Transcript of Pablo Torre Breaks Down The NBA Investigation's Findings | Local Hour

It's time to put on a suit and roll out the carpet. Crank up the tube and gather near. It's the best time of the year, so keep your dial right here. It's me and you and me again at the Suiiiit. The greatest of life's mistakes and best revelations.

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Brought to you by the greatest beer. It's the best time of the year, so keep your dial right here. It's me and you and me again at the Sooze. And every day you're gonna go to a website.

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To vote on the sounds that brought you cheer. 'Cause it's the best time of the year, so keep your dial right here. It's me and you. It's me again and it's you. It's me and you. You and me again at the Suis. That kind of thing. Ladies and gentlemen, Dan Levitard!

Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Come on! Come on! Gloria Estefan said get up! Get up, Tony! Get on your feet! Woo! Yeah!

Woo!

Woo! Woo! Get up, Pablo! Get up! Woo! Woo!

Woo!

Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on!

Woo!

Come on! Who said sit down?

Woo!

4 words for ya! Hi! Love this company!

That gas station event yesterday was amazing. You guys were so good out there.

I appreciate it.

We had a—

I was really good.

We had a shot of One side, somebody throwing a football. Another side, a tire.

2 different— 2 different shots. 2 different shots at the same time.

If you want to bring that up, there's obviously clear controversy on what happened there.

Oh my God, we're still doing this?

I mean, it's obvious.

You made 2. That's what you should be focused on. Not the one that you don't think should count.

You made 1. You can't talk.

You were 4— I'm not talking.

You're talking.

You're absolutely talking.

You made 40% accuracy. You want to try out for a football team?

You made 20. You made 20. You can't talk. I'm gonna talk to the person. Well, he's not here, Koga, but he only had 2 and then one got caught halfway. Controversy for a lifetime.

Catch that breath, Daniel. Want some water?

Do you want me to talk a little bit more about the tire or you got it?

I mean, if 2 and a half, 2 and a half strips—

It can't be a half, it's gotta go through the tire. When we were playing as kids, oh, it got caught halfway to the tire, is that a reception? No, absolutely not.

All right, first of all, Let's start with the big winner here, and that's Zaslow, because this controversy has provided the distraction he needs from everybody focusing in on his throwing motion. It was very poor, Zas. That's the first thing. Hot in the middle! He shrugs it off.

It has zero effect on my life.

Okay, fine. Listen, Tony loves to puff his chest out about how he was a borderline college quarterback And you made 2 out of 5, and now you want to blame the officials?

I had too much zip on the ball, Dave Damaschak. I don't know if you saw that. I got a high arm angle and the thing wasn't as high. That's the issue. So my release point is higher than Cocos, who was throwing like a softball. I don't know what he was doing.

Zazz, why are you looking at him that way?

I mean, what is he talking about? So your release angle's high? Who cares? Is the receiver you're throwing to— his chest is at your release point? What are you talking about?

No, but I had to throw it down because it was so short.

That would have been a touchdown if the defender hadn't intercepted it. I mean, that's the sort of logic you're playing with.

You were too tall for the swinging tire, is that what you're saying?

I said no, I'm not too tall. My arm angle is too high.

So you can't play with receivers who are shorter than you is what you're saying?

No, it's not about that.

That's a quarterback people are gonna want.

Disgrace.

This is why you tried out without a football.

You lost a Ham and Ager. And this is the, this is the danger of shooting your mouth off, writing checks that your butt can't cash. You understand?

Did you see the way he threw?

I saw that you made 2 out of 5. You're supposed to be a college quarterback.

I hit the tire every single time.

So when Damashek says, uh, writing checks your ass can't cash, Pablo Torre has been doing something that is dangerous. And the truth has to be on your side because— and I'm not making this up— this has caused a great much— a lot of sleeplessness over the last, uh, year. A mistake The wrong one gets us bankrupted. And Pablo has to be on the facts. And he was on the facts in a way that the NBA has nuked the LA Clippers for cheating and salary cap circumvention.

