so excited to get to for more than a year. As I've been reporting a year in public with you guys, two things are true about what we're going to do here today. One thing is, there is more to come than is in the NBA's report. This is not everything. There is still more. I don't even know if we're going to get to that. But there's even more.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Pablo, can we pause right there? Just, I think that might have been the thing that took me aback the most. Where Wachtel Lipton's like, "This isn't even all of it, guys."

• 5:53Pablo Torre?

  There are things that we have been investigating, continue to investigate today. The SEC got involved with Daktronics, which we will get to. That was before all of this happened. There is more. And yet, there are things that I learned for the first time in this report. And it's delightful. It's delightful as a journalist to see what was known, what wasn't. And we're going to get to the 35-page report by Wachtel Lipton, David, which dropped 90 minutes ago. We've been reading. Forgive, forgive the sort of like scramble here. We've all been reading. We've all been getting texts. Our phones are melted. And I think, David, we should just start with the NBA release.

• 6:38Pablo Torre?

  We're going to do a bit of a table read here. This is a way for you to catch up on what the NBA has ruled, which is not the same as our investigation. But you will see overlaps to a pretty incredible amount that will lead us to more discussion. So David, can you please begin?

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Mr. Leonard, through the conduct of Mr. Robertson, Uncle Dennis, for those of you who are just catching on. Mr. Leonard, through the conduct of Mr. Robertson, on his behalf, violated the circumvention rules by pressuring the Clippers to assist him in obtaining off-court income opportunities, successfully obtaining those opportunities, and failing to reimburse payments by the Clippers for personal expenses.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  We could do a show just on those four lines.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  I want to go to the last one first, if you'll let me for just quickly here, Pablo.

• 7:37Speaker 04

  Please.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  We didn't talk enough about this. When you've got players and they want to take a private plane somewhere, and you are in a capped league, and owners have private planes, and they want their family to go in different places. When we give that to a player in a contract, that is part of the contract. That is income to the player. It counts in our luxury tax. If a player gets 10 private plane flights, that is part of the calculation. You're not allowed, even in baseball, to have a player and then start doing all these things for the player and not disclosing it. And it looks like, in this report,

• 8:21Speaker 03

  what Wachtel is saying is Kawhi Leonard received tons of extra goodies, shall we say, from the Clippers and did not pay for them. That value of the goodies, if you fly from LA to New York on a private plane, call it $80,000. That counts toward the salary cap. If you don't disclose it, that is circumventing the salary cap. If Kawhi doesn't pay it back, and what this is saying is, there was no payback.

• 8:56Speaker 04

  David, David, the most common, you know what the most common form of this is, which I think a lot of people don't realize, is tickets to the game. Players are allotted a certain amount of tickets, but sometimes players have big families. Sometimes they have lots of friends. And they're like, "Oh, I got 20 tickets every game."

• 9:14Speaker 03

  You know, there's a tax for that, Amin. We have to keep track of what tickets we give to players because players have to declare that.

• 9:21Pablo Torre?

  Hold on, guys, guys, guys. We're starting, we're starting with the deepest possible cut of this report.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  Oh, my.

• 9:30Pablo Torre?

  It's the, that's literally like the last thing that the NBA's investigation found. I should sort of frame that as a top.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Well, that was the Kawhi thing, though, Pablo.

• 9:38Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, no, no, no, I know, David. We're doing this with some sort of logic. But I just want to point out that, based on this misconduct, the NBA has imposed the following penalties, Amin.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  The penalties are the Clippers shall forfeit five first round draft picks, one in each of the 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, and 2033 NBA drafts. That's a lot of picks.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Five first round picks is a lot, and we should point out that there are things in the collective bargaining agreement that outline punishments, that outline fines to players and to owners, which is something we're going to get back to, to explain to people what's going on with what the Clippers are reading and what's going on with what Wachtel wrote. But that is a major thing for a franchise to lose five first round picks, quite obviously, without getting a concomitant player. I mean, who's the guy in the, uh, the big trade for the Heat? The guy got five first round picks for a play in the Knicks. He plays for the Knicks.

• 10:45Speaker 04

  Mikal Bridges.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Mikal Bridges. Think about how many five first round picks. That's outrageous.

• 10:50Pablo Torre?

  What we're describing in the contours of it, and I'm realizing what I should be doing here, is I should be the guy to read because you guys are going to react.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:57Pablo Torre?

  Because that's, that's typically how this show has worked for a year. Um, but this is the largest punishment in the history of the NBA.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:05Pablo Torre?

  And so the Clippers get fined $30 million. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is suspended from all league and team activities for one year for knowingly seeking to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities for approving a business deal that he knew was a precondition for aspiration to enter into an endorsement agreement with Mr. Leonard. This is part one stuff, by the way. Here it is that the NBA has confirmed in their investigation and for Ballmer's failure to create conditions under which his organization abided by the NBA's circumvention rules. And inside of this part, as we get to the other components of his executive structure,

• 11:46Pablo Torre?

  and we show you guys on the stream, like some of the excerpts and some of the elements and the tweets and all that stuff. This is where it gets to be sprawling in a way that is going to require all of our explanations, I think.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Steve Ballmer in this situation, when you're suspended from league and team activities, that means he doesn't go to owners' meetings. And you could say that's no big deal, maybe he doesn't want to go. He can't be around the team. He can't go into his own arena. According to this punishment, as you just read, he will be attending a total of zero games, zero practices, zero league-wide events, owners' meetings, et cetera. This is a full one-year suspension.

• 12:34Pablo Torre?

  Yes. Clippers president of business operations, Galian Zucker, is suspended without pay for one year. Clippers president of basketball operations, Lawrence Frank, is suspended without pay for six months. The Clippers' organization and personnel are subject to a compliance and monitoring program. I mean, I mean, these are the, this is the right-hand person in charge of business, who we've talked about at length, Galian Zucker, and the right-hand person in charge of basketball, Lawrence Frank, who we've talked about at length.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  You know, first blush at reading through the document, Pablo, Galian Zucker does not come off positively.

• 13:12Pablo Torre?

  It's a whole movie inside of a movie with this, yes.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  The full statement from, in the document from Wachtel Lipton says that she's suspended for, without pay for one year for being primarily and directly culpable for impermissible endorsement arrangements and for providing false and misleading statements to investigators. They made it a point, they even contrasted directly that the, the, uh, statements from Ms. Zucker versus from Lawrence Frank saying, Lawrence Frank took culpability, he took accountability, he said it was on me, and you know, he basically was up front. And meanwhile, Zucker basically either blamed subordinates

• 13:57Speaker 04

  or said did not remember or would give statements that were contradicting to other statements he had given. I mean, it, reading through it, it was a tough read. If you're a big fan of Galian Zucker, because it was, it was, the investigators pulled no punches in letting everyone know.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Even more, I mean, what Wachtel found is that Zucker and Frank and Ballmer, they knew the rules, as Frank said, and we said it in one of our shows. We showed Lawrence Frank answering a question from the podium. We know the rules. Do you remember that? Do you remember that?

• 14:35Pablo Torre?

  Yes, everybody knows the rules. They know the rules. We know the rules.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Everybody knows the rules. It turns out that Lawrence Frank indeed did know the rules and violated them. What Wachtel also said in this report is that what Zucker did is that she also knew the rules and she not only misled the investigators, which is a big no-no, when Ballmer had said it's full cooperation. That's not cooperating when you lie to the investigators. Number two, what Zucker did is she knew the rules and then violated them in plain sight. There is a paper trail, the smoke is gone in the report, is amazing.

• 15:21Pablo Torre?

  The question of documentation and evidence, right? There's a whole news cycle about, is there evidence? We have said for a year on the show, as we provide evidence, as we provide documents, emails, whistleblower, testimony, all of that stuff. We've been saying there's evidence, what Wachtel has in their capacity to interview NBA employees specifically, as well as provide, I mean, the pressure of the NBA on companies that might want to do business in the future with the NBA, was seek and find evidence. And so I credit the ability for us to read this 35-page report because that was unclear to me, right? It was unclear, would we get an accounting of some of the accounting and some of the paper trail,

• 16:03Pablo Torre?

  which, as we'll get to, as you'll see, was allegedly a court, well, according to the NBA's finding, it is settled. The paper trail of emails that was set up to deliberately mislead people in the future who would see this and think, oh, of course, this was done by the rules, when of course, it was provable that it was to violate.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  Which of course is what Amin said in one of our episodes, when people have said to us, this is so obvious, or this is so easy to ascertain. It's the opposite. The way that it was done was in a way to not get caught. And they got caught. And what Wachtel is doing in this report is showing the way in which they got caught, which provided basically the buttress for the NBA to put this punishment on the Clippers, which I'm happy to argue with you both. I think, given the Wachtel report, that the punishment is light. And we can talk about that later, Pablo.

• 17:04Pablo Torre?

  No, no, I mean, let's frame it, Amin, because one of the things that I thought is what David just said, which is, when you get the sweep of this, there is, I would say, almost,

• 17:18Pablo Torre?

  what's the way I want to put this? If you had told me, here is a report, 35 pages, read it and tell me what you think the punishment is, I would read this as enthusiastically and as eagerly as I did. And I would say, I think they're taking the team away from Steve Ballmer.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  Oh, that's.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  I didn't go there, Pablo, because I think they go there for Sarver. I think they go there for workplace misconduct, sexual misconduct and things, and racism, like with Sterling. So I didn't think they'd go there. I thought that it would be a larger fine because I believe, and sources are telling me in the period after which 90 minutes, so this is very fresh. So I'll just say, the collective bargain agreement sets out a system for how you can dispute findings. It sets out a system for how players can. It sets out what owners can do. It also sets out what owners can get fined.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  And it is my understanding that this is larger than a fine that you would normally see out of a CBA, out of a violation of salary cap circumvention. It is the largest of all time. And the evidence was so overwhelming, but a factor to me has to be that $30 million is significant. Steve Ballmer is going to write the check. The bigger issue for Steve Ballmer is not the 30 million. It's the fact that from day one, when he sent you a statement that this is all provably false. He gives an interview to Ramona Shelburne, day two, that was all a lie.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  He doubles down on it, doubles down on it, and all the evidence collected by Wachtel, 200,000 pages, all of the 70 people interviewed. It all points to the fact that Ballmer led the salary cap circumvention campaign.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  I think that's the big, the big reveal, right? Is that there was a moment where people would push back. So is it possible that this all occurred while Steve was waving his hands and cheering on?

