Transcript of Pablo Torre, Kawhi Leonard, And The Clippers' Daktronics Scandal | Hour 1

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It's the footballiest time of the year. Football season is essentially upon us. Carson Beck, A good debut preseason though it was. Mike Ryan, I'm sensing some enthusiasm as somebody who enjoyed rooting for Carson Beck last year at the U.

Right now the meter points, he's a Miami Hurricane, you know, another interception, an interception or two, it swings back to Georgia Bulldog. But last night, that's a proper Miami Hurricane. Honestly though, the main takeaway and how good is it to have a bad beat? Oh, I had a bad beat.

I had—

what are you doing, man?

What am I doing? What am I doing is expressing confidence in Carson Beck. What I'm doing is putting my money where my mouth is. And he was fine. So King hater. Yeah.

See, ACC.

Well, one thing runs deep. One thing that I should have certainly not done and learned from history is betting against Haynes King. You know, and he just, he did it again. This guy's, he's magical. He's not good. But he's awesome. I don't understand it. He's just such a gamer.

Isn't it weird that he is— they always mention that he's a coach's son. It's like, why didn't his dad ever coach him to throw a football and look like a normal person throwing it? And he's still reached this lofty perch as a preseason QB without looking normal throwing a ball.

Whenever—

whoa, excuse me. Whenever I watch, uh, I get emotional watching Hanes King. Whenever watch Haynes King in college. I point to him, I'm like, this is my Bill Simmons. I point to Haynes King and I'm like, that's why college football is so awesome. Quarterbacks like that don't exist in the NFL. College is the only place where a Haynes King can not only exist but thrive and be one of the greatest players in your program's history. So to see him do it, I know it's preseason and I know it's Certainly against a team that not many people are expecting much from and it's all backups. But it was really awesome to see Haynes King do that in a pro uniform. And I'm not the only one that thought that, Dave Dameshek. Here is the final call from last night's thrilling Hall of Fame game from two 10-pole franchises in the NFL, the Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals. Don't believe me? Ask Mike Tirico.

Game on the line. King, he's going to step up, pumps, runs, goal line. Is he in? Yes! Carolina wins! Wins! King's king! King of the night!

Look at him!

Whole team's out there mobbing him. It's party time in Canton, Ohio.

The smile that was on your face when Collinsworth just decided to chime in there. That's football, buddy.

I, I've always, uh, told, uh, younger fellas, as a great Coxman, I've always said, listen, what you do on a first date, you don't go somewhere super fancy. Don't take it because first of all, it's too high. Well, you're also— yeah, you'll both be stiff and all of that. But also, where do you go from there? And where's Tariko and Collinsworth Booth going from here? Clap me back at 'em! Wait till the games start to matter. A cool matchup too, because neither of the quarterbacks when Beck and King were in the ACC QB showdown out there in Canton, Ohio, Neither one of them possesses a real first name. You know, Josh Allen has two first names, and then there are other guys who have no first names. You know, would you rather be Beck Carson? King Haynes? I think I'd rather be King Haynes.

King of the night!

It's a great take, Dave. And also, they ran it back. When those two quarterbacks play one another, they play great games. The Georgia Tech-Georgia game of huge consequence from 2 years ago, a game in which Carson Beck started the game hurt, toughed it out, and willed Georgia to victory. Also with the help of referees, but the SEC narrative won't allow for that. Haynes King and Carson Beck put on an all-time show as one of the greatest regular season college football games I had ever seen. And now they are responsible for arguably one of the greatest preseason games you've ever seen. Tell me your top 5.

Don't you try to draw me into your jive. I'm trying to keep the powder dry.

I'm jiving over here.

Listen, you think that people, you know, like I'm doing a bit. Don't watch preseason games. They are go— if your goal is to understand who is positioned to do well and who's not going to be good in the coming season, then don't watch preseason football because it tricks your eye. If you watch that game, you would think, hey, Kenny Pickett, you know, I'll tell you what, he had some tough years, but he's looking pretty sharp now. And also Carson Beck, man, I think a lot of teams slept on him. That was— those were the thoughts going through my mind. And then I legitimately said, turn the TV off because you're going to get seduced by Carson Beck and it's going to be a complete mirage in about 25 days.

