Torre: Clippers' punishment ‘could have been more'
Pablo Torre joined Dan Patrick on the heels of the NBA's ruling on the Los Angeles Clippers for cap circumvention with Kawhi Leonard.
Torre: Clippers' punishment 'could have been more' originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
Video Transcript
Pablo Torre, journalist, podcaster, host of Pablo Torre Finds Out with Metal Arc Media.
Well, you did find out, but I'm curious through all of this, any doubts along the way of your reporting after ESPN comes out with an article recently, hearing from the Clippers, hearing from other people?
Any doubts, any conversations with the wife at night of, "Uh-oh"?
The doubts were, hey, we're still gonna be married at the end of this, right?
Like, 'cause you're on the phone talking to sources all of the time that you say are very important, and we're at the beach with our daughter on your, quote-unquote, "vacation."
That was the doubt.
But in truth, like, those sources were right the whole time, Dan.
The thing that was interesting yesterday, and many things were interesting yesterday, was just what the NBA would do about it.
And that's what we found out is what does the internal politics of league governance look like when you have a scope that leads to a rabbit hole that has four separate companies in it, manufactured paper trails, fake jobs, not just for Kawhi Leonard, but for the companies, like fake consulting jobs for the companies that funneled money to Kawhi Leonard through the Clippers, as well as those companies.
And you have now, as of yesterday, an SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, not Southeastern Conference, SEC investigation into the scoreboard company that according to the NBA got the deal to build the halo board in Intuit Dome because they were willing to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard.
That's what the NBA could not deny.
What did you make of the punishments?
I thought that it could have been more.
And I think that it is two things.
The biggest punishment for an owner that we've ever seen in American sports, I think, when you account for the fact that it is Steve Ballmer banned from the building for a year, his head of business banned from the building for a year, his head of basketball banned from the building for six months because Lawrence Frank, that basketball ops president, participated and provided contemporaneous notes to the NBA.
By the way, a whole other rabbit hole of like- why was Lawrence Frank taking notes during the cap circumvention meetings in which he is quoting, thanks to the NBA's investigators, Steve Ballmer talking about how he's gonna service Dennis Robertson and Kawhi Leonard to circumvent the cap?
Like, why was, why was that there?
Interesting.
$30 million is, you know, change to a guy with $145 billion, depending on Microsoft stock.
But the thing about the scope and the vastness of it, the five first-rounders, I mean, I just I think it was unprecedented in that regard, but also because it was narrow in scope.
There are names in this report that we have been talking about for a year that did not show up.
There is a line that Wachtell Lipton, the law firm, put in.
Their investigation is ongoing.
They are still receiving tips as recently as just weeks ago.
They are still investigating.
It's only the beginning somehow, which is kind of the through line of the whole thing.
Okay.
Can you give me best guess of what you think could be next involving the Clippers?
Well, let's just take Steve Ballmer at his word.
He has written a letter via his very expensive attorneys to Adam Silver blaming this podcaster for getting the NBA to do a prejudiced investigation.
And at first, after the ruling came out, he threatened arbitration.
But this is something that's very interesting that I don't know if people appreciate about what the NBA did.
When the NBA tried to settle with Steve Ballmer, and they said, "Hey, we have a narrow scope.
We have undeniable evidence.
We wanna just make sure that you have the opportunity to take your punishment, admit wrongdoing, and let us all move on," Steve Ballmer, according to everything that we've seen now play out in public after that ESPN story two weeks ago, decided to fight, decided to mount his own campaign.
And the NBA said, "Well, in that case, we're gonna do something that perhaps caught Steve Ballmer by surprise."
They found a way to settle with Kawhi Leonard and the Players Union.
Why is that important?
When Kawhi gets a slap on the wrist That's where the slap on the wrist was, Dan, by the way.
$700,000 for Kawhi Leonard.
A- again, historically, that's quite a bit, but in terms of the role he had in the whole story, that's a slap on the wrist.
He can now go on to Toronto and the, you know, the betting lines can adjust based on that, if Toronto wants to go through with this not knowing what else is in the box.
I digress.
They got Kawhi to settle, and in the NBA, what Adam Silver knows better than Steve Ballmer and his lawyers know apparently, is that arbitration can only be activated by the union.
And so arbitration, because of that settlement, is off the table.
Can't go to arbitration.
What can Steve Ballmer do?
He can literally sue the NBA.
He can sue Adam Silver.
He can sue me.
He can sue Wachtell Lipton.
He can sue you.
He can sue everybody.
And that opens the door to, spoiler alert, more discovery of documents.
Could he have mitigated Like, how much damage could he have mitigated by just saying to the commissioner, "I'm so sorry.
I, I fall on my sword"?
Something that was really interesting in this Wachtell report was how much the NBA leaned on the interview he did with ESPN and sometime.
Take time out of your day to re-watch what Steve Ballmer did after knowing what he actually did, and you will see that he is lying repeatedly.
And once he does that, and he's on the record lying in public about what happened here, the NBA now has the ability to fact-check, as I did, as I have been doing this whole time.
And I wanna put this behind me and move on.
I don't think we're here.
I don't have a 15-part series.
I may not have a Pulitzer Prize.
The NBA might not have a 35-page legal report.
Steve Ballmer may not pay $50 million, as he has now said, for the legal investigation into him- Wow which is what has happened.
It's crazy.
That was the fork in the road, and he chose, I would say, to not tell the truth.
We're talking to Pablo Torre, the journalist, podcaster, host of Pablo Torre Finds Out with, Meadowlark Media.
This isn't the first time that this has happened with an owner.
It won't be the last.
But I'm just surprised it hasn't come up before.