• 19:25Pablo Torre?

  There was a whole news cycle with ESPN reporting it, for the record.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  It just happened, like last week.

• 19:31Pablo Torre?

  But I mean, to your point, that was the reveal, which is, this is a story about an organized campaign to get something that they all knew, not once, but twice, but three times since 2015, as we've been saying with the Andre Jordan and Cap's circumvention, that they should not be doing.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  And that was another point bade by Wachtel in the report that Steve Ballmer is not a first time offender. They went through in the report, the ways that the rules are communicated to

• 20:02Pablo Torre?

  It's recidivism. And so, look, I should say here, as Mr. Leonard is required to pay the league $700,000, Mr. Robertson is banned for a period of five years, all of that stuff. I also should say that the Clippers have now publicly come out with a response. And Amin, would you read this, please? The Clipper statement?

• 20:25Speaker 04

  Yes. This investigation has been flawed from the outset. And your decision to issue this report without any notice, this, yeah, to the NBA, your decision, or actually, this is directly in a letter to Commissioner Silver, we should point out, this is a letter to Commissioner Silver. This investigation has been flawed from the outset, and your decision to issue this report without any notice to the Clippers or their counsel is inexcusable. This type of witch hunt flies in the face of fundamental fairness and of the integrity of the league and of the sport that we all love. We're exploring every legal remedy to address this gross injustice.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  I cannot believe that the Clippers did not communicate with Kawhi Leonard. The first thing I do when I get this report is I am saying, hey, what are we doing here? Because Kawhi went the other way. The complete other way.

• 21:21Pablo Torre?

  Oh, David, the question of what is the union going to do and Kawhi Leonard going to do, this was mentioned, foreshadowed, as if they were in lockstep with Steve Ballmer's Clippers, right? That was the whole thing was come and try it, right? Come and try to punish this. This is clearly something that you can't punish without a reasonable arbitration process. And I want to point out that the Clippers released an earlier statement in which they said, we vehemently reject the NBA's findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence. And then we go on to say, for the past year, we cooperated fully and in good faith, and we will now fight just as hard to demonstrate our innocence. We intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to

• 22:05Pablo Torre?

  us and look forward to an ethical and impartial arbitration process. And I want to raise the question of, wait a minute, how are they going to arbitration now? How does that work, David?

• 22:15Speaker 03

  So let me explain. I have no idea how the Clippers released this statement because you fired the lawyers. There is no arbitration process available to Steve Ballmer. And having spoken to people within the league and my experience in baseball, there are exact things that go to arbitration, exact fights. This is not one of them. It's not allowed. The arbitration would be contained within the CBA and would be filed by the union on behalf of Kawhi.

• 22:47Pablo Torre?

  Right. That's, that's the big piece here, is that, Amin, the union and Kawhi said, are bad. And now the Clippers are trying to activate an option that, according to our understanding at this point, at 6:27 PM Eastern, they actually need the union to activate to get to the system arbitrator.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Well, to get, well, no, because, sorry, Pablo, but see, this is live, but no. The NBA and a team could agree to an arbitrator, to submit to an arbitration process when there is a dispute between the league and the club. Both sides would have to agree to that. That's number one. Number two, what the Clippers say specifically is, we intend to vigorously, I love when you use that adjective for no particular reason, that's as though sometimes you challenge findings in a not vigorous fashion, but they will vigorously challenge these findings where the only avenue available to them is the court and not the

• 23:50Speaker 03

  podcast court, not the arbitration system. I'm talking about the court court, the real court. So all Steve Ballmer can announce is that we intend to sue the NBA because of their findings.

• 24:06Pablo Torre?

  But, but this is the thing that I'm, I'm kind of circling here as we suss this out live, is that arbitration was contingent on the union. And the union is saying, we're actually settling. And so the only available option, the saber being rattled is literally suing Adam Silver or Wachtel Lipton. It's suing the NBA itself. And we, as David likes to say, I mean, wait to see if they're going to do that, given what we're about to outline in this report.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  It's a worse. It's the snake that eats its own tail. Right? What do you, you're suing, in essence, like David said, the arbitration exists between, because players, labor and management. That's why we have

• 24:48Pablo Torre?

  Collectively bargained.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  Yes, that's what this collective bargaining agreement is between labor and management. And so this is management suing other management? I just, I'm not, I'm not quite understanding. And David, like David said, you know, this is where you probably want to get on the horn with Kawhi before he puts out a statement.

• 25:10Pablo Torre?

  A statement which says, quote, "I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle and regret the distraction this situation has caused the fans and my family." So we presume, by the way, there, there it is, Uncle Dennis, you know, the marks left on your back, that is what it was just driven in the form of this statement. But as I return to Toronto, Kawhi says, I am focused on what I can control, closing this chapter, moving forward with the clean slate. And so here's the interesting sort of like thing, I mean, that you're noticing, right? Kawhi's like, so I can move on with this, right?

• 25:48Speaker 04

  Peace. Later. Hey, have fun with the draft picks and $30 million.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  Well, there's something else, though, guys. You know, the NBA gets to approve any trade. There is a world where the Clippers now trade Kawhi to the Raptors and the NBA does not approve that trade because what the Clippers are trying to do is restock their draft picks. But there was no scenario under which the league was going to grant Kawhi free agency. That, they would never do that to a player. He's got one year left on his deal. If he wants to sign a new deal, let him play healthy and play well and get a new deal when he gets it from wherever he gets it. But if the Clippers are allowed to get their first round picks back from Toronto, and, and I mean, what was the deal with Toronto and the Clippers?

• 26:36Speaker 04

  Brandon Ingram, Grady Dick, multiple first round picks. Believe it was two first round picks and a couple swaps.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  So, so the question is, will the NBA be inclined to allow the Clippers? Was that part of the negotiated settlement that we thought existed with the Clippers that the Clipper statement claims never happened?

• 26:56Pablo Torre?

  So, so this is all sort of the framework for these findings. And the findings are, I must say this, truly remarkable in ways that I want to get to. The beginning of it, page one, and I, I, I think this is, look, can I just say this? We're going to jump around here, but I just want to acknowledge that September 3, 2025, in the life of our show is one thing, and it's an incredible thing to have done this for a year with you guys. This is part 15, maybe. I've, I've literally lost count. I don't know what part we're in anymore. I think this might be part 15. But for David, I mean, like, I just

• 27:39Pablo Torre?

  want to acknowledge, like, September 3 is a meaningful day, and I want to just stop here to acknowledge why that is.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Thank you. The, our show, Amin and Pablo, on September 3 was the last show that my daughter ever watched me do. She got sick on September 12 and didn't watch, wasn't able to watch any more shows. And she just passed away, as you all know, on June 23. And I wish that she were able to watch this show because we talked a lot about the, the aspiration. As you know, we recorded that in the middle to end of August, and it was released on September 3. And I had spoken to Kira about it. And you guys have been, thank you for all your support. And, and I mean that. I love you guys and Metalark and all of you.

• 28:27Pablo Torre?

  The Kira Fund is the thing that we want to drive people to. Part of the reason we're doing this show live is also to draw attention to that, the fight for a cure.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  We'd like to cure bleoblastoma. I'd like there not to be another Kira. I'd like no family to go through what we're going through and what we've gone through because to me, it is just impossible to deal with. And all of the people who've given in so generously, it's raised over $700,000 and it's, we're just getting going. We've started to fund research projects. One is being announced again in the next couple of days called Project Rose. And I would just say that anything that anyone can do for the Kira Fund, every dollar matters. And we're going to keep going because during the past year, it's been very obviously difficult for, for me, for, and I'm the least of it, for Kira the most, for

• 29:20Speaker 03

  our entire family. And it's gone exactly in lockstep.

• 29:24Pablo Torre?

  Literally. I mean, it's a year, 365 days. Look, there is some symmetry to all of this. And by that, I mean, what we're not sharing as we report this story and doing episodes with the public, what we are trying to confirm, what money we're trying to raise as we do a story that's about following money. And, Amin, can you just read?

• 29:54Pablo Torre?

  Page one, the start of it, and we'll get into the nitty gritty of this thing.

• 29:59Speaker 04

  On September 3rd, 2025, the podcast Pablo Torre finds out produced the first in a series of episodes alleging that the LA Clippers, parentheses, the Clippers, and its owner Steve Ballmer violated the salary cap circumvention rules of the National Basketball Association, parentheses, the NBA or the league, through dealings with aspiration partners, parentheses, aspiration, a now bankrupt sustainability services company. Among other things, the episode, part one, revealed the existence of a four-year, $28 million endorsement agreement between aspiration and Clippers player Kawhi Leonard. Part two asserted that the agreement

• 30:41Speaker 04

  was never publicly announced and that Mr. Leonard performed no services under, excuse me, under it. And part three aired portions of an audio interview with an anonymous person asserted to be a former employee of aspiration who alleged that the agreement's purpose was to, quote, circumvent the salary cap, unquote. Shortly after the episode's release, the league hired Wachtel, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz, parentheses, Wachtel, Lipton, to investigate the alleged wrongdoing. In the intervening months, the investigation's scope expanded to cover additional endorsement agreements and other potential improprieties.

• 31:20Pablo Torre?

  And I just want to say, David, this is a story built on journalism. That's what this says. We are looking all the time.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  First line, Pablo, of the entire 36-page report is the name of your show.

• 31:34Pablo Torre?