According to the reports, y'all.

So went it.

Involving Kawhi Leonard. It's one of the most massive penalties in the history of sports and is the most massive one in the history of basketball. 5 first-round picks. That's a Mikal Bridges or a Rudy Gobert. $30 million in fine. That's almost an Immanuel Quickley next year. Almost a Jordan Poole. Almost a Walker $30 million. Doesn't pay for— it doesn't pay for Tyler Herro, but almost. And the big one, I thought, the one that's going to hurt Ballmer the most, he can't go to the games in his own arena for a year. Can't do anything around the team.

Loves that arena.

I can't go. Not allowed around anything.

Loves it so much.

And their 2 highest-ranking officials, both presidents, get hit. Lawrence Frank less so because he sang the song. Like, he took notes on everything, and he got 6 months less than the president of business operations. So let's get into the facts of this with Pablo Torre.

Pablo.

I urge you guys, guys to check out Pablo Torre Finds Out Live from Last Night. David Sampson, Amena Hassan, they won the Pulitzer Prize for their reporting, and what they did last night is worth reviewing. Since last night, Pablo, what are the facts that you have gotten in reading everything that has allowed you to have new thoughts today that are different because you've actually had time to absorb the material?

Yeah, my first thought is, can we get Dan a CPAP machine?

Because I'm worried that we're going to talk about journalism and he's not going to make get to the end of it. I have also thought that we may never get to the end of this investigation. What I realized though, as I was rereading and rewatching a lot of what we've done, as well as what the NBA and Wachtell Lipton, which released a 36-page report that we talked about in 90 Minutes yesterday. I said this was bigger than we were able to say, even as we circled the vastness of it. The thing, Dan, that I don't know if people realize is that this was not merely a story of fake jobs for Kawhi Leonard.

This was a story of fake consulting jobs for the 4 companies that Wachtell Lipton detailed in documentation. Everybody got fake jobs and the contracts to build out the Intuit Dome with the wireless sponsor, the insurance provider, the scoreboard maker, the carbon credit environmental company that all went to the $2 billion building that Steve Ballmer is now banned from for a year. All of those deals, according to our reporting and now the NBA's investigation, were contingent on paying Kawhi Leonard in ways they weren't allowed to do.

It is astonishing in ways that I was surprised by, and I am heartened that the NBA went to places we were not able to because we are merely reporters, not the NBA with the power to compel people to talk.

All right. So what surprised you yesterday? What in there did you not know? Because there were 2 more side deals, allegedly, and also something that I don't think is small, Pablo. he apparently just had an expense account where he could just not repay an assortment of things where the company, or the NBA was, or the Clippers rather, were just apparently just letting him run around with an expense account.

We've been hearing lots of stuff that we haven't gone public with that mercifully made it into this report. The thing that I'm most interested in and surprised by though was who ended up giving the NBA some of the evidence that we were unable to obtain. Lawrence Frank, the GM of the Clippers, the president of basketball operations, Dan, was taking contemporaneous notes during meetings that were about the things they were not allowed to do.

And those notes were quoted by Wachtell Lipton, and they praised Lawrence Frank, who got a 4-year extension from the Clippers in December of last year, by the way, mid-investigation, right? We were all saying, what is happening here? Lawrence Frank had notes quoting Steve Ballmer about how Ballmer pledged to Uncle Dennis Robertson and Kawhi Leonard, we are gonna act as collective workers to your financial benefit. That was quoted from Lawrence Frank's notes.

There is stuff happening behind the scenes in terms of people realizing I need to cooperate and tell them what really happened here that we were not able to access, in part because we are not the NBA. But God bless this report for spelling out that Lawrence Frank's notes were key to Ballmer actually being identified as clearly as we've been saying this entire time.

You only get to pick one thing. What was most interesting about yesterday?

