What Questions Adam Silver Should Address in Kawhi Leonard–Aspiration Scandal, According to Pablo Torre

Last September, Pablo Torre sent a shockwave through the NBA when he reported on his podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out, that the Los Angeles Clippers and Kawhi Leonard attempted to circumvent the salary cap by funneling money to Leonard through Aspiration, an environmental company and team sponsor. Since then Torre has dropped seven more episodes that strengthen the links between Aspiration and Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. His reporting sparked a league-ordered independent investigation into the Clippers which could result in devastating punishments for both Ballmer and the organization.

With NBA commissioner Adam Silver expected to address the investigation—and do it from the Ballmer-owned Intuit Dome no less—I asked Torre to join me on the Open Floor podcast for a little State of the Investigation.

(The following excerpts have been edited for brevity.)

SI: Let me ask you this first: I’ve seen your reporting denigrated as noise from a sports podcast. You are a former Sports Illustrated writer. If you published this as an eight-part series in the pages of SI, do you think it would be treated any different?

Pablo Torre: It would’ve been harder to dismiss. The brand name carries that imprimatur. But I think that part of the whole story is calculating, what’s the NBA going to do about this? What does Adam [Silver] care about? It is entirely about reaction to public relations. It’s about what does the public think? And I think part of the premise of my show and why I think that we have been in this Goldilocks zone of actual impact despite the dismissiveness is because we’re putting this on the internet where it goes viral, where it goes on to NBA Reddit and there are clips with documentation that you could see.

What’s funny, and it’s not just the NBA, that broadly speaking isn’t so eager to jump in the pool with me on the Aspiration and Clippers investigation. It’s also, like Steve Ballmer’s own attorneys, in our most recent episode we read from their filing in a civil lawsuit filed by 11 Aspiration investors, who are alleging things that I’m not even alleging, but Ballmer in writing has to say, here’s why we’re effectively innocent. Here’s why, in his words, this podcast, and he uses the word podcast 13 times to prove the point of the attempted dismissal, here’s why this podcast is just noise. I get that, but at a certain point, the question for the NBA is when the public can see the documentation and can hear the voices of two federal witnesses who go on tape under voice modulation because they’re speaking against the richest owner in all of sports, can you really just dismiss it?

SI: The one thing I asked in the preseason and have been looking for an answer for is, is there any example that can be given of Kawhi Leonard promoting Aspiration? Like any whatsoever? I feel, and maybe it’s naive, if they could point to a tweet, an Instagram post, an appearance, something that maybe all of this doesn’t go away, but they can say, “Hey, he was just really lazy. He did some stuff.”

PT: It’s the rare thing where the absence of evidence is the evidence. It’s a marketing deal. He had to do literally anything, just like anything. The crazy part about it is, let’s say Kawhi does nothing, but they at least announced the deal in a press release. They never did. The company that’s paying the dude the most money that is hamstringing the employees of the company who are like, “Why are we paying this dude? We’re struggling to pay our bills. We’re laying off people and this guy and his uncle keep on calling us demanding money for a deal in which he is only draining the capital that we need to stay afloat.” And the answer keeps on coming back, it’s because Steve Ballmer is circumventing the salary cap and Steve Ballmer is the most important investor at the company, because the more that Steve Ballmer stays a supporter of Aspiration, the more they can potentially raise more money.

And so, to your point though about the endorsements and all of it, the other crazy thing is that when Steve Ballmer says in that interview with [ESPN’s] Ramona Shelburne, he says, “We did this all by the book. We know the rules. We got an email from the Aspiration founders asking us to connect them to Kawhi Leonard, and so they’re off to the races on their own.” Just consider this: Steve Ballmer connects the co-founders of the company he is a marquee investor in to the most important employee that he has, who he knows and, in fact, has been previously investigated for cap circumvention with, and he says, “Whatever happened, I don’t know about it.”