  But the reason we've been reporting it is because we think this story is fundamentally important. We think it's important to bring people what is not being told to them otherwise by some of the wealthiest, most powerful people in America who happen to control some of the most important institutions in America, as in sports. We're doing a story about accountability. We're doing a story in which people, such as the source alluded to here, who we heard as source number one on September 3rd, 2025, took risks to talk about. This is a story about people who told the truth and people who didn't. And David, as we continue what this executive summary is saying, on the backs of people who were daring to tell the truth, the sources that we relied on, please give us the accounting there.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  The investigation finds that the Clippers organization violated the circumvention rules in numerous independent ways. By one, affirmatively initiating off-court income opportunities between Mr. Leonard and four different companies doing business with the team, aspiration, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance.

• 32:46Pablo Torre?

  And I just got to point out, it hurts when you get scooped by a law firm. Man, you know how much time I've spent investigating Boingo Wireless? We haven't, we didn't even get to say that in public.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  I wanted that so badly for us.

• 33:05Pablo Torre?

  I have Boingo. I don't know if anybody wants Boingo documents, but I got some Boingo documents.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  Do you?

• 33:12Pablo Torre?

  Of course.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  So here's the thing, guys, that we should just know is that the NBA, the reason they were so concerned, the reason why Anders wanted to meet with us, they wanted to not get rosiered. They wanted to make sure that if we're going to drip death by a thousand cuts, when do they end the investigation? In the report, they referenced something that happened August 17th with the, was it, was that the ESPN story? Something happened August 17th.

• 33:44Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  And then we did the Daktronics episodes. They kept wondering, is there more? Is there possibly more?

• 33:52Pablo Torre?

  The answer is, there is yet more. There is, there is. And this report will acknowledge that as well, as I keep on referring to. But the point is, what we try to do here is we try to report everything to the level of satisfaction such that we don't actually get sued, such that we are correct. Like, the number of things. Anyway, I don't want to, this is not about, this is not about our process so much as it is what has been found here.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  I understand why you're doing this, Pablo, because you're human. And, and we have all been, our processes have been impugned.

• 34:25Pablo Torre?

  But this is, this is, this is what, this is what the report says to foreshadow, quote, according to this witness, we'll get to the witness, the company was willing to enter into such a sham consulting agreement based on the promise to win a much larger, a much larger services contract with the Clippers. This confidential information came to investigators late in the investigation, and additional steps are ongoing to corroborate it. There is more. And the story, and David, I want to get you back to the, to the bullet points here, but the point here, I mean, is that whenever someone has asked me, is the story over? The response has always been, there's more. And at a certain point, the

• 35:04Pablo Torre?

  tonnage of stuff that you find ends up being something you cannot sweep under a rug, something you cannot just dismiss, something that you cannot leak to some outlet to say, there's nothing here. And this is what we're seeing is what a parallel investigation was corroborating.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  And Wachtel had to acknowledge that in the report, and they did. They had to literally acknowledge that there's more and that there could still be more with investigators. He didn't mention our name a second time in the report, but he's talking about us in general. And I, and I would just say, there could be more that investigators find, and we'll deal with that as it comes.

• 35:44Pablo Torre?

  So Amin, could you actually take over and read the next bullet point, bullet point two, as we get to the executive summary here?

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Facilitating the consummation of endorsement agreements between each of these companies and Mr. Leonard, including in some cases by participating in the Wachtel, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz, September 2nd, 2026, development and communication of deal terms. Do you want me to keep going?

• 36:11Pablo Torre?

  I, I think that we should just keep going because there's a lot to get to.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  Point three, inducing the companies to enter into these agreements by offering and providing them with business from the Clippers.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  Don't make him keep, can we please stop there, Pablo?

• 36:24Speaker 04

  Yes, we have to.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  And translate that one. We, I have to.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  This is, yeah, go ahead.

• 36:30Speaker 03

  Do you see what they, they're saying in the report? That what we said about Daktronics, when I told you in a show, I believe I was even in a volcano in place where it was a rusting in Italy a couple of weeks ago. Daktronics, there are deals all the time where companies give money back to a team in, by buying tickets, by buying a suite, and those deals are done all the time. And that's acknowledged in the Wachtel report. What Wachtel is saying is that it was different. It was, we will do business with you if you do business with Kawhi. And that's what we had been talking about.

• 37:11Pablo Torre?

  Dude.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  Right here in the report.

• 37:13Pablo Torre?

  It's wild.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  It was the only logical explanation for what Daktronics did. There was no reason to have him as Kawhi Leonard as an endorser of Daktronics. Go back and listen to that episode, Pablo, that we did about Daktronics.

• 37:28Pablo Torre?

  We were, I mean, I mean, I mean, we were, I would say this, in our attempt to be fair within the access that we had, I would say that we were even restrained.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  Yes. Yes. Because what I said at the time was, this is perhaps the most easily explainable version of cap circumvention that I think the layperson can understand, could wrap their hands around. Because aspiration was just such a crazy company to begin with. You have to explain what the tree credit, carbon credit thing, and like, people are like, what? This was easy. He's like, hey, you get to build our video board. In exchange, we'll write into the contract where this extra money goes, and you just go ahead and, and sign our guy to a deal. And that was the important thing in the findings, is them being able to create the trail of money from the Clippers to the vendor, from the vendor

• 38:22Speaker 04

  to Kawhi Leonard. The Wachtel Lipton found that thread and connected it all in a way that I think we, again, being, trying to be as inside the lines as possible, we led people up to that point. And just, huh? Whereas Wachtel Lipton said, no, here it is.

• 38:42Pablo Torre?

  It's, it's, it's what, the question that Wachtel answered, and it's really impressive work, when you see it laid out, it's what, what holes do you fill in to the story that we could not access because it relies on participation from the, from the one entity, David, that from the very beginning would not tell us the truth?

• 39:03Speaker 04

  Well, and, and to, to jump in real quick, the other thing was, they got some cooperation from some of these companies, right?

• 39:13Pablo Torre?

  Some.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  Right?

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Daktronics.

• 39:15Pablo Torre?

  Aspiration in part.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Yes. But like, it makes sense. And like, if you're Daktronics, say, I make video boards. You know who needs video boards? NBA teams need video boards. Do I want to play defense on behalf of the Clippers and then maybe perhaps excommunicate myself from this entire league? Or do I just play ball?

• 39:37Pablo Torre?

  There's, we got to foreshadow that one of the things that we underweighted, because it frankly was a reflection of my lack of cynicism, which is crazy to say, is how much every story that we've done is even simpler when you understand that the Clippers were dangling Clippers business in front of each of the companies in a way that feels so crazy to me when you see it laid out in a paper trail.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  It's hard for me to imagine looking back and we can just stick with Daktronics because they were in the news today where there is an SEC investigation underway.

• 40:17Pablo Torre?

  Their earning call today, their CFO said the SEC has requested information from us. This is following our episodes. This is in addition to the NBA, which we now see what the NBA did with that information.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  And so the SEC has to be interested in this because that's where it's also not podcast court. This is actual problem. When you're a public company, you can't do things like that. They don't, the SEC, I remind you, doesn't care about salary cap circumvention one bit.

• 40:45Pablo Torre?

  People have been asking, I mean, like, why do you, this story, why do you care about? It's just like, because this is, I mean, beyond the fact that I don't think you need the SEC or Wachtel Lipton to validate what's been reported because it feels like we did a pretty decent job in laying it all out. It's because there's consequences. There was a set of consequences that the Daktronics CFO said when he said, quote, "We have received requests for information from the NBA. Additionally, the Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking information from us concerning the company and Mr. Leonard. We take these requests seriously and are cooperating. At this point, out of respect for the respective processes, we will not be providing further comment."

• 41:22Speaker 03

  They can't. Their lawyers will not. There is not one scenario under which the corporate lawyers for Daktronics, a public company, will allow them to comment at all. And of course they're going to cooperate fully because again, Daktronics doesn't care about salary cap circumvention. They care about SEC violations.

• 41:41Pablo Torre?

  It's how the salary cap circumvention speaks to everything else we've been saying. It's the story. It's the story of what an organization will do when the rules prevent them from doing it and what else it costs them in the process of trying to get to, I think, I mean, part five of this list here, if you want to skip ahead down to that, past the expenses that we already referred to.

• 42:06Speaker 04

  Failing to report improper solicitations for off-court income opportunities made by Mr. Leonard's uncle and business manager, Dennis Robertson. The pattern of conduct reflected here involving four separate arrangements sharing many common characteristics further demonstrates the clear violation of NBA rules set forth in this report.

• 42:29Pablo Torre?

  So, Lockton Insurance Company, by the way, we hadn't even mentioned, that was merely, I mean, it's just, they refused to cooperate. Boingo, again, more later on that. Daktronics, we've talked about at length. Aspiration, of course. And it gets to the C-suite. It gets back to who was in charge?

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Oh my gosh.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  There's something, there's something else that happened with aspiration that I was not aware of and I may have missed it while doing all of these shows. We always knew it was a $28 million four-year deal, $7 million a year. I read in the report and I don't recall thinking this way, where did that $7 million come from? In the report, Wachtel says that the Clippers claimed that there was, they wanted $7 million of carbon offset credits. They said to aspiration, "We will give you $7 million to plant trees." And coincidentally, $7 million per year was given by aspiration to Kawhi Leonard.

• 43:32Speaker 03

  Wachtel followed that scent and found that was no coincidence. And when aspiration started not getting the money, they were like, "We're not going to keep paying Kawhi if we don't get the money."

• 43:46Speaker 04

  So this was part of a, the carbon offset for the Kia Forum. It's a forum deal. And what they did was basically said, "All right, let's just buy $28 million worth of credits. We'll pay you seven mil over 40 years. How's that sound?" Which is how no one does carbon credits. You usually assess, "What's my carbon footprint?" And then you purchase said carbon credits to offset. Clippers said, wrote a blank check, basically. He'd say, "Here, take this. Just, you know, keep the change, kid," or whatever.

• 44:15Pablo Torre?