All right, so yes, there are some times that A guy is lights out in the preseason and it's a total mirage, right? But you, you take the times that a dude flashed instantly and you knew right away he was going to be good as an indicator. Whenever you watch these guys like Carson Beck, you harken back to the time you first saw Cam Newton doing in the pros and you had your questions like, that guy's going to be good. Fans love to do that stuff.

All right. So, yeah, okay. It's a fun exercise. But if you're really trying to evaluate that, as I say, it just— it's an an illusion.

It's a lie.

I don't think Keane King is going to be a starter in this league.

I think something—

doubt him at your peril.

I think, you know, legitimately, Jacoby Brissett probably is sweating just a little bit today because now there's going to be the Cardinals fan base, the 8 people in Phoenix that care about that team, are probably saying like, oh, number 19, that's the answer, that's the future. By the way, I should mention Pablo Torre, while we talk jive, um, with another great, um, report, unless you're on the Clippers side or on Kawhi's side. He's coming up at the top of the 10 o'clock hour, I believe, is when we have him booked for— wait, wait, wait, I don't know why you just did that to me, Roy. Was that wrong?

Ah, that's classic radio right there.

Shouldn't mention the hour that it is because we're doing it because it's a podcast.

Yeah.

All right, well, listen, I took today off because he is elated because Pablo's reporting made the bottom line on ESPN.

Yeah.

The Daktronics story is now a lead headline on The Bottom Line. Congratulations, Pablo Torres.

Well, that's only the case with ESPN because it has the word Dak in it.

Right, exactly.

Yes, well done there, Tache.

5 minutes, Pablo will be here.

Um, 5 minutes?

In 5 minutes.

Yeah, 5 minutes.

Oh, you're right. Okay, so he's coming up in a few minutes. You're the one that said the time. I know, you're right. That was a mistake. I mean, I don't have to be attacked and dragged over the coals for it.

Radio.

What happened happened, and I'm not one to live life in the rearview mirror, except that I do want to go back to that Hall of Fame game last night and further back by about 3 hours than Tirico and Collinsworth going wild over the last-second touchdown. In the pregame, Mike Tomlin, who used to be the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach, is now an analyst on the pregame show for NBC. And they asked him about his replacement, Mike McCarthy. Do we have some of that sound?

Nope. You and I agreed before the show, you were like, no, I'll just describe it to the people.

Hey, stop explaining the show.

Touché, touché. I thought we were gonna pull—

Thanks for scaring the shit out of me though.

Describe it at the top of the 10 o'clock hour.

Pablo, I thought it was interesting.

It's the chair.

I thought it was very interesting. Where do you come down on— I mean, you know, he was the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach 6 months ago. Don't worry, Dave.

It happens all the time. But you probably say we're not going to do something. The chair says you are.

Yeah, you should probably explain it to the audience.

Listen, listen, listen.

No, you know what?

My bad.

Look at him.

Do you feel the need to talk about media and streaming rights?

I would like to talk about this. Mike Tomlin was the head coach of these Pittsburgh Steelers for the better part of two decades.

Would you like to avoid the Rossini story?

We covered that, but good. And by the way, I thought, I thought Dan's explanation made all the sense in the world. ESPN should be talking about a reporter who doesn't work at ESPN, should be covering that story. Or should they be covering the head coach's marriage? That's a weird thing to dip into. No, either, either direction. I understand it is a dust-up, um, that, that transcended the two people, but, but his logic behind it made sense. All right, go ahead there, Mike Ryan.

Super El Niño. We're all gonna die.

Anyway, Tomlinson.

Munitions running low. Critical. Your thoughts. Tomlinson. Race. Just race. Black, white, do something with it. Uniquely Miami. The all of it.

Early. Tashay rubbing his temples. I don't know exactly what that does, but Tomlin says he is the coach for 20 years thereabouts. He now calls the Steelers them and they. Where do you come down on that?

It'd be odd. I think we'd make fun of him if he said we at this point.

Black bodies breaking gladiator spectacle.

Hate when people use they/them pronouns.