Now, I know that Ballmer tried to do this with DeAndre Jordan, which doesn't help his case in this situation, but do you think that this is pr- how prevalent do you think this, this has been?
And is there anything that you're interested in that might be going on akin to this of circumventing the salary cap?
You got me to do it one time, and I said, "What about, what about a certain player who plays in a city where I may be living right now?"
And I said that, and I've been trying to manage the expectations ever since.
Dan, I see what you're doing.
You're a clever interviewer.
Um- But are you looking into the Knicks and Jalen Brunson?
I am not focusing on the, on the What, what do they say when you're an ESPN employee and you're trying to break graphics without breaking graphics?
You say, "I am not currently targeting.
I am not currently looking into.
I'm not currently circling-" Have you? "
Jalen Brunson and the Knicks."
I have had all sorts of calls about so many teams.
I've talked to people on the Knicks about all of this, and they're just not the focus because we have other things that are, by the way, coming very soon, that are in the vein of what are billionaires who run sports trying to get away with using your money?
And I will leave it there just for now because I think we gotta button some stuff up, but that's There's th- let me say this.
Soon on the show, we will start a new series, and that new series will speak to a lot of the themes and even more, I think, even greater complications for what the everyday person in America should be worried about.
And so what did Ballmer do here?
What makes this one special?
He had the ambition of creating a scheme that is beyond what other owners have attempted.
That much I am very comfortable saying.
This is the furthest point in the spectrum of attempted salary cap circumvention.
People do it by degree.
No one did it by this order of magnitude, and that's why the NBA, which wanted to make everybody stop talking about this, that's why they had to do the thing we saw yesterday.
How does ESPN go with the story with their finest investigative reporters that basically exonerated the Clippers and Steve Ballmer?
I mean, I, for 15 parts a year, did of course the other thing.
I found sources, whistleblowers, documents, who were willing to tell the truth.
What was left open, if you think of all this as sports, right?
What's left available as territory for us to claim?
What ESPN apparently saw was the Clippers' side of the story, and the NBA immediately within an hour refutes it vociferously with Mike Bass's name attached, Dan, and you know how rare that is for there to be a byline on a statement that says, "Significant and numerous inaccuracies."
And what ESPN had done, according to my reporting, is they were fed a story by the Clippers that the Clippers may have known was not true.
And why do you do that?
Well, perhaps it's because that's the available territory that you have, having been beaten on the other part of this landscape.
Perhaps you really believed it because the Clippers look you in the eye, and for months, for a year said to you, "We're telling the truth.
That annoying clout-chasing podcaster is lying to you."
And at a certain point, it's a test.
Do you choose to believe the evidence, the sources, the journalism, or do you try to get a win even when the game's already over?
Do you care-- Have you received an apology from ESPN?
You know what's interesting?
I submitted I was told after the story published, "Hey, if you want to have a comment here because this is effectively refuting your whole deal here, we'll include a statement from you."
And so I submitted a statement, and I'll just paraphrase it.
It was, "We stand by our reporting, and we look forward to the NBA's ruling.
Our investigation continues."
For whatever reason, ESPN did not include it.
And so I don't expect an apology.
I don't expect anything, nor do I think I even need or deserve one, right?
Like, I'm a big boy, as they say.
I just wonder why it happened like this because in this story, a story of no alternate rational explanations, it sure seems to me, based on my reporting, that they got fed a story by the people who were lying to everybody this whole time, and I got implicated as a result of it.
How much money did Kawhi Leonard make off the books, in your opinion?
So I'll tell you factually what I know and what I don't.
So Aspiration has a total value of $48 million.
Now let's bring in the other companies, right?
Boingo Wireless.
Of course.
Which is just funny because, of course, the wireless provider of the Intuit Dome is giving Kawhi Leonard payments off the books.
Of course, Daktronics, the scoreboard operator is.
Of course, LockedIn Insurance, the insurance company on the construction of the dome is doing the same thing, Dan.
Those three companies, according to the NBA's investigation, through 2021, guaranteed $18 million to Kawhi Leonard.
So doing the math, that's $66 million only through, let's call it, 2022.
He re-signs with the Clippers, as I said before on my show, in January of '24 for a discount.
A discount.
Less than the max.
Why and what happened there?
And so you're at 66 million plus.
I've told the story, the beginning of it, around the Rhode Island Football Club, started an LLC, in which he got secret undisclosed equity the week before he signed the extension.
And I ask, as always, what else was there?
And I have a feeling, as always, that there is more.
Congrats.
It's been a long process there.
And, at least you get a trophy.
You, you get something the Clippers don't have.
You get a trophy.
You, you, you, you know, I wasn't gonna make the joke, but I'm glad you just did.
Thank you.
Thank you, Dan.
Thank you, Pablo.
Pablo Torre.
He won a Pulitzer Prize.
I think it's a trophy.
I don't know.
I haven't even seen a Pulitzer.
Is it a statue?
Is it a plaque?
Maybe some of my best people could get on that right now.
Um- A ribbon maybe.
Wait, Pablo.
Okay.
What I hope I don't, I don't A- Admittedly, I, I've become known now for my investigations.
I don't know what this looks like either- Oh, okay which is perhaps embarrassing.
But- my hope is that it's a karate trophy.
Ooh.
I want a big- karate trophy with a karate man on the top, 'cause I only was a white belt, and I've been chasing that high ever since, so that'd be nice.
You might need that white belt.
You, you're gonna need a white belt.
You know what?
You know what?
The more questions you ask me about Jalen Brunson, the more martial arts training I'm gonna need in New York City, Dan.
You brought up- I'm gonna bill you you, you, you brought up Jalen Brunson again.
You pesky journalists- Uh- with your questions.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm not winning a Pulitzer.
All right.
That's Pablo Torre.