  What happens in this story with all of these companies, what's the pattern and the through line we will establish? It's that it wasn't just fake jobs for Kawhi. It was fake jobs for the companies. They invented jobs.

• 44:31Speaker 04

  Consulting work.

• 44:32Pablo Torre?

  Consulting, I mean, like, apples to apples, round peg, round hole, completely timed, exactly in conjunction. And as Joe Sandberg says at one point, which I hate to step on the aspiration story, as we're still, like, we're still on page one, basically. But Joe Sandberg, at one point, it's revealed, texts, quote, "Should I call Dennis and Kawhi and tell them that deal is off because we got fucked?"

• 45:00Speaker 04

  He's, he turns it to Nino Brown at the end of New Jack City. He says, "I'm going to stand up and I'm going to name everybody."

• 45:07Pablo Torre?

  Everybody. And so, and so here's the thing about Joe Sandberg that everybody leaned on was the guy's convicted felon, he's going to federal prison, and in fact, he is, he was sentenced to 14 years. And everybody, not everybody, I'm overstating it, but lots of people were saying, "But he's a scammer. He scammed everybody." And, and on some level, of course, what we've said from the start is, it is entirely possible, of course, that Joe Sandberg scammed all of his investors along the way.

• 45:36Speaker 03

  Both can be true.

• 45:37Pablo Torre?

  And yet, and yet, what he was doing was partnering with Steve Ballmer and Gillian Zucker and Lawrence Frank and the Clippers to deceive the NBA. And when you get to Daktronics and apparently Boingo and Lockton Insurance, the same playbook is run. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries or merch or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 46:19Pablo Torre?

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• 47:32Speaker 04

  Well, that, that was the other amazing part where the four deals before aspiration were all initiated, negotiated, and executed within basically a couple of weeks during the middle of the pandemic. They're in the, like, the depth of the pandemic when people didn't know whether their companies would survive or not, right? It was, again, it goes back to, I don't know if this was magnificently orchestrated or just sloppily executed because when you look at it in the context, it becomes so obvious. Oh no, of course.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  But that's Pablo. That's us, guys. Not slot, no. We, Pablo had to go through 7,000 pages of documents and find sources.

• 48:17Pablo Torre?

  And it's finding, it's finding people who said, "This is what's really happening." And the question is, how do you corroborate that? And this is the story of corroboration.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  And that's another thing that Wachtel put in that 36 pages. When you, when you do an investigation and you have witnesses come in, you evaluate their testimony.

• 48:37Pablo Torre?

  Which is what we've been doing the entire time, by the way.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  So I would just point out, when you have a convicted felon, a fraudster, a liar, and the liar tells you the sky is blue, you do not conclude the sky is blue. You try to find corroborating evidence, corroborating witnesses. Wachtel specifically said in the report that everything Joe Sandberg said to us, we discounted.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  Because he's a felon, but it turns out that we had corroborating evidence from witnesses and documentation that everything this convicted felon said happened to be true.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  What they that's yeah, that's exactly the point. It's a hey, we get it. This guy is unreliable. That's why anything that we took from him had to have another kind of corresponding corroboration from somewhere.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  Like a journalist.

• 49:29Speaker 04

  Well, no, no, beyond us, from the internal documentation.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  I'm saying journalists get more than one source. You're going to go with something. You're going to get a source and you're going to find a corroborating source.

• 49:40Pablo Torre?

  It's why we haven't been able to unveil everything that we think is true. It's because we didn't have the sourcing nailed down.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 49:48Pablo Torre?

  It's it's why I I applaud on some level. I mean, look, there are two things I applaud. I applaud the ambition of the Clippers because holy crap, man, like you guys, you guys went for it. And I applaud Wachtel for telling us in detail what they found so they could show that this is something that they couldn't just dismiss. And so, look, it gets to Gillian Zucker, the president of business, and Lawrence Frank, the president of basketball. Quote, in addition, Steve Ballmer, owner of the Clippers and its affiliates knowingly sought to help Mr. Leonard obtain off court income opportunities and at least in one instance, engaged in a significant act of team felicitation.

• 50:33Pablo Torre?

  Mr. Ballmer also failed to create conditions under which his organization abided by the NBA circumvention rules and especially egregious laps because the Clippers are a prior offender of those rules and were previously and specifically investigated by the NBA with respect to Mr. Leonard.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  This goes to our show where Steve Ballmer has been very clear, and we talked about this so many times, guys, ready? Off to the races. That was Steve Ballmer's number one defense. We are allowed to facilitate an introduction, but that's all you're allowed to do. And then Steve Ballmer quote, aspiration and Kawhi, they were off to the races. What Wachtel found is the races were rigged, that not only were they not off to the races, the races were being run by the Clippers and by Zucker and by Frank and by Ballmer.

• 51:29Speaker 03

  And that is a really, really important thing to note, in my opinion.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  The the other thing is, one of the big defenses that Steve Ballmer had was, I was scammed. This guy's a scam artist. These people were were people who are taking advantage of me and others, other investors. Well, when you put it like that, and then you look at what happens in the document and you say, well, no, the initiation comes from the Clippers end. And oh, by the way, it wasn't just that scam company, but several real company, real businesses that aren't doing, you know, some weird tree thing. That's the part where it's like, he's presenting it as a victim. That was a big part of his defense, Mark Cuban's defense of him when he came on the show.

• 52:20Pablo Torre?

  I miss Mark, by the way. I miss Mark Cuban.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  He sent you a very nice message. I hope you saw it on Twitter.

• 52:25Pablo Torre?

  He he he wished us congrats and Team Shitting Bricks appreciates the message.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  But by the way.

• 52:32Speaker 03

  What we say about Mark Cuban is he said, to his credit, while he told you that this is ridiculous, what he did say is, Pablo, if what we said on September 3rd is true, then they should basically throw the book at Ballmer. And what Cuban, by saying congrats, Pablo, is saying, yeah, Team Shitting Bricks turned out to be the right team, and it was true.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  I'd just like to point out also that, you know, we don't say this for credit. We don't need congrats for this. The trophy case is full, an Edward Armer Award, the Pulitzer Prize. Those are our prizes. Those are our trophies. This, this is just.

• 53:11Pablo Torre?

  Oh, this is, this is, this is a dessert. This is to me like, what else? If we had the powers of the NBA, what would we want to know? And we got today, like, it's it's been so fun to read.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  My regret is that we didn't have more information or I didn't have more on Zucker because for me, as a team president for all those years, I would love to have done a show with you talking about all the things that we figured out or found out that she did versus what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to do it.

• 53:44Pablo Torre?

  So let's, let's, let's.

• 53:46Speaker 04

  Wait.

• 53:46Pablo Torre?

  Let's get, okay.

• 53:47Speaker 04

  Wait, how how are you supposed to do it as in following the rules or how are you supposed to do it as in skirting the rules, David?

• 53:53Pablo Torre?

  Both.

• 53:54Speaker 04

  Okay, I want to do that show. Not today, but we're going to do that show at some point.

• 53:58Pablo Torre?

  Yes. What was being described in the report was the Clippers did know the rules. And what they did, what Gillian did, is that she created a paper trail of emails in which the introductions were manufactured so as to provide legal cover by the NBA rules in the future, so that if called to the mat, they would say, of course, this is how it happened. And of course, what was also findable, if you dig deep enough, is that none of this passed the smell test. And in fact, there were other communications that showed that this was all orchestrated for exactly the reason of circumventing the rules. So, look, I want to get to, man, there's, do we get to, here we go.

• 54:41Pablo Torre?

  Um, there's a quote, there's so many, this is, and by the way, I'm referring there to the introduction emails, which were written to appear responsive to requests from partners. In fact, the Clippers initiated all of it.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  Let's explain what that means, because that was confusing what you just said, Pablo. There is a rule in the CBA of how you are allowed to act when it comes to players and team sponsors, players and team business partners. What the Clippers did is they thought that they could get away by being involved. We read emails that were back and forth. Remember, we had the Clippers redacted emails? When is Kawhi going to do this? Do you need help with Kawhi doing that? And the reality is, what Zucker did basically said, I know the rules, but I got to find, I got to do the job for Ballmer here. As a team president, that's what I would have told you on my show. My job is to do something for the owner, and I know what my job is.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  So I'm out there trying to make sure that we're able to get these deals done for Kawhi, and she violated every rule with the emails that she sent.

• 55:49Speaker 04

  David, my favorite part was basically, you're not supposed to initiate. The the third party is supposed to ask, and then you could say, oh, yeah, I'll make the introduction. So the workaround was, in essence, to say, oh, yeah, following up on that conversation we had the other day. So there's no original paper trail of, hey, how can we get Kawhi on board with us? It's always, oh, I'm following up on that thing that we talked about that we didn't email about. We talked about on the phone, and here's our introduction.

• 56:17Pablo Torre?

  I want to, I want to skip ahead a little bit, forgive me, because we're in the pandemic now. It's April of 2020, according to the report. And what happens here, this is, this is how it happens. Dennis Robertson speaks to the Clippers, to Steve Ballmer, to Lawrence Frank, and says, hey, we made these demands. How are you going to fulfill them for us? And Robertson complained to Mr. Ballmer that Ms. Zucker was making introductions for bullshit deals and that I, Mr. Robertson, can't wait on Ms. Zucker. I have to get paid.

• 56:49Speaker 03

  I love that.

• 56:50Pablo Torre?

  And what Steve, dude, what Steve Ballmer responds here, this is a quote, Mr. Ballmer responded by telling Mr. Robertson then that he and Clippers personnel were all collective workers to try to help Mr. Leonard achieve his financial goals.

• 57:07Pablo Torre?

  I'm just like, how many smoking guns are we supposed to need here?

• 57:13Speaker 03

  Can't do that.

• 57:13Pablo Torre?