He, um, it's very strange the arm's length distance he now has from this team as he talks about how they went 10-7 and how they haven't won games and the expectation is and the standard is. Yeah, that was you the whole time, man. That was you for the last 20 years. I thought that was interesting stuff. Also, with Hall of Fame weekend here, I'm reminded of the— I think when, you know, we'll see during the speeches, part of the ceremony will be that they take a drape off of a little thing off of— and there will be a head statue, a bronze head statue of Drew Brees and the other guys. And it's a bust. It's a bust. If you're the best, if you're one of the very best, you get a bust. But also, if you're one of the very worst, you're a bust. Bust is our rangiest word.

Jeremy, look up the origins of dust-up. Why do we call it that? What is a dust-up?

I've said something similar to what you're saying with bust with washed. You call someone washed.

Jeremy, why is something washed?

It's a bad thing. They're washed.

They're used up.

I enjoy it when I'm washed.

Isn't it good to wash something?

I enjoy being washed.

You're born anew, right?

I'm clean.

Yeah, you're clean.

Yeah, but yet if I'm an athlete and I'm washed, that's bad.

Help me with this. Help me understand.

You could be You could be a head statue or you could be an all-time bum at the sport that you were supposed to be good at.

You can be JaMarcus Russell or Drew Brees, right?

You could also be boobs if you're bust. And also, you know, yeah, the coppers. The coppers.

I always have to tell myself, no, they don't mean that. They mean that when they say bust.

Yeah, the coppers.

You know, I'm a red-blooded American male, Dave Dameshek.

Go ahead, say your filth. You want to work blue, that's your business.

Bust its boobs, first and foremost.

Oh, I thought you were going even bluer.

Oh, well, there is another type of bust.

And then if you're grammatically unsound, you can bust a watermelon.

Right, but I don't like using bust in that way.

Yeah, what?

I'm gonna bust. Is that MC Lyte?

What is this? Are you— you're evaluating?

Well, when I say—

blue version—

when do you— when I say like, it depends on the decade, because I'm about to bust.

Yeah.

Oh, how does he mean it?

Sorry, honey.

I'm about to bust. How does— how does he mean it? It depends on the decade. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I'm about to like spit a mediocre rhyme right now.

But he could be busted or orgasmic—

bust-a-rhyme!

Well say now that right? And arrest. Is there another contender to the throne that is "bust" as our rangiest word in the English language?

Dan Levitar!

No one was... Golly olly lolly ho!

PJ!

Dave Demacek!

That's pretty good.

This is The Dan Levitar Show!

Let's ask Pulitzer Prize-winning writer surprise winner when he gets here. When we say bust, what is the way that you use it the most?

Top 5 ways.

It's a very rangy word.

Perfect. He joins us right on time here. He has some other stuff he wants to talk about, but here he is. From the guy he finds it all out, it's Pablo Torre. How are you, fella? Congratulations, muzzletub and otherwise, to you on another breakout story here.

Thank you. To quote the Ghostbusters theme song, busting makes me feel good. I don't know if that's entered the discourse yet, but busting also can be, you know, you've caught someone doing something. And so maybe there's that from the, you know, the federal sense.

I don't know.

That's how Pablo uses it because he just busted Kawhi Leonard again, allegedly to protect us from legal ramifications.

Look at him.

All right. So just to bring up to speed another layer now with the Kawhi Leonard experience and the Clippers. And it seems as though— and what my brain always goes to with this, with this particular particular story that you continue to find new layers of, Pablo, is it really reminds me of Tom Brady with the Patriots. And do you see the connection there with the TB12 stuff and all of that? Does the TB12 stuff walk so that the Kawhi Leonard stuff can run?

So what's interesting there, of course, is that Tom Brady took materially less money to play for the Patriots, enabling all sorts of other salary cap, hard cap flexibility in the NFL. Uh, Kawhi, the last extension he took from the Clippers was submax, but part of what's so glorious about this story is that—

uh-oh, we just—

of a superstar. Oh wait, am I back? You're back, you're back.

Yes.

Okay, no, excuse me. Um, What I was saying was before I was really interrupted or hacked was this is the story in the NBA, as well as allegedly the money off the books. And so that's where it got to be.

All right.

Son with the Spurs.

All right.

I think this is genuinely Tom Brady.

Pablo, I'm going to call this one.