This is a story about hundreds of millions of dollars. It's more. It's a story about every contract that the Clippers signed with the Intuit Dome that now needs to be looked at anew. It's the story about how everything that Kawhi Leonard wanted was given to him according to this investigation and our reporting, it seems, by granting contracts to companies and some of them public companies that the SEC is now looking into. It is beyond cap circumvention now. That is what is interesting to me. This is about allegations of not disclosing to the federal government what they were legally obligated to.

I used to say when I turn 80, all bets are off. That's when the heroin starts. But then I moved it up to 75 a few years ago. I'm thinking now 65 years of age.

I have a pact with a friend that we both live until 90, we're gonna do heroin. This is the Dan Le Batard Show.

I have 1,000 questions, so let me do this as quickly as possible, given some subject matter that is difficult, but he is the authority on this subject. This is a sports journalism story that I don't think I've ever seen in my career as a journalist, and it's one of the biggest sports scandals about cheating that we've ever seen. The Clippers now have 2 owners. Who are at this— at the center of 2 of the most giant ownership scandals there have been, somehow. And Ballmer got the team because they took it from the other one. So, uh, what do you do with the wording around Ballmer that doesn't seem to make a direct link to him being the source of the wrongdoing while suspending him for a year?

I think the link's there. I think anybody who says, oh, there wasn't direct funneling of money, should just read the report.

And listen to our episodes.

It's very clear that Steve Ballmer was a participant and the overseer of a GM and a head of business that were operating in a scheme. This was a scheme. It was a scheme with 4 separate companies and beyond, according to my reporting, by the way. There are some names in here that didn't make it in that we will get to eventually. But this is Ballmer's quotes, his authorization, his investments, his oversight.

And anybody who knows, as we've said from the beginning, Dan, that the dude was measuring the distance between toilets in his building. He knows that the details matter. He was a recidivist. And the NBA says what we've been saying for a year. 2015, punished for cap circumvention with DeAndre Jordan, that attempt, right? 2019, investigated. Same thing we're talking about still in 2026.

And in 2026, of course, we now know what happened, or at the very least, what's apparent above the surface of the water still. And so in that way, Steve Ballmer was directly funneling money through sponsors.

It's just that he did it in a way that the NBA called, quote unquote, novel, that the Clippers thought would be their excuse. We're gonna do it through partners that we will pay as a team for the $100 million video board, for Locked In Insurance, the insurance company on the construction, for Boingo Wireless. I didn't have this on my Boingo card, Dan. The wireless company would be A key player in this. That was pretty good.

I was workshopping that. I was workshopping that. Okay, beat me to it.

Put it away. The Clippers vehemently reject this and vigorously challenge.

How?

What does that look like?

I would love to find out. We've been waiting this whole time. What's the alternate explanation? Now that task becomes twice as hard, if not more so, because the NBA has provided what we could not get.

And so if you're telling me here is the evidence, here is the paper trail, a manufactured paper trail, by the way, that could have been the most interesting part of this. Gillian Be president of business operations for the Clippers, Steve Ballmer's right-hand person. They would meet in the office all of the time, is what I was told, for a year. And they would discuss everything with the Intuit Dome privately. She created, according to the NBA, a manufactured paper trail to hide what they were doing so that when investigators or journalists came looking, they could say, we had an introductory email and then we were off to the races.

Which is what Steve Ballmer said to Ramona Shelburne when he came on to ESPN Air a day after we dropped part 1. as his exculpatory proof.

And so the question is, you have emails before the email that was supposed to be exculpatory, you have emails after, you have the financial flows, you have the documentation, you have the testimony, you have Lawrence Frank, you have Kawhi Leonard saying, by the way, my bad, should have trusted the people in my inner circle, admitting to it.

And now Ballmer says still at the end, we're gonna A, arbitrate, and B, possibly sue.

Part A, for people who haven't been keeping track, is now impossible according to the CBA. Why?

Kawhi Leonard settled.

The union settled. Everything we've heard in ESPN especially was the union will never settle.

They'll never settle. They'll never settle. They'll never settle. Kawhi Leonard got a slap on the wrist. He settled. What does that mean? The Clippers can't take this to arbitration. They now need to sue in court the NBA and Wachtell Lipton and maybe us if they want.

But they need to figure out how they're gonna explain this to a jury.

and what discovery is going to show. Because as I keep on saying, there's more.

Quickest answer you can give: the punishment is too stiff, too light, or fair?

Wow.

Based on what the report shows, fair. Based on what it doesn't in totality, too light.

So when they say at least 5 first-round picks and at least $30 million, if you're the Clippers, don't you run to them right now and say, look, we'll cop to everything, we won't fight, but no future punishment, no more? Like, stop this, it ends now.

Well, keep in mind what Wachtell says in their report, which is that their investigation is ongoing too. There was something that they are referring to in the report that says that it came in late in the last couple weeks, as we ourselves have been reporting. As Daktronics— I can't stress this enough, Dan—

Daktronics, the video board company, right, the Halo board, they are now, as their CFO said on their earnings call yesterday, the SEC is now probing them. The federal government wants documents. We have so much access. The NBA has perhaps even more access to some of the more relevant characters. The federal government has yet more access. There is more.

And so if the Clippers want to settle, I think it seems like they've decided not to, but now they have to be worried. What else is there?

Give me some range here. Just a quick answer that you think, guesstimate on the amount of extra money that Kawhi got through all of these things. Just give me a range from where that extra money can be.

I mean, the total value in terms of what he was promised, it was close to 9 figures.

Okay, so given that, what do you think of the penalty? Did you just answer the question? $700,000 if you got tens of millions of dollars, what kind of penalty is that? Is that just the plea bargain?

That is a very savvy legal move that the NBA's lawyers, which understand the CBA better, it seems, than a very high-priced law firm, that has been representing Steve Ballmer made to box in Steve Ballmer. That is my read based on the report.

According to reports, y'all.

According to reports, y'all. Uh, why are picks not taken until 29, 30, 31, 32, 33?

That is a great question, and I continue my reporting on that.

Gillian Zucker.

They don't have any, Dan. That's why they, they don't have picks.

Traded all those.

Yeah, no, but they're getting a couple for Kawhi.

Well, they technically don't have it yet.

But that's the part where my reporting continues, is we're waiting for the trade to go through. And by the way, the Raptors now are thinking to themselves, is it done?

And I keep saying to everybody, it's not done.

But they are thinking to themselves, maybe it's done. And that's how the Clippers get those picks back. So we wait to see.

Gillian Zucker, explain to me. This is the first time I'm hearing that name.

Yeah, she's the right-hand person of Steve Ballmer. What Lawrence Frank is to basketball operations, she is to business. She is the character that we introduced in our series that was across the Petronas stuff.

She was on emails with Joe Sandberg, the co-founder of Aspiration. She's the person who was there to execute what Ballmer wanted. And if you ask anybody who worked at the Clippers, does Gillian Zucker—

I've been told that is how to pronounce her name—

if Gillian Zucker does something, does she do it without Ballmer's permission?

You ask that to people who've worked with them both, who know them, who've been in rooms with them, and they will laugh in your face. And so when I say Steve Ballmer knew, the question is, do his lieutenants operate without his knowledge? And what everybody says to me is he is a micromanager in ways that you still continue to underestimate.

Chris, what were you yelling at me about?

I mean, there's debate back here on the pronunciation of her name, the first and the last.

There's never been a Gillian.

There has been a Zucker.

Get your facts right.

Gillian. Gillian.

Get your facts right.

Our investigation also continues on how to pronounce Gilian Zucker's name. Admittedly, a blind spot for me.

So you tell me what I'm to do with an assortment of different things here, Pablo, because there's a lot here. That ESPN report from 10 days ago where you got a 3-time Pulitzer winner, Don Van Natta, Ramona Shelburne, their best reporters are basically just being puppets for Clipper leaks that are in no way true. Like, what Walk me through what the hell happened from like, how is it that ESPN got used as a puppet here? Going back to this interview with Balmer where he's squeaking his way through, I didn't do anything, I don't know what you guys are talking about. Play that from Ramona Shelburne's initial report.