  And and Ms. Zucker assured Mr. Robertson that Mr. Ballmer would follow through on his promise. Like, the whole idea of like, what do we, what's the threshold of like clarity here? We're so, I mean, look, anyway, I don't want to just continue to to say, we told you so, but like, this is how the reporting came together.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  Let's, let's talk about one thing as it relates to Ballmer and some of his other quotes that were problematic. When he started with the provably false, that was the first statement, as you recall, to you and to your show, Pablo, before September 3rd. He said that he will be able to prove, show that all of, that he did nothing, that our assertions are provably false. Then he got rid of the provably false and later statements, but kept hammering the fact that he did nothing wrong. It was off to the races. Wachtel was very clear in this 36-page document that Steve Ballmer's culpability is significant, and that is why the fine is 30 million, the five draft picks, the suspension of a year,

• 58:17Speaker 03

  which I reiterate, when you suspend an owner for a year.

• 58:21Pablo Torre?

  It's enormous. It's enormous.

• 58:22Speaker 03

  It's enormous. And so I believe, having read the report, that while it is enormous, that he could easily have suspended.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  Ballmer for longer, not forced to sail, but made him give up control as a possibility, suspend him from being a governor for five years or more, could have been a punishment. His president of business operations, Gillian Zooker, fired. Remember what happened with the Astros when the GM and the manager got fired for the garbage can banging, remember that, but the owner, no, we're good. Wachtel did not find that in this report.

• 59:02Speaker 04

  You know, it's funny, Pablo, going back to, you know, him saying, we are collective workers trying to help Mr. Leonard reach his earnings. It reminded me of the scene in Role Models where, uh, I think Elizabeth Berkeley is the, not Elizabeth, Elizabeth Banks is the lawyer and she's got the guy in there and he says, we're going to plead innocent. And they say, what do you mean? So they have you on tape doing this, it could have been anyone. And then they play the tape and he says, who will believe it? Me, David Garvin, stealing TVs. And it's this, it's, we are collective workers trying to get this, what? Like, how is that?

• 59:43Pablo Torre?

  I mean, it speaks to the desperation, right? We said this at the, at the beginning of our whole series. How desperate was Steve Ballmer, the richest owner in American sports, one of the richest people on the planet, to get a superstar that would allow him to compete as owner of the Clippers? And the answer was, look at what he was doing for, not, look, the whole thing about, it's interesting, the whole thing about the Timberwolves, which is the previous precedent, right? The reason the Timberwolves is small potatoes and why, when I read this, I was like, this feels like the definition of what you can't do as the owner of a sports team, is that this was vast. I mean, and this is the explanation, I just want to quote this part.

• 1:00:25Pablo Torre?

  As the evidence mounted that the Clippers had again stepped over the circumvention line by providing improper assistance to Mr. Leonard, the Clippers advanced a novel theory. Affirmative not responsive introductions of players to business partners for the purpose of helping them generate off-court income. If such introductions are requested by the player's representative, that's, that's, that's cool. You could do that. And if you have that understanding in your mind, then you're trying to drive four different deals through that framework. Or alternatively, right? We can't psychoanalyze the Clippers. I don't know what they would say. Or that's what they made up when they were caught red handed doing something that obviously was never even vaguely okay to them.

• 1:01:09Pablo Torre?

  So anyway, we move down as the Clippers appear to double down on this theory by issuing all of these publicly worded statements. This was the August 17th thing. This is normal. We introduce stuff, players and teams are introduced all the time, blah, blah, blah, partners, all that stuff. Based on the foregoing evidence, investigators find these statements to be inaccurate at best with respect to Mr. Ballmer and clearly false with respect to Ms. Zooker, whose name I'll begin to pronounce correctly. Thank you, David, it's urgent.

• 1:01:38Speaker 04

  I was, the way they treated her cooperation or lack thereof was so scathing. I was taken aback, David. I don't know if you felt the same way I did. I was, I was shocked. I'm like, they did not mince words at all. They felt that she was, as it says, misleading them in the investigation.

• 1:02:01Speaker 03

  You know, there's no penalties in the Wachtel report. There's no punishments. That is their report of the findings. The NBA takes that report and then decides on punishment, negotiates with the union on the Kawhi punishment, settles. Either does or does not negotiate with the Clippers, we need to find that out because the Clippers clearly are acting like they're reading the report today for the first time, which I think is straight horse hockey. That said.

• 1:02:29Speaker 04

  You don't, hold on, you don't think they had their hands on this, or you think they had their hands on this?

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  I think that they did not read the report the way we read the report at 4:30 or 5 o'clock.

• 1:02:39Pablo Torre?

  I think, I think, I think that there was a fundamental misapprehension that is baffling to me. It's about, I mean, look, I can't, I, I just, we'll leave it at that for now.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  We'll leave it at that for now, but the Clippers statement is major. The Clippers saying they are going to fight.

• 1:02:58Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  The NBA, when they do this, if they, let me just talk about baseball for a quick second. If you think a team's going to fight the league, you start by talking to the team and trying to settle it before it's a fight. You don't want there to be a fight. You don't. If something's not covered by the CBA, the way steroids is, we can't fight when a player gets suspended 80 games. That's the CBA, that's the rule. But if you think there's going to be a fight, you do a negotiation. Did the NBA and the Clippers negotiate? The Clippers are saying, we had no idea that this was the report and we are going to fight it vigorously, they, they're saying.

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Well, that means they got to file a lawsuit and they're working on it right now and they're going to have to sue, I mean, maybe us, but certainly Adam Silver, the NBA. I don't, they try to put Wachtel in that, but I don't think that works at all. But in any case, that is a huge burden for Steve Ballmer to try to get over in terms of successfully overturning the punishment. And the punishment is not Wachtel based, the NBA chose it. Wachtel doesn't say in here, take five picks away.

• 1:04:13Pablo Torre?

  By the way, by the way, I will say for the record here, whenever we got asked, whenever I got asked at least, like, what should the punishment be? I don't know. I, I, I'm not, that's not my job. My job is just tell you what the story is. It's to report. And then what happens after that, you can discern, but like, I mean, like.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  Pablo, remember, the Astros result was a suspension of Hinch and a suspension of Lunau, but Jim Crane then fired them the next day. What I'm waiting for and what I thought was coming before I read the Clippers statement, when I assumed the Clippers were acknowledging, I figured that they would fire Zooker tomorrow the way the Astros fired Jeff Lunau the next day. That she was suspended by the league and that they would, and now she would just get fired. And I would expect that to still happen.

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  I, I know we'll probably get to it later in the document, but how do you think it feels to be a subordinate under Gillian Zooker to find out that when she talked to them, she was like, ah, it's one of these guys probably did that, I didn't do that. That's got to be the worst because, because I think that, that's got to be, because, you know, David, I'm thinking about what you're saying. And in, in a, in a way, I could see Lawrence Frank not getting fired because good soldier. I went out and I did what the general asked me to do and, and they, they said I got suspended and I took the suspension on the chin.

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  Well, let's hold on a second with that because we also reported and then it got announced, I believe, Pablo, did Lawrence Frank get a big extension recently?

• 1:05:50Speaker 04

  Sure did.

• 1:05:51Speaker 03

  Sure did.

• 1:05:52Pablo Torre?

  December.

• 1:05:53Speaker 03

  A four-year extension. Went what month?

• 1:05:56Pablo Torre?

  December, I believe, but we'll fact check that.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  The investigation is ongoing at this point. Lawrence Frank knows what happened. Ballmer knows what happened. He gets the extension. You can fire Frank, but you can still pay him out. You can fire him for cause and then you don't pay him, or you fire him without cause and you just pay him. And that could be the reward for Lawrence Frank for being the good soldier. He gets suspended for six months and then gets fired but paid that four-year extension.

• 1:06:24Speaker 04

  Just to separate, is it just to separate yourself from, from the bad PR, the bad juju of the scandal?

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  That's what the Astros did with Lunau and, and, and their manager, A.J. Hinch. You got to separate yours. If you're Steve Ballmer, if I'm the owner of a team, I want to separate myself from all of this stuff.

• 1:06:41Pablo Torre?

  Well, but this is so, but this is the challenge, right? So as we go through this and we'll not get to all of it because it's way too much and I encourage people to like dig in as we continue to cover it and investigate still, especially now that it seems like the story isn't over yet, which is perfect for what this story has been this whole time. The question is, so how do you explain all of this? Like, you can go and go to court and I perversely, of course, want more documents. I always want more documents. Somehow still I'm unsatisfied with the documents. But I mean, how do you rationally explain what is in the documents?

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  This, this is where I go back to, it's section, it's Article 13, Section 2, Part D. Violation of Section 2A to be above may be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence, including but not limited to, evidence that a player contract or any term or provision thereof cannot rationally be explained in the absence of conduct violative.

• 1:07:43Speaker 04

  That's all we're talking about here, guys. Give me a rational explanation for all of this. So if I may push this, nudge this thing forward, Pablo, in the efforts to get to as much as we can. A lot of people kept asking, what's taking so long? What's taking so long? Why is Wachtel taking so long? Pablo and his crew are running rings around you guys. What's taking so long? Well, it turns out Wachtel's did not pull punches on that either. Quote, "This effort was challenged by, among other things, the approach of the Clippers and their outside counsel, who at times delayed in responding to requests for information and operated in an adversarial or obfuscatory manner that slowed investigators' ability to gather the facts."

• 1:08:28Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:08:29Speaker 03

  I'm glad you got that word. I couldn't do it.

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  From the perspective of due process, however, the Clippers were zealously represented throughout this investigation by outside counsel seeking to protect the team's interests.

• 1:08:42Pablo Torre?

  I mean, we read in the episodes we've done. In, by the way, there's a civil trial happening. Aspiration investors suing Steve Ballmer, 11 of them, by the way. And in the filings provided by Steve Ballmer's attorneys, his personal lawyers, not only are we trashed and the whole thing dismissed, but to say the least, it was quite zealous how they've done this. I know that the Clippers have been working with their own PR outside people.

• 1:09:10Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:09:11Pablo Torre?