You got to—

you got to back out of the Zoom and back in.

All right.

This is not going well.

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

Let him do that. And why don't we summarize the newest layer of this story, Mike Ryan.

Yes, for the audience, we'll do that while we repair Pablo Torres' connection. So last week he had the Rhode Island FC thing, and I was like, I don't know, where is this going? I don't want to criticize it. I don't want to call it a nothing.

This is not important, but I'm vain and I have to say this. Do you know I went to see Rhode Island FC play a game 2 weeks ago?

Why weren't you on the episode?

You had way more background knowledge of the second tier of, uh, I never heard of them until I went and watched them play the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, reigning champs of whatever league they're in, and, and that's who, who they vanquished. And then to see them in the news was weird.

So last week I was like, all right, I'm not going to criticize this episode for not being substantive because I know how Pablo gets down. This is going to be a part of a bigger thing. And one week later, it was indeed part of a bigger thing. And the way that it's tethered to it is Rhode Island FC used Daktronics to put in some of the, uh, the, the screens in their new stadium, allegedly. No, not allegedly.

Like, no, that happened.

I just get scared.

I just want to say it as much as possible.

Yeah. Oh, that's a good guy. So, uh, although that could be circumstantial because as Pablo laid out, and Pablo, you can defend it for yourself here, Daktronics is the industry leader. So it's not like a total gotcha that they did the screens for Rhode Island FC, right?

No, I mean, look, it's important to point out that this is a story that has been hiding in plain sight for lots of reasons. One of them, one of them is that Daktronics is just a scoreboard company that lots of people use. Right. And so, look, the RIFC connection here, if you want to just jump right into that part, which is like, you know, a thing we are still, of course, unfolding and investigating. Daktronics, at the time that they got into business with the Clippers, was worried about bankruptcy. Like, Daktronics becomes the worldwide leader in jumbotrons on the back, in large part, according to their own press releases, on the back of this $100 million Halo board buildout in the Adoitt Dome. But we got earnings call. I mean, we have literal tape from the heads of Daktronics, including their auditor, who's saying there is a going concern, meaning within 12 months we might be a bankrupt company. And so this Intuit Dome deal, it could not have been more important to the worldwide leader in jumbotrons because they were absolutely worried about their ability to exist as a company. And so the question of like, what kind of influence did the Clippers have over Daktronics at the time in the year 2023?

The stock chart tells the story. So do the earnings calls. So does the annual report from the company itself. And so it's not the case that this has always been a company that could do business with everybody and everybody wants to do business with them. It's actually the story of how the Clippers saved them. And so then what happens afterwards? Well, it turns out simultaneous to that Intuit Dome buildout in this exact same timeline, they are building a video board for the Rhode Island Football Club. And we leave it at that in this episode. But you can surmise that this is something that we are extremely interested in.

Pablo, the part that really shocked me when I was listening wasn't just the fact that there was this almost clear transfer of power, of Aspiration falling apart, to then Daktronics sort of stepping in and being the next sponsorship deal that involved Kawhi, but the fact that at least with Aspiration, there were other celebrity endorsements. Daktronics is a B2B business. Like, this made no sense.

Yeah, I mean, that's the comedy of this, is that this is a company that has zero endorsers of any kind on the record ever. We talked to— we talked to a half dozen former and current Daktronics employees who said literally that, like, we're a B2B company. You don't, like, buy a Jumbotron at Walmart. No one is making a decision to go contract with Daktronics over their competitor because this celebrity athlete is saying, I endorse this brand. And more to the point, Daktronics themselves, again, when you go through their advertising materials, when you go through what they've put into, again, these earnings calls and annual reports, they actually advertise that they don't advertise. They say that effectively other companies use sponsorships. We don't. And so the idea that they would break precedent by signing Kawhi Leonard secretly to a deal, as we report, that was for millions of dollars that no one— once again in the aspiration mold— no one ever knew about outside of the companies involved here and was never announced, and to which there is no recorded information of Kawhi doing anything towards, as well as multiple attempts to get answers to the questions of like, hey, uh, is there any evidence that Kawhi did anything?

Do you want to answer any of these questions directly? Those answers come back no. All of that sounds a lot like aspiration in terms of a template.

It's like Florida Power and Light or Waste Management having a pitchman. It's just totally not necessary and it makes no sense. And I think that through your investigation here, Pablo, this seems given the background, because Aspiration had a ton of endorsement deals, and, and you could argue a ton of those were also no-show jobs. This one, hiding apparently, I guess, in plain sight, is really, really damning. And ESPN is running with this, where they, they've, they've picked and choo— uh, chosen which, uh, which of your reports to run with. This one's getting bottom line attention. This one is sending shockwaves throughout. How many of these things could Kawhi Leonard possibly have? I— this seems— I don't understand for the life of me why it's so messy. And it really— and I know I don't want to put you in a place where you're guessing because you're investigating Kawhi right now, but there are so many of these with Kawhi Leonard and the response from the NBA is so weird. That the conspiracy theory starts formulating in the mind that the NBA wants this to go, go away because maybe what Kawhi is doing isn't so outlandish by NBA standards.

Mm-hmm.

Well, this is, this is what's at stake here, right? Adam Silver, if you listen to his own words when he talks about cap circumvention, when the NBA itself investigated the Clippers in 2019 because of complaints from the Lakers and the Raptors direct to the league office about how Dennis Robertson and Kawhi Leonard were asking for things in circumvention of the salary cap in order to sign as a free agent, right? Adam Silver clears them and says there's no evidence, but reiterates salary cap circumvention is the cardinal rule of our league. Um, relatedly, by the way, in 2015, when Steve Ballmer's Clippers are investigated because they offer this deal with a team sponsor, Lexus, to DeAndre Jordan, There is a fine, there's a quarter million dollar fine that says you can't do that. You can't do that in your free agent or in your presentation behind closed doors to a free agent like DeAndre Jordan. And they were punished for that. And so the point that I'm establishing here, Mike, to your question, is this is a pattern. As much as I would like to be the guy who discovered salary cap circumvention with the Clippers, the first one on this planet to ever do that, it goes to 2015 and it goes to the question of what does the richest owner in American sports want to do and what is he not able to because of these pesky cardinal rules?

And so the question of how many of these are there, I continue to quote Michael Winger, the general manager of the Clippers at that time. This is now '23-'24 because he says, quote, how many bleeping side deals have we made with Kawhi? In an exasperated way because what Ballmer did, according to all of our reporting, as well as, by the way, the allegations in 2019, was service a free agent that he wanted as much as a person can want anything. Just imagine the motive here. He's opening the Intuit Dome. He needs a franchise player. He's a basketball fan. He's competing with the Lakers in their very same city. And Kawhi Leonard had just won. A title, microwaved a championship with the Raptors. So the desire here cannot be overstated. And so the ambition is also proportional to that. And so what do you do? According to our reporting, you create the largest salary cap circumvention scheme that's ever existed in professional sports.

Couple of things. First of all, to go back to the, the potential sponsorship of Daktronics, I mean, Dak Prescott sitting right there. They haven't made a deal with him. Very strange.

His agent, Dak's agent, should be really kicking himself.

Ashamed, right? With the Kawhi, what you and Mike are kind of getting at is, you know, I always thought with the Deshaun Watson, to try to make a very strained analogy, Deshaun Watson doing that with massage therapists— he did what? What kind of creepo would do that? And I, you know, as a reminder, he was doing that and then got caught doing it by somebody who felt violated by that. But he didn't just jump in that— that wasn't the first time he did it. This was a pattern of behavior. So beyond just Kawhi and the Clippers, is that Adam Silver's concern? Is this siloed with just that franchise and the rich owner, or do you imagine— and again, you're— I'm putting you in a spot to speculate. Do you think that Silver is afraid or maybe knows even more that it is a league-wide issue?

I think what is the issue here from the highest possible level is the question of whether fans— let's be honest about it— whether fans believe that this game is on the up and up. Right. There's an integrity of the game concern here. And I don't want to be the guy who's moralizing because truly, like, the whole approach of the story is we want to tell the truth as best we can, however dangerous it might be given various looming litigation, as the alleged lees imply. And our goal is to not advocate for a specific punishment. I have not done that once. I have merely said, like, we got to take this stuff seriously because, by the way, I think it's worse than people in the public realize. Like, I'm comfortable saying that according to our reporting. But in terms of like, why should the NBA care about this? It's because we're at this inflection point in this sport. And this goes to the gambling scandal, which we've also been investigating. It goes to the salary cap circumvention scandal, parentheses, as allegations are swirling, by the way, not just around Kawhi Leonard, but of course, Gary Trent Jr.