They’re not only saying that Kawhi did nothing. Steve Ballmer is also saying, “I had no follow-up questions about the company I give my money to.” That is our $300 million sponsor of the Intuit Dome, the building that everyone’s celebrating this weekend, in the other way, because it is money going all around between Ballmer and the Clippers. Ballmer saying he had no curiosity around what deal they struck and I had even less curiosity once I saw zero things being done by Kawhi, and I had even less curiosity when my money turned out to be a horrific investment, and they did not terminate their agreement with Aspiration. Again, I await some explanation, but it’s been six months.

SI: Do you think there is a defense beyond, “We didn’t know, we were duped?” I think a lot of people, myself included, are looking for something that sounds realistic.

PT: I had Mark Cuban on for this exact reason. I was like, “Can someone, they call it steelmanning in Silicon Valley, make the strongest argument against my argument?” I sat there and I was like waiting and waiting and waiting, and there is nothing logical or certainly evidence-based.

What is very interesting is that, as we look for what the NBA would consider a smoking gun, and I believe, by the way, that the Dennis Wong investment, again, a co-owner of the team, bank statements, money in, money out within nine days, paperwork everywhere, that, to me, is a smoking gun on top of all the other stuff. The other thing that I’m told in this new episode is that there is this question all around Aspiration about a whistleblower report.

Just to briefly summarize it, because I think this is really important as to where this goes next around Aspiration: I am told that there was a government whistleblower, and this person or people are the ones who went to the federal government, and the federal government, as a result of their in writing under penalty of perjury documentation, said about prosecuting and investigating and convicting Joe Sanberg and another Aspiration board member.

The question is, did that whistleblower report mention in writing explicitly Steve Ballmer and cap circumvention? That is what I am trying to get to the bottom of. It is what I hope the NBA, if they care about this at all, wants to get to the bottom of. Because at the end of this, if you say it was never in writing anywhere, I think that is a fragile excuse that does not negate what might actually be in writing somewhere.

SI: Adam Silver is going to speak to reporters this weekend. What would you ask him?

PT: Yeah. I’ll go specific then I’ll go general. Specific, I would ask questions such as, is [Kawhi Leonard’s uncle] Dennis Robertson under any obligation to speak with your investigators? Dennis Robertson, keep in mind, the result of the 2019 investigation was the “Uncle Dennis Rules.” You can’t negotiate with an unlicensed agent. That was kind of the only upshot. It was like no punishment, but there’s that. Will the NBA ever hear from him? Can they? I just think that, when you talk about who has information and documentation, that dude is really important.

And then in general I would say, in the collective bargaining agreement, there is a clause around the punishment for cap circumvention violations, which has to do with rational explanation. Can what the evidence is suggesting be rationally explained in one way or another? There’s so much here, to the idea of a smoking gun that reminds me, and this is not a specific comment on Steve Ballmer, but as an observation about investigating anything. The point of money laundering as a concept is that we’re not going to put our name on the check, but we’ll make it so that there are layers of separation between us and the thing that is being allegedly labeled a crime.

One of the obvious things that I have found in this story is that Steve Ballmer is not so stupid as to put into a memo somewhere, green light for circumventing the cap. In the absence of that, can you find a rational explanation? For me, part of what becomes the question is, “Mr. Commissioner, in the absence of a note or signed check or memo with the signature of Steve Ballmer and the Clippers on it, can you punish Steve Ballmer and the Clippers for what is now allegedly the largest cap circumvention scheme in NBA history?” which includes nine sources and thousands of pages of documents and bank statements showing that the co-owner of the team was investing in a company in a way that defies a rational explanation nine days before Kawhi Leonard gets paid to do nothing.

Because if that’s the lesson, the lesson is just don’t put your name on it, then you’re right. It’s open season for every team to do things below that line. Below the line of Aspiration as a scheme is the universe of normal cheating, and that’s where it becomes crazy to me.

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