  I have not talked about this because I'm not trying to whatever, but like they have been working behind the scenes this whole time, trying to zealously create a story favorable to them. And so when it comes to what did they know? And how did they choose to hide it or obfuscate it? What everybody knows who's been plugged into this doing interviews this whole time is that they have been remarkably strategic. And the lack of plausible explanation, of rational explanation for a year, speaks to what this report and our reports, and anyone who does actual legwork on this begins to realize,

• 1:09:51Pablo Torre?

  which is, of course, it's going to be a story about salary cap circumvention.

• 1:09:58Speaker 06

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• 1:11:51Speaker 03

  People really were confused a lot. I'm now thinking back to the last year where my head was spinning for most of the year and still is. But when it came to this story where the real confusion was, is people would come up to me all the time, and it really happened a crazy amount of times. Are you just after Ballmer? Like, is that what you're doing? Or are you?

• 1:12:14Pablo Torre?

  David hangs out with different people, Amin.

• 1:12:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know what I got all the time, David? It was like, why are you guys hating on Kawhi? I'm like, this is not a story.

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  So funny. I got all Ballmer and you got all Kawhi. By the way, that is absolutely awesome.

• 1:12:27Pablo Torre?

  I just, I just got, aren't you just prostituting yourself for clicks?

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  Oh, by the way, three for three ain't bad, meatloaf.

• 1:12:35Pablo Torre?

  We're at an hour and seven minutes. There are more clicks that I want to get out of this. But listen, here's, I want to get to the part that is so remarkable. And this is where, again, tip your cap to an investigation that surfaced new things, right? And so this, again, stuff that's existed in the realm of rumor that we could not publish. I want to, I want to get down here. Consulting. The consulting contracts, because this is maybe my favorite part. I'll just read this. "In early June 2020, at the time of Ms. Zucker's introductions, none of Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton had commercial agreements with the Clippers, but all three companies were in active discussions

• 1:13:17Pablo Torre?

  to provide business services to the team or its arena." You've been saying this for a while. "The Intuit Dome's construction was this gateway to get all of these business deals." But I proceed to quote. "Within weeks following the introductions, either before or on the same day as the companies signed endorsement agreements with Mr. Leonard, each company entered into a multimillion-dollar consulting agreement with the Clippers. Two of the companies received almost the entirety of their consulting fees upfront in payments of $10 million each, delivered prior to these companies entering into endorsement agreements with Mr. Leonard. The third company received its first annual consulting fee of $2 million one day after making its first payment to Mr. Leonard

• 1:14:01Pablo Torre?

  under the endorsement agreement it had entered into with him." And what does that say, David? It says that these companies were themselves getting no-show fake jobs to funnel money to pay Kawhi Leonard.

• 1:14:20Speaker 03

  Well, but they also were getting more than that. Because if they're getting an opportunity to be a part of Intuit's construction, so don't say Daktronics got nothing. They got to do the Halo scoreboard. Don't say Boingo got nothing if they get to be.

• 1:14:35Pablo Torre?

  Oh, David has, David has, David has stopped.

• 1:14:37Speaker 04

  Frozen.

• 1:14:39Pablo Torre?

  I will pick up the thread as David hopefully resets his.

• 1:14:41Speaker 04

  Let me, let me ask, let me, let me play my role as the dumb observer, Pablo. But these consultancy gigs happen all the time. I'm sure these companies have done consultancy before with other vendors. Yes, no?

• 1:14:55Pablo Torre?

  It's so clear that there is no real precedent for the types of jobs that these companies got.

• 1:15:02Speaker 04

  There was an exec who told the Wachtel Lipton investigators, like, we've never done that. We've never had a consultancy gig.

• 1:15:11Pablo Torre?

  Indeed. "A credible witness with direct knowledge told investigators that the consulting agreement one company signed with the Clippers was in fact a ruse, designed and intended to be a vehicle for the team to provide the company with funds to be paid to Mr. Leonard." According to this witness, "The company was willing to enter into such a sham consulting agreement based on the promise to win a much larger services contract with the Clippers. This confidential information came to investigators late in the investigation. This is the additional steps being taken to corroborate it." So David, where you dropped out was the point of they were doing nothing in these fake consulting jobs, but what they were doing by funneling money to Kawhi was putting them in play, in the case of Daktronics,

• 1:15:54Pablo Torre?

  for literally a $100 million deal to build the Halo board, which, as we've established in our episodes, kind of saved the company.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  This is no small part of this finding by Wachtel. Because this is what I have been describing to you on this show and on Nothing Personal. When you're building a stadium or a ballpark, or you're doing any sort of business with sponsors, there's a lot of room to fudge numbers. There's a lot of room to hide money. There's a lot of opportunity to do things that may violate rules. And what Wachtel found very clearly is that there was a immediate causal relationship between Daktronics getting the business of the scoreboard and doing a endorsement deal with Leonard. That is a violation on myriad levels.

• 1:16:52Pablo Torre?

  Amin, could you read this part here in the doc? I wish we had folders, but we gotta obviously do this jerry-rigged. But it's the part where I'm highlighting it. It's at page 19 at the bottom.

• 1:17:02Speaker 04

  Page 19.

• 1:17:04Pablo Torre?

  Of the document, but if you just click to me, it's under the Daktronics section.

• 1:17:08Speaker 04

  Got you.

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  I got it if you need it.

• 1:17:13Speaker 04

  What's the first couple of words?

• 1:17:14Speaker 03

  Daktronics believed that failing to enter into a commercial relationship with Mr. Leonard could jeopardize its ability to win the bid for the Intuit Dome. Later in May 2020, in a call with the senior executive of Daktronics, a senior Clippers executive specified the precise financial terms that the Clippers expected Daktronics to provide to Mr. Leonard in the endorsement agreement. $3 million per year for two years.

• 1:17:46Speaker 04

  So then, fast forward to February 2021. This time, the Clippers executive told Daktronics that because the team had decided to increase the amount it would spend on the scoreboard, Daktronics should correspondingly increase the amount it would pay to Mr. Leonard. After some negotiation, and again, based on its concern that failing to comply could jeopardize its business with the Clippers, Daktronics ultimately agreed to increase its second-year payment to Mr. Leonard by $2 million. In return, the amended agreement called for Mr. Leonard to provide additional services. This arrangement was reflected in an amendment to the Daktronics-Leonard endorsement agreement executed on May 20, 2021.

• 1:18:27Pablo Torre?

  And this is Wachtel's read. Quote, "To underscore the point, the impetus to provide this additional $2 million payment to Mr. Leonard did not come from Daktronics. Instead, it originated entirely from the Clippers."

• 1:18:47Speaker 03

  I'm smoking the gun because it's all anyone said to me. Are you after Ballmer? What are you doing? You have no smoking gun. You guys are not journalists. You're morons. Wachtel, in their ability to spend Ballmer's money, which we need to re-point out that Steve Ballmer paid for this investigation. Just a quick side note for everyone to remember.

• 1:19:08Pablo Torre?

  We'll do the full accounting at some point in the future when the legal bills are all tallied because they're not over yet. We learned.

• 1:19:13Speaker 03

  No, they are not. So it's just a very clear, and when the evidence becomes that clear, and then you have it again happen, and what Wachtel said in the report is it wasn't just Daktronics. They went endorser by endorser of Kawhi and showed the same pattern. And that's how you end up with this penalty.

• 1:19:33Pablo Torre?

  And that's how you end up talking about aspiration where we started this story as almost like, you know, close to the end, I think of what we can do here in one episode, which we'll of course follow up on. But the summary here, as we get to aspiration, is a Gillian Zooker story here. And look, we've had emails in which Joe Sandberg is talking about how helpful Gillian is going to be. We should activate all this stuff. I don't want to do the aspiration series again. But here is the summary from Wachtel, which is that it's October of 2021, and Ms. Zooker raised the topic of endorsement agreements

• 1:20:12Pablo Torre?

  between team sponsors and players, and she used Mr. Leonard and another player, foreshadowing, as examples of players with whom aspiration could partner. Ms. Zooker told investigators that she told Mr. Sandberg that NBA rules prevented her from providing such assistance, but the record establishes that she acted otherwise. And this takes us to Joe Sandberg, the aforementioned convicted felon in federal prison, who said to the NBA something interesting, it seems, because, quote, "Indeed, in that very same, in that very same conversation, and rather than simply supplying Mr. Sandberg with contact information for Mr. Leonard and/or his representatives, which is all that is permitted by the CBA circumvention

• 1:20:55Pablo Torre?

  rules, Ms. Zooker told Mr. Sandberg that she would enlist a particular business agent to assist Mr. Sandberg in structuring the agreement, a business agent who was then under a retention agreement with the Clippers," end quote. And just to spell that out, there was an agency working for both the Clippers and for aspiration. And we will, again, have to hold on some of the reporting here, but that agency ended up being a nexus through paperwork and money to flow.

• 1:21:29Speaker 03

  When you look at that part of the Wachtel report, and again, we just got it an hour and a half ago, and I've done, I will admit that I've only read the report once, and I will have to read it again. But one thing, another thing that came to me while reading this report is that a conversation with Joe Sandberg, Wachtel as the investigator, had to find another way to get at the Clippers and Zooker, to get at the truth. They weren't just going to base it on any testimony from Sandberg. And what Wachtel said in the report is, hold on a second, Zooker did the same thing with four companies exactly this way. What are the chances that Joe Sandberg's line, but yet the other three companies, it's

• 1:22:14Speaker 03

  exactly the same? Well, wait a minute, maybe Joe Sandberg is telling the truth about this specific part, which is not an SEC violation. I remind everybody, this is salary cap circumvention, not SEC violation for Zooker and the Clippers. No criminal issue whatsoever. But this is a damning paragraph. When a convicted felon is explaining to the investigators something that is so easily corroborated, that is when, if you're Steve Ballmer, you say, I can't go forward with my president of business operations.

• 1:22:52Pablo Torre?

  Of course. I mean, unless, unless all of this was also something that was cool with him. But.

• 1:23:00Speaker 03

  Doesn't matter. You still sell her down the river. You don't blame yourself. It's like saying Jim Crane, I had no idea they were banging.

• 1:23:07Pablo Torre?

  No, but I mean, there's an email here. We love documents. October 28, 2021. Could you please read?

• 1:23:14Speaker 04

  Yes. Subject line, aspiration and Kawhi. Joe is making an offer to Kawhi to be a spokesperson for $5 million cash, plus $7 million in stock per year for four years, as long as he's with the Clippers. Can someone please come up with a wish list Joe should ask for from Kawhi? Joe doesn't really know what to ask for.

• 1:23:36Pablo Torre?

  Which is the definition of a fake job.

• 1:23:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  It's even, it's even better because on September 3, one of the areas where, interestingly enough, that Kira was involved when she heard the episode, was the thing we've talked about where I focused on that line, as long as he is with the Clippers. And people were saying to me, yeah, that's not really any big deal. That's normal. You wouldn't be a sponsor if you're with a different team. And I said, hold on, this is not normal at all. And there were people who came out publicly who said, oh, David, of course it's normal. No. The reason why it's as long as he is with the Clippers is that if Steve Ballmer's not paying

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  Kawhi Leonard, then he doesn't need aspiration to pay Kawhi Leonard. It is right there as clear as day in the Wachtel report.

• 1:24:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it is normal, David, when you're talking about like Dodge of Dade Land or whatever. Like, yes, that makes sense that the local car dealer does not want to, you know, endorse an athlete who is not local to the area. But when you're talking about big national brands, the example I use when confronted with the same kind of pushback was Steph Curry and Chase. Obviously, there's a connection there between Chase as a team sponsor and Steph Curry. If Steph Curry were to go to Charlotte, it's not like Chase says, well, that's it. Rip that up. Don't want anything to do with you anymore. We were going to pay you all this money if you stayed here. It's Steph Curry. That's the whole point. And so

• 1:25:09Speaker 04

  when you talk about national brands and presumably national name superstar players, these, this, this, you know, term is it has to be a Clipper, becomes very suspicious indeed.

• 1:25:22Pablo Torre?

  We have been saying this whole time for a year, $28 million over four years for a no-show endorsement job, plus this $20 million in guaranteed stock. And here it is. It's just, it's, it's, it's just, it's all, the math is adding up. And so we go through, there are more emails between the agent, Gillian was the person who wrote the email that Amin just wrote, the agent and Gillian, they're talking about how they want their thoughts on all this stuff. Agent writes back, Gillian shared with me that you guys spoke. She asked me to help you draft thoughts for the Kawhi offer. Please review and let me know if this is how you were looking at this. The next day, Zooker requests a call with

• 1:26:04Pablo Torre?

  Uncle Dennis and Mitch Frankel, remember him, Kawhi's agent. Kawhi claims to investigator, excuse me, Zooker claims to investigators that it's a, quote, preview. And one day later, November 5, 2021, Gillian Zooker sends a formal, quote unquote, introduction email to Mr. Robertson and Mr. Sandberg, which you may recall from the interview Steve Ballmer gave to Ramona Shelburne that first week of September. That is the bleeping email that has been cited as exculpatory evidence this whole bleeping time.

• 1:26:40Speaker 03

  Off to the races.

• 1:26:42Speaker 04

  This was the introduction, right? And by the way, when she gets on the call, when asked about that call, she said she does that always before an introductory email. She gets on the call with the people, let them know, hey, this introductory email's coming, which reminds me of the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Jason Alexander and Larry David have an argument about having a meeting to set the meeting. No, we just had the meeting. No, no, this is the meeting to set when the meeting is. What is that? What? You're calling someone to let them know there's an introductory email happening? That doesn't make any sense. But in essence, that introduction email is what we talked about earlier in this episode, which is, she frames it as though, hey, remember when

• 1:27:24Speaker 04

  you guys asked? Here it is. Off to the races. But as Wachtel points out, this introduction came nine days after Ms. Zooker told Mr. Sandberg that she would call a business agent to help him structure an agreement with Mr. Leonard. Eight days after Ms. Zooker conveyed to the agent financial terms for the deal, and one day after Ms. Zooker gave input on the deal's term sheet.

• 1:27:49Speaker 03

  Off to the races.

• 1:27:50Pablo Torre?

  Please, please, please, please read to me the next part of this.

• 1:27:55Speaker 04

  Based on this series of events and based on the record related to Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton, investigators find that the November 5, quote unquote, introduction email from Ms. Zooker was drafted solely for record making purposes and was not a genuine communication intended to kick off a deal making process for Mr. Leonard that was by this time already well underway.

• 1:28:21Speaker 03

  That's a major paragraph when it comes to punishment.

• 1:28:24Pablo Torre?

  Tootch.

• 1:28:24Speaker 03

  Because that is exactly saying that you did not follow the rules. The email was intended to comply with the rules. We make the introduction and we're off to the races. What is made clear by Wachtel is that it did not work that way.

• 1:28:40Speaker 04

  This is not a crime of ignorance, is what David is saying. What Wachtel is asserting is this is an active cover up.

• 1:28:49Pablo Torre?

  And at a certain point, Joe Sandberg is saying all of this in his texts, and maybe you just discount him because of the convicted felon aspect of his story, which we get it. But he says stuff as clearly as, the Clippers are asking us to do this with Kawhi Leonard. He is then getting mad because at some point with the Forum deal, which we talked about already, there is a seems, some hesitation, some conflict on whether Joe Sandberg, co-founder of aspiration, is going to get what he wants out of all of this. And I mean, this is the rational explanation part. I want to zoom to this. No Clippers witness could provide a credible alternative explanation for the initial appearance of the $7 million annual

• 1:29:34Pablo Torre?

  payment from the team to aspiration in the Forum agreement. They found another, it's just, it, you scratch the surface and you keep on realizing the depth. And what Ballmer tells investigators is that this was based on a study from a consultant. But the consultant told investigators, this whole carbon credits deal for the Forum, quote, "that the Clippers had given him a $28 million budget with which to address the Forum's emissions, not the other way around."

• 1:30:06Speaker 04

  No one does it like that, folks. Nobody does it like that. You gotta figure out what your emissions are, and then you pay to offset it. You don't give them the money and say, as I said earlier, keep the change, kid.

• 1:30:19Speaker 03

  There is something that was not addressed in the report.

• 1:30:22Pablo Torre?

  Yes, there were a couple of things that I was looking for.

• 1:30:25Speaker 03

  I'd like to bring it up because I found it to be incredibly coincidental. The investments by Ballmer into aspiration, the amount of the investments, the investment by Dennis Wong.

• 1:30:37Speaker 04

  Did not appear in the report at all.

• 1:30:39Speaker 03

  Who does not appear in the report?

• 1:30:41Pablo Torre?

  Did not appear in the report despite, as we've said one zillion times, investing in aspiration as if it was a real company, was in default, had its auditor resign, had been under a probe by the SEC already. And while, by the way, Kawhi was waiting for his money, only to get it nine days after Dennis Wong invested for the very first time, the only outside investor to enter Aspiration's books at that point in December of 2020.

• 1:31:09Speaker 03

  And I have an explanation for it because if you're Wachtel, you're investigating salary cap circumvention. You're not investigating the civil claim of fraudulent inducement to invest in a company, the way Steve Ballmer has said, "I got scammed." What by not putting Ballmer's investment into aspiration into the report, they are acknowledging that two things can be true, as we've said time and time again. Steve Ballmer could have been scammed by aspiration, and Steve Ballmer could have worked with aspiration to circumvent the salary cap. And there's no reason for Wachtel to address the first part because that's not what they were hired to do. So while I'm not happy they're not in the reports,

• 1:31:53Speaker 03

  I would like to know what they found out that may be different than what we found out. It makes perfect sense to me it would not be in the report because Wachtel, putting this together, knows exactly what their job was, to investigate salary cap circumvention, not any sort of fraud with Ballmer and his investment into aspiration.

• 1:32:14Speaker 04

  Now, David, I have a question for you because the Clippers' ownership structure is very uncommon in modern sports. Steve Ballmer, majority owner, Dennis Wong, minority owner, no more owners.

• 1:32:27Pablo Torre?

  99% Ballmer, 1% Wong.

• 1:32:30Speaker 04

  Right. And so typically-

• 1:32:32Speaker 03

  That had never been released before.

• 1:32:34Speaker 04

  In the NBA, you have your governor, and then there's an alternate governor, who is typically the other, you know, the next, you know, partner in line. Had Dennis Wong been in this and disciplined in this, you have a situation where both the majority owner and the minority owner, excuse me.

• 1:32:59Speaker 03

  It's a great point that you're making behind the cough, which is if you suspend Ballmer and Wong, then you have to put in some sort of proxy to vote.

• 1:33:08Pablo Torre?

  Can I, can I tell you guys something interesting as I've come to know way too much about the ownership governance structure of the Clippers? Steve Ballmer is the owner. Here are two alternate governors that he has used in recent years. Dennis Wong, Gillian Zucker.

• 1:33:23Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. It's, it's, I'm like, what's the name of that TV show, like Chain of Command or whatever, where it's like, what happens when the president and the vice president and the secretary of state, like, they all die?

• 1:33:34Pablo Torre?

  Designated Survivor.

• 1:33:35Speaker 04

  Designated Survivor. Who's the designated survivor here if Dennis Wong was out and Gillian's out and Lawrence Frank is out and Steve's out? Who's that? Is it Ty Lou? Who becomes the governor in this?

• 1:33:46Speaker 03

  I thought, I think that I read something that it's gonna be Doc Rivers.

• 1:33:50Pablo Torre?

  They're bringing, they're bringing Doc back.

• 1:33:53Speaker 04

  That would be, hey, hey, my voice, my voice, my voice isn't that good, but I'm still doing it just for you guys. Hey, Steve, if you need-

• 1:34:03Pablo Torre?

  Amin, Amin has the only impression where losing his ability to speak actually makes it more convincing.

• 1:34:09Speaker 04

  If you need me, just give, give me a call. I'm on the golf course.