In the court documents and in Pablo's podcast, they report it was $28 million.

Pablo's podcast. I don't know anything about the court documents on this. I don't. I haven't seen them and I don't know. I'm not trying to be I don't know. I really don't know. But the speculation is what it is. Any speculation would be crazy. These are guys who committed fraud. How would I be able— look, they conned me.

You're one of the richest men in America.

They conned me. I made an investment in these guys thinking it was on the up and up, and they conned me. At this stage, I have no ability to predict why they might have done anything they did.

Pablo.

For a year, the Clippers, through their personal relationships with media, with crisis PR people, with compliant outlets, have tried to sell a story in which I and we have been lying about this the whole time. And what those media sources should have known a lot earlier than yesterday was that it was the opposite. They were being fed a story that could not be rationally explained. And for a year we asked for the explanation and it never came. And so 2 weeks ago when ESPN goes with that story, all I could think was it felt like people who were trying to compete on a story that they got beat on without doing the work. And it's embarrassing. I can't speak to their personal motivations. I submitted to ESPN a comment saying that we stand by our reporting and look forward to the NBA's ruling after the story came out. I was not given an opportunity to comment before it came out, by the way, which is interesting. And even more interesting is that they didn't include my comment, even though I was told by that team that they would. So they should have known better is all I'm left thinking about.

And I don't know if I could have made it any clearer over the course of a year.

The CBA doesn't allow for player suspension for cap circumvention. It's plain and simple. Kawhi got double the fine that is the maximum allowable fine. We should say all of that, but everyone's going to think he got off light here, correct? Like, he's in the middle of this and everyone else takes the shrapnel and he got barely anything for being somebody who was just wandering around taking handouts, allegedly.

Well, the CBA is a fascinating collectively bargained document that is bargained between owners and players.

And so the players in that document have a level of protection by the NBA's rules that is special and is, it turns out, something that can be used to box in the richest owner in American sports if the commissioner and if the other owners deem that richest owner in American sports, Steve Ballmer, to be acting beyond what is acceptable to them. And that's also the story here, Dan. It's been painted this entire time like not everyone does this. Everyone does perhaps some degree of this, but not what we've reported and not what the NBA has found. And that left the NBA with a move. If we slap Kawhi Leonard on the wrist relative to real-world consequence, but we simply abide by the CBA, we can punish Steve Ballmer, who is otherwise incredibly intimidating because there is this unbelievable overabundance of evidence, and they chose to do it.

Dan Levitar.

I like options. I don't like Cheeto trying to corner the market by saying we're everything.

Dave Demachek.

Well, we're the puffy ones. We're the— yeah, I believe you're picking up what I'm laying down.

This is the Dan Levitar Show. Pablo, I have a question which may sound stupid. I don't think it's stupid, but ultimately you were able to find evidence of the cap circumvention because of a paper trail, because of the Clippers' dealings with outside businesses to then funnel the money to Kawhi. Why couldn't Steve Ballmer just show up at Kawhi's house with a duffel bag full of $50 million and say, here, don't tell anyone?

I mean, look, we could do a whole— I mean, with Mark Cuban present, maybe a whole Shark Tank episode about the best way to pitch cap circumvention. Company ideas.

It's a great show.

And could you do it with a crypto wallet? Could you do it with a stock pick? Could you do it with, yes, the duffel bag, SMU-style cash delivery? Absolutely. You could say that would have been more effective than this.

But what they tried to— and this is where it gets to be beyond the pale.

The Clippers were warned repeatedly what they should not do, and they thought they were smarter than everybody.

And they said, all we gotta do is make a fake paper trail, never thinking that the real paper trail would be acknowledged. They said, all we gotta do is stay within the letter of the law that we have misinterpreted, and these journalists can't touch us. All they gotta do is say the story is A to all of the reporters that we look into the eyes and lie to, and we can get away with it, never thinking that story B, the truth, would ever be attested to by sources brave enough to say it.

