Pablo Torre Finds Out - The Halo, Ballmer's Bowl and a New Crisis in the Super-System: Kawhi-Gate, Part XIII

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

How high up did Kawhi Leonard's silent deals go? Pablo ties a larger-than-life scoop to Steve Ballmer's "seemingly impossible aspirations," as Hunterbrook Media's Sam Koppelman follows the money from South Dakota to L.A. — and Amin Elhassan is left to deconstruct the Death Star.• Subscribe to Huntebrook Media's newsletter for more investigations• Subscribe to PTFO on YouTube for Kawhi news, greatest hits and morePreviously on PTFO:• Part I: The Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree• Part II: An Argument with Mark Cuban• Part III: The Mystery Investor, the No-Show Payday and the "Smoking Gun"• Part IV: Steve Ballmer, the Other Cuban and the $118 Million Infusion• Part V: Steve Ballmer's "Inconceivable" Donation, the $20 Million Guarantee and a Head on a Spike• Part VI: An IRL Showdown with Mark Cuban• Part VII: The Briefcase, Ballmer's Social Network and Aspiration's House of Cards• Part VIII: Uncle Dennis, Ballmer's $50 Million Sprint and the Side Deal That Wouldn't Die• Part IX: Ballmer's Tree Money, the Whistle-Blowers and the Document You've Been Waiting For• Part X: Steve Ballmer's Victim Impact, the Man Who Prosecuted Aspiration and the Abacus of Incarceration• Part XI: Ballmer's Secret I.O.U., Aspiration's "Web of Lies" and the Zenith of Fraud• Part XII: RIFC, the Impossible Deal and Life After Aspiration(Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and Hunterbrook Media and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Carrying it in terms of what was going on with, you know, the salary caps or convention. Right away, the light bulbs went off in my head in terms of, oh yeah, this is also going on with other parts of the Intuit Dome project as well. Right after this. It's important to point out that we are underneath a roof, the same roof again, I mean. Yep. Thanks for being here.

I mean, no problem. Are you adjusted? Yeah, there is. Okay. I like here. Okay, very good. Yeah, this is true narcissism. I like hearing the sound of my own voice.

It's shocking to everybody. Yeah, it's like, oh yeah, there it is. The deep baritones of Amino Hassan. I do really love this part for people who are just somehow finding out about us for the first time. You're about to see, along with our audience, for the very first time, what the fuck's going on today? Last week, you may recall that we broke the news of Kaui Leonard's secret unannounced part ownership. Okay, so this is a Kauai episode. Got it.

All right, cool. A second tier pro soccer team on the opposite side of the country from the Los Angeles Clippers in Rhode Island. While the Kauai trade with the Raptors remains frozen, at least for right now, as the NBA's investigation is still hanging over the head of Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. And my personal favorite piece of feedback from this last episode is, in fact, the first thing in your folder. This is from user at PDWO on Blue. this guy. David Samson basically gives up the game on getting public financing for sports stadiums and it's maybe the sea plot in this episode.

Our friend David Samson, former president of the Marlins, was explaining to us how he hid things from journalists by relying on intermediaries, these third-party entities during the construction of the stadium that he had built Marlins Park. And you may recall that after years of this very careful secrecy, David told us that he finally got to the point, This was in 2011, where he could autograph a steel beam, a beam that got raised to the roof of his brand new stadium in a beautiful ceremony. As we showed you in our last episode, we could remind us what you see in this photograph. It's our guy, David Samson. First of all, these sunglasses are the mid-autso's, I want to say.

A little Morpheus from the Matrix. He's got a Marlins heart hat on and a construction vest. Yes, the neon yellow high visibility safety vest is what that is called, apparently. And he's pointing at a massive beam with a massive Sharpie. And there are all sorts of names and messages written and signed on that beam. And I'm assuming that this is the one that goes to the roof. This was the sea plot. The third most important thing it felt like in the last episode

because we had spent 10 months investigating the perfect storm of life after aspiration. Aspiration, that do-gooding Clipper sponsor, which had specialized in... Planting trees and giving you carbon credits for them. That's right. Aspiration was broke and under federal investigation, leaving Kauai Leonard, looking for the multiple millions of dollars he was owed, on top of his guaranteed eight-figure ownership stake in said tree planting company, despite never... Doing a single thing. Not planting a single tree.

Not planting a single tree. All of it somehow. leading to Kauai's submax extension with the Clippers in January 2024, the week after he formally registered two LLCs tied to the Rhode Island Football Club and its owner, Brett Johnson's real estate development around their brand new Centerville Bank Stadium, a nine-figure project sucking up millions and millions of taxpayer dollars that had been originally earmarked for affordable housing, which takes us back to this headline, I mean, from the athletic,

which remains extremely useful context, for this episode. NBA investigating second Kauai Leonard's sponsorship deal as part of Aspiration probe. And here is what RIFC itself told our collaborators at local WPRI TV

last Friday the day after our episode dropped in an updated statement. Rhode Island FC can confirm that neither the club, Brett Johnson, nor anyone else affiliated with fortuitous partners has been contacted by

by Walktail Lipton, Rosen, and Cats, as part of the investigation into the LA Clippers and Kauai Leonard. Therefore suggesting that Kauai's random-ass soccer team may not be the NBA's mysterious second sponsorship, looming on a grassy but treeless knoll after all. And so another very common question we've gotten in our feedback to the RIFC episode is, how is this secret side deal connected to Saturday?

Calgary cap circumvention. Right. We never really connected the dots between what's happening in Rhode Island and the Clippers, which is necessary for any cap circumvention conversation. There has to be a team circumventing said cap. And lots of people around the NBA are saying exactly this. They are asking, yeah, how the fuck is Kauai's private money trail after aspiration directly tied to the Clippers?

And for the record, the Clippers did not respond to our request for comment. about any of that. Shocked. I haven't responded for months now. Despite us asking the kinds of detailed questions you're going to hear today, ahead of time giving them the opportunity, as always, to correct us. But the Clippers did recently say what, Amin, in a statement to ESPN. We remain confident that when the facts are evaluated fairly and thoroughly,

the NBA will confirm exactly what we have said from the beginning. we have not done what we are accused of doing. And just to remind everyone, our job in this studio actually isn't to do Wachtel's job. The law firm in charge of the NBA investigation, they were hired to help Commissioner Adam Silver decide if any of Kauai's deals can be rationally explained as anything but salary caps or convention

in an attempt, what might presume, to finally end this hellish, almost year-logue news cycle for the league. Whereas our job is to broadcast the truth of what happened as best we can understand it to the public and to go as high up as this story might take us. And so today, I mean, before we go any further, I do want to show you that photo of David Sampson and his autographed steel beam one more time. Yes, please. