The latest findings on Kawhi's Leonard contract

Pablo Torre joined Dan Patrick to report on Kawhi Leonard's undisclosed sponsorship deal with Daktronics, Intuit Dome's scoreboard manufacturer, and where this goes from here.

The latest findings on Kawhi's Leonard contract originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

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Pablo Torre uncovers Kawhi Leonard's other hidden secret spon- sponsorship here.

Tonight, Pablo Torre finds out, releases its latest installment of the saga that continues to linger here over the Clippers and the NBA.

All right.

So what's the update here, and what does that mean bigger picture, Pablo?

Hi, Dan.

We, we are brought together once again by a, an alleged secret sponsorship deal for Kawhi Leonard.

Always good to see you like this.

What we're reporting is that two days after I published part one of my now 13-part investigation, which I say knowing how ridiculous that sounds, I'll fully cop to it, this is a 13-part, serialized novel at this point.

But it's actually an investigation, right?

It's an investigative series, and two days after we dropped part one, what happened was I got a tip saying that there is another secret sponsorship for Kawhi Leonard that was 1,000%, that is a quote, 1,000% designed to circumvent the salary cap.

And I have spent the last 11 months trying to fact-check that, confirm it, further report the story of why that would be, how it would be.

And it turns out that, yes, according to our reporting, we have two sources, two high-level sources, one who was under contract with the Clippers Intuit Dome project, the other a former Clippers high-level source.

They both say that the jumbotron manufacturer Daktronics, which you may not know by name but you certainly know by sight Dan, why are you laughing?

Jumbotron manufacturers are very, very famous, obviously.

This one, this one is the one that built the Halo board.

This is the $100 million project that Steve Ballmer built to create the greatest jumbotron in human history.

And Kawhi Leonard, according to our reporting, had a secret, unannounced, no evidence that he did anything for it, multimillion-dollar sponsorship for that company, which, and I, I'll just beg one more bit of time here, because Daktronics had never hired a celebrity spokesperson or sponsor or endorser or partner like this before or since, and so hard to explain otherwise, I would say.

Given these sponsorship deals and his salary, how much money was Kawhi Leonard making a year?

Well, it is a, it's a, it's a, it's a number that we're constantly chasing and that is constantly changing, which is why we chase it.

Look, he was, of course, a max player in the NBA.

What's interesting, though, in that this timeframe we're talking about is actually after Aspiration collapses.

So we're looking at 2023, and Aspiration is going bankrupt.

It's under federal investigation by the end of that year.

And so that deal, I'll just remind people, was $28 million under contract for a no-show endorsement deal that was never announced.

If this is s- sounding familiar, let me know.

And also a $20 million equity deal in the company that was guaranteed to him.

So that's $48 million in total value that was guaranteed to Kawhi Leonard on top of his NBA contract, and that's just that.

But Aspiration, according to our reporting, is struggling to make the payments in 2023, of course, and what happens next is the story of these last two episodes we've now done.

And what's so interesting, Dan, and I'll answer your question in this context, January 2024 comes around, and Kawhi Leonard does something shocking to NBA media, certainly.

He takes less than the max.

And so if you just put this all together, right, a guy who truly is here to earn as much as he possibly can and beyond decides to take less from the Clippers to extend in January of 2024 while also still being owed money from this team sponsor, Aspiration, which according to the bankruptcy filing we obtained, owes him at least $7 million.

And so why and how does he do that is what leads me to the story of Daktronics.

And so we don't know how many millions of dollars were in the Daktronics deal.

We are actively, of course, interested in finding that number.

But when you're talking about what was he paid beyond the cap, we're talking about the largest alleged salary cap circumvention scheme in the history of sports, right?

We're talking about something that ranges into the $50-plus million, if that would be a reasonable projection, beyond what he was allowed to be paid.

That's just based on inferences on our reporting.

Which brings me to when you request to speak to the Clippers owner, Steve Ballmer, the response is what?

The Clippers have stopped responding to our request for comment.

We tell them what's gonna be in the episodes.

For months now, they've stopped responding.

They used to say stuff like, "This is all provably false."

And I've learned in this story, Dan, that words are very carefully chosen by lawyers.

I didn't go to law school, didn't make it to that point, but I've been told that words are important in legal proceedings.

Provably false is a big claim, and it's been, it's August 7th, I believe, and it's been 11 to 12 months, right?

A year almost that we've been waiting to show how this is provably false, what I started reporting with Aspiration that's now into a second hidden sponsorship.

And so we always ask, and what's so interesting about this story, because request for comment is really important to us to get it right, we went to Daktronics.

We went to the company itself and asked all of these questions.

And what our colleague and collaborator Sam Koppelman learned is that Daktronics wanted, A, the first response was, "Here's our general counsel.

Talk to them."

And Kawhi Leonard had not even been mentioned yet.

So I was like, "Okay, so something already.

They're on alert."

then they send us to a crisis comms firm, and you love when those enter the room because apparently there's now a crisis.

And we still are wondering, what do they think the crisis is?

'Cause we have a sense, but we haven't even started talking about that yet.

And that crisis comms firm, and this is really important, they say two things that I wanna quote for you here.

One is, quote, "My understanding is Dactronics doesn't have a deal with Kawhi right now."

And I think the tense of right now- Right now.

Is, is a, is a useful thing to hang a lantern on for a second here.

So right now is the tense that they stand behind on the record.

The second sentence they say is, quote, "I don't know what the company," this is the crisis comms firm, "I don't know what the company, Dactronics, wants to say or can say given the Wachtell investigation."

End quote.

And, and that is the crisis comms firm volunteering the name of the law firm that the NBA hired to investigate the Clippers for secret no-show sponsorships for Kawhi Leonard.

And so at this point you're like, okay, you're realizing this is of great interest to Dactronics.

They're familiar with this investigation.

In fact, they've been managing the crisis of it before we called.

And so now when it comes to getting questions and responses about did you have any proof that Kawhi did anything?

How much was the deal for?

When did it start?

There is no further comment or response.

I'm wondering, though, how this plays out.

If, if these things are true, the NBA, you start with Steve Ballmer.

I don't know what you can do with Kawhi Leonard, but give me the scenario or scenarios that you think that, how this plays out.

Yeah, so all of this got phenomenally, I think, concrete and tag- and tangible when the trade, Kawhi Leonard is traded from the Clippers to the Raptors, to the team, by the way, that originally alleged in 2019 that Kawhi Leonard and Dennis Robertson, his uncle, unlicensed agent, had requested benefits beyond the salary cap in violation of the CBA.

These include no-show jobs.

These include equity in the companies that they were hoping to get in business with through the team.

So the Raptors, I say that to say the Raptors know the backstage of this with unusual clarity as that timeline, 2019, is concerned.

And so they wanna trade for Kawhi Leonard.

But what happens is, of course, the trade is frozen, and what I've been told and what has now been reported is that the change is that the NBA puts in front of the Raptors a piece of paper that effectively indemnifies the NBA, the league itself, and the Clippers from any legal resource or negotiation if there are punishments specific to Kawhi Leonard, because those punishments will travel with the player to Toronto.

If you pay X, you're getting whatever Kawhi ends up being post-punishment.

And the Raptors, in their perhaps eternal wisdom and this backdrop, say, "Then we're not signing this, and therefore the trade is not proceeding."

And so that trade has been frozen for weeks, obviously.

And so the question of, like, what happens next is when is this ruling gonna come down?

Will this ruling speak to the things that I've been publicly reporting that have been vetted by now, of course, months of careful investigation and multiple sources?

Will that ruling speak to those things?

Will there be a punishment?

Will the Raptors want to proceed with this deal?

And if there is a punishment beyond Kawhi Leonard, 'cause again, that's specific to Kawhi alone, how does this possibly avoid touching the richest owner in American sports, Steve Ballmer?

The guy who was across every bit of this, and Dan, perhaps in the superlative I gave him, you can detect some of the cynicism and the concern that when you're the richest owner in American sports, the game you're playing, even in legal recourse and certainly punishment, it is different from even the normal billionaires that you might have to deal with as commissioner.

Has the NBA's investigators talked to you?

They reached out months ago.

I met with them.

I handed them a bunch of paperwork particular to Aspiration, signed contracts, financial documents, and I encouraged them, to take all of it as seriously as, as they can because I think there's a lot more here even than I can get to as a guy who has, you know, Dan Lebatard as his bleeping boss and one lawyer helping me.

So w- we don't exactly have the resources of a multinational, you know, enterprise, but I think that Wachtell, in listening to the podcast, has a lot to go on, and my hope is that they're doing exactly that.

Any chance Steve Ballmer is in jeopardy of losing the Clippers?

Well- Being able to own them I, I, I think the question is an Adam Silver question, right?

And this is what's so interesting.

Adam Silver is not his mentor, David Stern.

Adam Silver is actually the guy who welcomed Steve Ballmer in in replacement of Donald Sterling, and was hailed as this almost Aristotelian, brilliant, progressive leader in comparison to all the other commissioners, Roger Goodell namely at that time.

And so now he is bookending, perhaps, his tenure with the same guy being an even bigger problem, a complicated problem.

And so if you're Adam Silver, and in 2019 when you cleared the Clippers and Steve Ballmer of cap circumvention after investigating the Raptors' claims and the Lakers' claims, what you have done, by the way, on the record to say salary cap circumvention is the cardinal rule of the NBA.

And I think underpinning all of this, Dan, the moment we're in with sports gambling as the NBA balances a gambling scandal, an investigation that we've been covering on the show as well, when they're balancing all of the other cap circumvention theories out there, Gary Trent Jr. Just being the latest hypothesis someone has, is the question of whether the rules matter.

And if you break the rules, as have been alleged by multiple episodes here, of my show and now elsewhere, the question is how do you possibly make it so that the cardinal rule is actually treated like it?

And so by any standard of fake NBA law, 'cause these are all fake laws, these are all collectively bargained rules that you gotta enforce, I think everything should be on the table.

Realistically, in terms of the money, and if you follow it, I think there's a very real chance that Steve Ballmer emerges relatively unscathed, which is kind of insane to me according to my reporting.

Great stuff, Pablo.

Thanks for joining us as always, and good luck with Dan Lebatard.

I'm gonna need all of it, Dan, as you know, with him.

So appreciate it.

Pa- Pablo Torre finds out with Meadowlark Media

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