And that's what the story is, man.

Like, this is about people and whistleblowers who are brave enough to take on the richest owner in American sports, who trusted an independent journalist with their story. It is about the people who are brave enough to say this is not what happened. And we rely on that.

The credit goes to people brave enough to share documents, to tell a story that can be fact-checked as true. And that's why this— it's why all of this wound up being a story of underestimation of the public interest.

So I have an update on the name. I heard both Zucker, Zooker, Gillian, and Jillian from Fortune magazine, from CBS LA, and ultimately found Steve Ballmer introducing Gillian Zucker.

Hmm.

Pablo, get your facts right, man.

So this is what happened.

It's David Zucker.

I've been saying Gillian Zucker. And then David, it's like if I pronounce a Filipino name one way, you're gonna trust my pronunciation of it. David just goes to Zucker, and I'm like, I guess it must be Zucker.

So, all right, get your facts, hand up, get a second source, do something responsible.

That is a real correction that I apologize for.

So Lawrence Frank, in all of this, explain to me and walk me through the idea of he gets an extension, uh, in December, as you said. I thought it was something that felt or looked like hush money, and then he just goes and evidently is one of the main sources on this report. As far as I can tell, Daktronics and Lawrence Frank were the ones that were most helpful here. Do I have that wrong?

According to reports, y'all.

I think that's right.

Gillian Zucker was, according to Wachtell, purposefully obfuscatory, purposefully unhelpful. They credit Lawrence Frank. Lawrence Frank is a really interesting character because he knew everything, was across all the basketball stuff, was clearly involved and an executive-level participant.

But at a certain point, Dan, and this is the calculation that everybody in media had to make, that all protagonists had to make.

They had to figure out when is it time for me to pull the parachute cord? When is it time for me to acknowledge bad things are about to happen because we didn't tell the truth? So do I wanna be somebody who helps the prosecutors or do I wanna be someone who gets prosecuted? And Lawrence Frank is a habitual note-taker. When I say he was taking notes and people have been rightfully quoting that line from The Wire the whole time, are you really taking notes on a criminal conspiracy? Lawrence Frank was taking notes all of the time, and he's always done that.

And that's just who he is, it seems. And he used those notes to get, it seems, a yes-and story.

I'm going to get my extension from my employer, and I'm also going to tell the NBA all the things my employer does not want them to know. It is a fascinating calculation that Lawrence Frank made.

Does he keep his job? Like, what's going to happen there if you had to take a best guess?

If I'm taking a guess, I don't think Gillian Zucker or Lawrence Frank keep their jobs.

And that's even before you get to the particular hypothetical betrayal that Ballmer might feel on the part of either of them. I think one of those people in Lawrence Frank prepared for an exit. The other one, Gillian Zucker, in her noncompliance with the NBA investigation, perhaps knew that she didn't have a backup quite as good.

And that was a calculation that we are only, based on the available reporting, connecting the dots on, but that's what it feels like to me.

I'd like to see Pablo do one of those Animal House, at the end of Animal House, what happens to everybody kind of thing in a year or two from now, and go through each of the characters. The surprising thing to me—

A 1977 movie. Ameen polluted yesterday's podcast with movie references. I urge you to hear Pablo Torre Finds Out. They did a great 90 minutes live that Ameen wouldn't shut up about movies on Animal House, a 1977 movie.

You get the reference. Pablo gets the reference. Here's the question, though. My assumption was, and I feel like, Pablo, maybe that you were leaning in this direction as well, is that this was going to come down to billionaires protecting a billionaire over a millionaire. Do I have it right that Adam Silver, as people like to say about Roger Goodell with the NFL and any major league, is He's working for the owners. So did his peers, who are not his peers financially because he's richer than any of them are, I mean, did they sign off on this? They had to, right? Adam Silver didn't just decide, I'm going to do this, and not get sign-off from some percentage of the other owners in the league, right?

No, he read the room, and the room is the Board of Governors meeting, the country club of owners that is meeting in days. We've been saying it for a year that other owners have been telling me that Ballmer deserves punishment. Coaches, other executives have been saying it, and you could read it as self-interest, of course, because we're the good guys, they're the bad guy, and grain of salt with all of it. But that still means that the other owners were at the very least cool with what Adam Silver did. And so look, How is it that it's 2 things, right? How is it that this is an independent investigation that's really the NBA deciding what to do? And how is it that the NBA decided to drop a nuke on the most powerful, richest owner in American sports? And the answer is they set a scope that was more narrow than our reporting. We're here to tell you the story. Dennis Wong, Rhode Island Football Club, and more. They set a scope, look at salary cap circumvention through this lens. And so Rhode Island Football Club not mentioned, Dennis Wong even not mentioned.

But when they went down the rabbit hole that was sized for them, measured by the NBA, which is smaller than our reporting, what they found was an endless endless burrow in which they found 4 companies and a paper trail.

And at that point, you throw your hands up and say, we can't do anything but take this extraordinarily seriously, even with those parameters.

Pablo, we've got about 5 minutes left, so let's do this 30 seconds at a time because I've got a ton of questions. Let's put a clock on this so that we can do this as well as we can possibly do this in a limited amount of time. Okay, uh, Uncle Dennis, go.

Banned for 5 years, a hilarious person who I'm gonna miss on some level, but he is utterly aware of his own leverage and used it against a guy who should have known better also.

Have you heard any theories that are good on the no-show job that make any sense whatsoever?

All of these jobs effectively were fake jobs. I mean, Wachtell attested to that. These were jobs with minimal responsibilities in which he did virtually nothing outside of an autograph signing for Boingo Wireless at an Army base, which we've been reporting, by the way, in ways that we got scooped on, unfortunately. But that was the one thing.

These are all fake jobs. We've been saying it. Why would you do any of this if they weren't fake jobs?

They were all fake jobs and even more fake jobs than we realized.

Give me the American sports precedent, precedent, American sports precedent for the owner gets gone and 2 of your presidents get hit with suspension.

The Timberwolves is the only precedent, but as we have been saying, the Timberwolves was a promise from an owner to an agent that was locked in a drawer that got loosed by a dispute within the agency.

This was a vast scheme that involves federal agencies that is not over yet. So precedent is the T-Wolves.

The story is multiples more than what the T-Wolves actually did.

Dissect for me Kawhi Leonard's statement, please.

One of the funniest quotes is that he regrets the lapses made by people in his inner circle. Peace out, I'm going to Toronto. If you read that and you happen to be Steve Ballmer, you are punching a hole in your wall because that's the same guy you needed to go to war against the league with you. And that guy did what he's done this entire story, which is prioritize his self-interest over the collective good of the team.

Yeah.

And you're left holding multiple I thought that the reporting was that they were still talking about a settlement. What happened to the plea bargain? What happened to the settlement? What happened to the Clippers negotiating with the NBA on something quieter than what happened yesterday?

Yeah, I mean, that ESPN story is a fascinating tell in that regard. It is, it is true that this was a settlement that was proposed to the Clippers, but what the NBA wound up doing was an end-around, an end-around around the Clippers needing to consent. When the Clippers signaled that they were going to fight till the very end, the NBA knew, okay, we're in wartime and we have an arsenal of evidence, so how do we handle it? And they figured out if the union participates and settles, we don't need bombers.

So that is a very disturbing—

That's the buzzer.

Haunting buzzer. Yeah, I gathered as much.

But you knew that was the buzzer?

Yeah.

This is like the Flintstones where instead of the bird, that's your car horn.

You have whatever that person is.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do know that that's the buzzer, but I think it's just jarring to people. David Sampson is ready to go, and I have a number of legal questions for him as well. But Pablo, what else is there here? Like when you say there's more and the NBA says there's more, how can there be more?