And certainly there are news cycles, some of them originating very prominently in the studio I'm addressing right now around every superstar acquisition. What else is on the table? And so the thing that can't be understated here, the thing that I think the NBA should be very aware of is that I was also surprised that people cared this much about cap circumvention. And so the question is why? And I think it's because it speaks to a moment we live in right now where we care deeply about sports. We are investing our money in them. We are investing our time and our energy and our emotions in them. And if you don't think the thing you are betting on, literally and figuratively, caring about with the emotion of an ancestral inheritance, is actually the thing it's claiming to be, is actually the thing it's selling you, then you have a business problem. And so I just start with the grassroots level of what do fans think? Because that's what's been astonishing. People feel like they're not being told the truth. And after an episode like this, in which we show the ways in which Steve Ballmer hid his identity, according to the LA District Attorney's Office, behind an LLC to build the dome in the first place, it's hard not to sympathize with people who think that the billionaires are saying stuff behind closed doors that they don't want you out there in the public to know.

Down Levitar!

I don't like the word blue, but I do have at least one pal that I can think of who has— he actually, he says he fell asleep in coitus.

Dave Demacek!

You may look at me and be surprised to hear this, I happen to be a vigorous lovemaker, so that would never happen to me.

This is the Down Levitar Show!

Still trying to piece together what you mean by in this studio. And I look down at my jersey, I'm like, did Inter Miami do something? Well, I mean, they famously did with, with Apple, but they actually have designated player rules. And maybe— I can't believe I'm about to say this— maybe an actual professional sports league can learn from the MLS in that you can literally pay a designated player whatever you want. It does not count against your cap.

I am— the thing you're not going to hear from me is the moral indignation of the salary cap. Cap as an instrument of righteousness must be validated and defended. I had DeMaurice Smith on PTFO, the former head of the NFLPA, to talk about why he thinks the union should be concerned about this, concerned in a way that I think is surprising to people, because typically you'd imagine every union must, of course, take the side of the player no matter what. And of course, Kawhi Leonard, as he has been receiving according to reporting, he deserves the representation of the union, and he will receive it, and he should.. But in terms of what else the union should consider, what DeMora Smith was telling me was that this is also the story of the CBA being allegedly broken by the richest owner in sports. And if you're the union and you fight tooth and nail in collective bargaining to get to an agreement, this covenant, right? If you're going to let ownership break those rules and get away with it to this degree, what you're effectively doing is surrendering your ability to enforce that CBA when it directly speaks to your interests in ways that are even clearer.

And so it's not merely player versus owner here. It's about literally what the rules are and whether they matter and who should want to enforce them. And I would argue that the rule of law in every facet of our country, whether it's governmental, whether it's something silly like sports, the rules are there to protect the people with less resources. They're there to protect people who don't have the force of closed doors and billions of dollars. It's there to protect those who need to seek and appeal to the rules to protect their interests. And so if you give on a violation this flagrant, what you're doing is you're losing the ability to credibly claim that you care about these rules in general. And I will say, Mike, by the way, to the whole designated player exemption thing, I have now talked and heard from the representatives of star players in the NBA who are not Kawhi Leonard, and their response is not— to be very clear, it's not Kawhi, good job, go get yours. It's why can't we also do this? You have a guy breaking the rules like this, allegedly. We're the idiots who are preventing ourselves from also cashing in.

Like, it's not— it's not that Kawhi Leonard's secret deals are something that everybody thinks should be defended because they want them for themselves. They're realizing we can't access that, but that guy can. And that is a problem because we're actually not as bold in doing the degree of stuff that he is doing. And so that's just part of the consideration, I think, as well.

So a big part of enforcing these rules is the NBA's investigation via Wachtell Lipton. And there is a huge jawdrop dropping moment where a Daktronics spokesperson invokes on their own the Wattel investigation. What did you make of that? What does this mean?

Yeah, I mean, so to explain the context here, there's a point in the episode, and I really hope people listen and watch the episode because the full thing as we unfold it, it's also kind of just like torturing Ameen with information that he's struggling to piece together. And I love that part. Like the audience is Ameen, but Ameen is in the dunk tank a bit. Because it's been hiding there in front of him. But one of the things that's hiding there is the fact that Daktronics, when we have our collaborator, our, our friend and colleague Sam Kopelman from Hunterbrook Media, when we have him tell us about his experience going directly to Daktronics for comment about all of this, and what he is met with is a crisis communications firm after Daktronics first sends him to their general counsel, by the way, which is a bit, I think, revealing in terms of like, okay, they're taking this quite seriously. Kawhi Leonard has not been mentioned at all yet, but they're immediately escalating this to this is an issue. Um, the crisis communications firm says a couple of fascinating things. Um, one of the things that he says, of course, is, quote, we don't have a deal with Kawhi right now.

And that's, I think, a telling, uh, tense there, as we discussed in the episode why that would be. And then the other thing he says that Mike raises is, and I want to get this right here because it's really important. He says, here we go, quote, I don't know what the company wants to say or can say given the Wachtell investigation. And so what we're dealing with here is Daktronics, a company that has been managing the issue of the Wachtell investigation before we ever called them. That is what our reporting is telling us. And so the question for all of us to contemplate here is, is the NBA and is Wachtell Lipton taking this story as seriously as they should? And my hope and belief is that, of course, they should and are. But, you know, we won't know until we get whatever it is that they are going to publish because This has not been mentioned anywhere else. It's taken us a while to get it onto the record. But that investigation, the thing that I empathize with, if you're a lawyer, Wachtell Lipton, is not only they have to subscribe to this weird podcast to figure out if you're going to get in trouble, maybe with your boss, Adam Silver, but also you're trying to follow every thread that we're also tugging at.

And what you realize is that these threads connect. According to our reporting, everything we're telling you, we are telling you for a deliberate reason. That's the story of how we structured this episode. It's the story of why we did it after the RIFC episode. It's the story of why it is that no one can rationally explain without cap circumvention why it is that Kawhi Leonard keeps getting multimillion-dollar secret deals with Clippers partners that are never announced. And which no one has any evidence that he did anything for.

And Pablo, like, when I was watching this, I couldn't help but think about what's going on across town in LA, not with the Lakers, but with the Dodgers. And I think about the range of all of this as we put it cross-sport, because you have one league right now where you have the Clippers and their rich owner circumventing the rules, allegedly, of the salary cap to try to load the deck for their team. And yet in this other league, in Major League Baseball, with the Dodgers, they're following every rule. Every rule of Major League Baseball has allowed them to create this quasi-superteam. And yet what the Major League Baseball owners are doing is saying, we need a salary cap for you, the fan, to prevent the Dodgers from creating these super teams and acquiring these superstars. And yet you have the Clippers right here in the same town with the rules in place, potentially skirting those rules and being able to acquire those superstars. So for the, for the fans, for the question that you're asking of is the NBA paying attention, for the question that Dan asked last week of like why don't fans seem to care more, I think that's the way we can position this to sort of look at the attention of yeah, it doesn't matter if Kawhi Leonard individually got some more money.

It's the a greater conversation of why are these rules even in place to begin with if the richest of owners can skirt them and effectively create a super team for themselves that other organizations don't have those advantages to create?

So the bigger picture, zoom out issue for all of sports here is that these things are so expensive that we're going to get to a point pretty soon where no individual billionaire can even afford them.. And so what you're seeing is the widening of the gap, right? So Ballmer, when he comes in and he replaces, of course, Donald Sterling, he pays $2 billion for the Clippers. And this is a record price. And Adam Silver, this is his first job, right? He is the white knight riding in, expelling Donald Sterling, bringing in Steve Ballmer, tech guy, former Microsoft CEO, who's going to pay all this money. And so that, in retrospect, was just the beginning, because over time what we've seen— and Mark Walter, by the way, the owner of the Dodgers, and the Lakers, the guy that Jeremy referring to, he is not merely himself. He is also Guggenheim Partners. He is also institutional investing that is backing him. And so when you get to teams being evaluated as the Dodgers and Lakers are at $10 billion plus or whatever it is that the market rate is at this point on August 7th, 2026, what you're getting to is a class of owners who are either institutional investors, meaning hedge funds, private equity conglomerations of people, and/or hyper, hyper super wealthy people like Steve Ballmer who have $140 billion at their disposal.