• 1:34:13Pablo Torre?

  By the way, I saw Doc in France, and when we, I was, anyway, that's, that sounds like a terrible humble brag. But I gotta call Doc, I gotta call Doc after this. Doc sat for the, for the Wachtel investigations. He's not in here either. I just want, and there, there are a lot of things, aspiration investor Doc Rivers, by the way. There are a lot of names in here which make me think that, to David's point, there was a scope, we've said this the whole time, right? An independent investigation is not journalism. We credit what this investigation found. We've done it for 90 minutes, literally. We've done that for 90 minutes. But it's not journalism. It's not telling you the story that I think

• 1:34:57Pablo Torre?

  the public interest most finds compelling. It's quite compelling, but the other characters that we've outlined here, Dennis Wong being one of them, David, I can imagine a world in which the scope was given in a certain way, and within that scope, what became undeniable was the sweeping nature of this whole scheme. And at that point, the biggest punishment in NBA history does not need an expansion of scope, which they were not given in the first place.

• 1:35:28Speaker 03

  And I want to read what Wachtel wrote in the report when they said, "As part of the investigation, Wachtel conducted 73 interviews of 60 people." That's not a mistake. 13 people interviewed twice because there was more that was discovered during the course of the investigation. Then they said that they reviewed more than 200,000 pages of documents. It's the equivalent of filming 24 hours a day on the island for Survivor and cutting it into a 50-minute episode. This is a 36-page report. They found and looked at tons of

• 1:36:08Speaker 03

  other stuff, which is why they had to put in the report, there may be more. And that's exactly what they said.

• 1:36:15Pablo Torre?

  Well, let's get to our, our conclusion here for now. It's always for now with this story. Because what they say in the report is, "The evidence supporting these findings is substantial. While it is possible that even more evidence will be uncovered as investigators continue to follow up on information that was recently received, the record as developed is more than sufficient to establish the rules violations described in the summary report." Amin, would you like to take over the next read?

• 1:36:45Speaker 04

  The three individuals most responsible for the Clippers' rule-breaking are Mr. Ballmer, Ms. Zucker, and Mr. Frank.

• 1:36:56Pablo Torre?

  David, will you read the next?

• 1:36:57Speaker 03

  I cannot because I was reading the report, so I don't know where you are.

• 1:37:01Speaker 04

  I got you. No worry. "Mr. Ballmer knowingly sought to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities and engaged in a significant act of facilitation through the form agreement. Mr. Ballmer also failed to supervise his most senior businessperson while she systematically violated NBA rules..." Hold on, it's not letting me scroll. "...and more generally permitted a culture in his organization..." Please stop editing so I can scroll and read it.

• 1:37:38Speaker 03

  "...that allowed for the initiation, facilitation, inducement, and potential funding of multiple endorsement agreements between Mr. Leonard and team partners. Mr. Leonard, through the conduct of Mr. Robertson, Uncle Dennis, violated the CBA's circumvention rules by successfully pressuring the Clippers over many years to assist him in obtaining off-court income opportunities. Mr. Leonard also violated the CBA by failing to reimburse payments by the Clippers for personal expenses not authorized by the CBA, many of which were requested by Mr. Robertson."

• 1:38:22Pablo Torre?

  And so now we await further confirmation. We've, we're reaching out to Boingo Wireless. By the way, I don't even say what Boingo is. It's the, Boingo was the wireless internet provider for the Intuit Dome. And if you look up who was on the board of Boingo, what connections do they have to certain Clippers executives? There is more there, I dare say. Locked In Insurance, requesting comment from you as well. And we await the conclusion of all the things that Joe Sandberg is dealing with in the federal court system, as well as the civil suit against Steve Ballmer, which has been hinging on the premise of what does cap circumvention mean when you trusted a tree-planting startup with millions of

• 1:39:06Pablo Torre?

  dollars of your money because you were in it because Steve Ballmer was in it to save the environment. And so I will, I will, I will have, David, please, hold for one second. I will also read the end of Kawhi Leonard's statement. Quote, "As I return to Toronto, I am focused on what I can control, closing this chapter, and moving forward with a clean slate."

• 1:39:36Speaker 03

  Did I miss the announcement of the trade?

• 1:39:39Pablo Torre?

  We await that as well.

• 1:39:43Pablo Torre?

  What happened such that the union and Kawhi Leonard said, "We're gonna settle." And the Clippers perhaps realized, "Oh, wait a minute. Our, our door that said, "System arbitration on it," maybe just closed.

• 1:39:59Speaker 04

  Well, I'll tell you what happened. We can start with the very beginning. What was the punishment levied to Kawhi Leonard? The very first episode of this, I was talking about what you can do in the collective bargaining agreement to punish players. You can fine them up to 350 grand. You can void their contract. That's about it. For months, I'd hear people, reputable people, on reputable networks, "They might have to see what happens with this Kawhi suspension." I said, "What suspension? Where are you getting this from? Because I'm reading this document every damn day. I don't see anything where you can suspend a player." Well, Kawhi Leonard got fined 700 grand, which I have to assume, David, that's what, 350 per contract?

• 1:40:45Speaker 03

  It's, it's a settlement. It's a settlement. They could allege that it's two different incidences. They could allege four different ones and say it's 200 grand for each. But the bottom line is, it's a settlement between the league and the NBA.

• 1:41:00Speaker 04

  But the end, end game here is Kawhi Leonard slap on the wrist. Uncle Dennis was already out of the picture. He's always moved on with, uh, his new agent, right? And he goes to Toronto, a place where he's beloved. Toronto gets to sit back and say, "Ooh, okay, he's here. We know he wants to sign an extension. He's a player that can move us up into the stratosphere of the Eastern Conference." They gave up Brandon Ingram, good player. They give up Grady Dick, young player. They gave up two first-round picks, a pick swap, and they're saying, "Yeah, you look like you need it more than I do." And so Kawhi Leonard, if you're a Kawhi fan, and this goes out to all the people for all these months, "Why are you guys hating on Kawhi? Oh, you guys trying to get him suspended?"

• 1:41:43Speaker 04

  I said, "It's not a Kawhi Leonard story." And here is, the proof is in the pudding. It's not a Kawhi Leonard story. I, I compared it to watching the movie American Gangster and walking away saying, "I don't know why Russell Crowe kept messing with T.I." Like, what? Did you, did you miss the whole point of the movie? You thought T.I. was the center of the investigation? It's, this is a big bulletin board with faces and strings attached. And in every one of these movies, the guy at the top, that's the big fish. And then they get the capos underneath, and then you got the, the guy, the affiliates over here, and then lower people and street people and all that stuff.

• 1:42:28Speaker 04

  And what the Wachtel Lipton report in essence painted for us was this bulletin board with Steve Ballmer at the top, Gillian Zucker over here, Lawrence Frank over here. And everything else was secondary to that power chain.

• 1:42:48Speaker 03

  It is extremely telling here, the two statements, one by Kawhi, one by the Clippers. Kawhi saying, "Moving on. You got it. You got me. I did this. I'm done with Dennis."

• 1:42:59Pablo Torre?

  I regret that my family members, these other people in my inner circle.

• 1:43:03Speaker 03

  Why? It's a negotiated settlement. It's done. There is no more action to be taken against Kawhi, and there's no more action to be taken for Kawhi or the union against the NBA. But then the Clippers come out and they come out guns blazing in their statement.

• 1:43:22Pablo Torre?

  Quote, "The result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative. For the past year, we cooperated fully and in good faith. We will now fight just as hard to demonstrate our innocence."

• 1:43:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, Amin.

• 1:43:38Speaker 04

  I, I play this game all the time. I try to put myself in their shoes and try to figure out what would my defense be?

• 1:43:49Speaker 04

  David, what, what could they, I mean, first of all, just let's start with this idea that there's a predetermined narrative. Said by whom? Why would the NBA want a predetermined narrative against its richest owner and its, dare I say, its most popular owner?

• 1:44:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, so listen to what he's a legend. So I love the vehemently reject. So that's worse than just rejecting. You vehemently reject the NBA's findings. But when you allege that there's been a heavily biased investigation, that is a shot across the bow at Wachtel. And Wachtel is in the business of being hired to do investigations. The last thing they want to be seen is as heavily biased because they want more work, more jobs, more money for their own partners. There was nothing biased about the investigation because it couldn't have been, because again, they submit to the NBA their findings.

• 1:44:47Speaker 03

  The NBA then decides, "I agree. I don't agree. I'm gonna do five picks, one pick, two picks, 30 million, five million." Wachtel has nothing to do with that.

• 1:44:57Pablo Torre?

  From the same release from the Clippers, quote, speaking to what they thought this was gonna be. "Unfortunately, none of those promises have been kept. In the last year, Steve Ballmer has spent nearly $50 million funding an investigation by Wachtel, Lipton, Rosen and Katz that has stretched far beyond the bounds of what the league set out to investigate, let alone the bounds of fundamental fairness."

• 1:45:24Speaker 03

  50 million? I would have taken the over. It's been a year.

• 1:45:29Pablo Torre?

  David, David, the lesson of this story is take the over.

• 1:45:37Pablo Torre?

  Every part of this is take the over.

• 1:45:40Speaker 03

  We did.

• 1:45:41Pablo Torre?

  Except in one thing, except in one thing. Any rational explanation that all of the sources and documents and evidence and at this point, vetted reports from all, all sides of the story, right? We are not Wachtel Lipton cheerleaders. We have said from the very beginning, this is not independent. This is not journalism.

• 1:46:07Speaker 04

  We were questioning. We were questioning whether they were gonna bury stuff.

• 1:46:10Pablo Torre?

  And by the way, as I, as I continue to look into Rhode Island Football Club and Dennis Wong and all of these other proper names that are not even in this thing, I just want to say, please tell me how you explain the sum total of what the last year has revealed to us. And we continue, we continue despite the vehemence to wait to find out. So David Samson, Amin Alhassan, I love you guys. There is, dare I say, more to come.

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