Because there's more. Like Rhode Island Football Club, we talked about for a very deliberate reason, right? They focused on really it was Kawhi signs with the Clippers.

Why?

And it took us into the pandemic.

The timeline continues. He signs an extension in January of 2024 after all of this had happened. Why did he do it at a discount? Right. Rhode Island Football Club enters the picture. Dennis Wong is the 1% owner to Steve's 99%.

It's the buzzer.

Yeah, you got to tighten it up. Ballmer's attorney, uh, saying it's a witch hunt and a gross injustice.

Tell us your version of events. They keep on saying that a podcaster made irresponsible allegations, and all we've seen is documentation proving that this is the truth. Meanwhile, they say nothing resembling a rational explanation for why they did what they did, if it wasn't exactly what it smells like.

I tell you, 2 years ago that you could have one or the other, but not both— a Pulitzer Prize or your podcast promoted in the first sentence of a report from a law firm that is one of the biggest scandals in sports history for cheating. Which do you take?

Much like Uncle Dennis Robertson, my answer is why not both?

Uh, nope, that's not what I asked you.

Um, easy one, Pablo.

I'm taking the Pulitzer Prize because my parents have a hard time following what it is that I've done, but that is a brand they recognize.

So thanks.

Look at Samson piping in there. Samson, I have more questions for Pablo, but you're— you've been extraordinary on this story. Your expertise is something I literally have not seen from anyone else in sports journalism. You and Amin have been at the top of your game helping Pablo. And by the way, I should say, uh, super proud of Pablo's entire team because while he wanders around with a parasol getting all the credit, there are a whole lot of people behind the scenes making him look a lot better than he actually is, even though he's, uh, the best going right now. The legal things that you found most interesting yesterday, Dave? It—

I found it interesting that the Clippers had no understanding of what was happening, and it's been going on for a year. And the only explanation I have is that Steve Ballmer told the people who work for him, I don't care about the truth. I don't care about the consequences. We are going to fight and fight and fight. And the problem with doing that is that you're dealing with a league that has the ability to match him dollar for dollar because Steve Ballmer's paying for all of it. So Ballmer's paying for both sides of this fight. And if he wants to keep going, the NBA is more than happy to do it because they didn't want to. But now, as Pablo pointed out, they have to. They wanted to settle with the Clippers. They wanted Steve to go quietly into the night and acknowledge this, pay the fine, and move on. But he refused and the people below him kept lying and they got caught.

Pablo, why were you shaking your head there?

They said— Ballmer said in a letter to Adam Silver that this has cost him personally $50 million in legal fees. And I just think that that is both funny and also making me want to ask for a raise.

So, you know, on that note, I'll let him go with that, declining also that request. Actually, 30 more seconds here. Ty Lawson, saying via tweet, so does Pablo Torre get any fine, backlash, sued, or fired for trying to ruin people's reputations and lives? A lot of people have hated you here. They're apologizing to you today, but you got an extraordinary amount of doubt here, even though anyone who listened to the episodes knew it was all fact-based. Anyone who was listening. And I felt like everyone criticizing you didn't bother with any of your 14 episodes, never mind all of them.

It is rare to get the validation, the accountability from the institution you are investigating, right? We see this in politics in real life all of the time. I don't want this to be the precedent. When someone is reporting a story and showing you the receipts, maybe do the work of listening because you may not always get a situation where a law firm gives you the 35-page details. And that is scary if, by the way, we're gonna always wait for the institution to tell you the reporter had it wrong.

Yeah.

Get out of here, Pablo. Good seeing you. You almost hit your mark there at the end. Let's tighten up the fat and get some more facts in there, okay? You can't be getting names wrong with this shit. What's the matter with you?

The Zucker, Zucker, tightening up the fat. No, I'm not going to make the joke.

Get out of here.

I'm not going to make the joke.

Get out of here. Pablo Torre finds out. If you want more information on this, it should have been 60 minutes, but it was 90 because they couldn't stop yammering.