And they have advantages that allow them to do things that the rest of the former sort of understanding of owners that we used to have, those guys, it makes them look poor in comparison. And so this is an issue, the unbelievable wealth of sports, right? Sports is winning and so are all the owners. But there are some owners who are distinguishing themselves by their wealth as different. And that gap is only getting larger over time. And so the question for any commissioner, as you welcome in new owners, by the way, and you manage the country club in which suddenly now this is beginning to feel like a union membership where not everybody is incentivized in the same way. Now, that's always been the case with big markets versus small markets, but it's been exacerbated now through sheer wealth, right? Some people are a lot more liquid than others. They have more money to spend than others. What you're getting to is this question of how can the commissioner possibly govern and hold these people to account? How can the rules matter? How can you actually make it so that they have to abide by things that are designed to constrain their ability.

And so in baseball, look, that's a whole other series that I want to get to, the question of like, should baseball have a salary cap and how much is the Scoble thing, how much is that just like the, the sort of like coin in that arcade machine that tips all the other coins down and suddenly now we have a salary cap because that was too much. But I think the question here is about the wealth gap, and it's not the wealth gap between average citizen and billionaire, it's normal billionaire versus the richest people who can only afford— who are the only ones who can afford these teams now.

Right. Major League Baseball expresses capitalism in a way that the NFL, specifically our most communist professional sports league, doesn't. And is the answer as simple, Pablo? The results of the Dodgers, which is back-to-back titles, versus the Clippers, clippering with Kawhi Leonard. It's as straightforward as that. That's why there's not a more visceral fan-level reaction to the Kawhi Leonard saga here.

Well, I think, look, there is the comedy, right? The dark comedy if you're a Clipper fan of we went to every possible extent to do this and we ended up sending away the future MVP and Finals MVP to Oklahoma City that now tortures us every time we see them, right? Like, there is just the insult to injury, so to speak, of what the Clippers did and how it backfired beyond even not winning a title, but arming the Thunder with the ingredients to be a dynasty. So I think certainly we play the results, right? If this was a championship team, there would be even more outrage. If this was a team that had succeeded more brilliantly along these lines, we would have, I think, paid attention to this a lot sooner. But to me, the story is not the story of this is how you win. The story is this is how you mislead the public and allegedly hide the truth of what you're doing right in front of their eyes. And that's why I think this is a sports business story and why this is a public interest story than anything else. Like, it's why RIFC— we spent all this time talking about like the housing crisis in Rhode Island.

It's that taxpayer money got sucked into that. It's why in this episode, even though Ballmer built the Intuit Dome with private money entirely, which to his enduring credit, to be very clear, it's the fact that he hid his identity behind this LLC Murphy's Bowl, which was generically named as a matter of design to obfuscate the truth in front of the citizens of Inglewood so they wouldn't know what was being put in front of their eyes until it was a really, really inconvenient timeline to debate. That's according to the LA District Attorney's Office. Like, The people who are running sports are playing a different game. And this is the story of why we should be exposing that marvelous stuff.

Once again, per usual, Pablo Torre is finding stuff out.

No one's doing this stuff.

What is it?

Who's that?

What's that? What's that?

Pablo, Pablo, you did it again. Oh, look at us. Just a couple of Pulitzer Prize winners upholding journalistic values, saving America. Why won't enough people talk about this?

Why?

I will proceed to talk about it every day.

Pablo, now Dan Levitar, getting busted. Don't get busted. I was gonna say, Kawhi Leonard signing with the Clippers was a bust.

Busting over journalism.

Bust.

Big J.

See if you can find a rangier word. See if you can find that one out, Pablo Torre. Great work in the meantime, man. Thanks for joining.

Thank you for sparing the animation where Dan, you know, busts. I guess that'd be a bit graphic to go that far. Oh God.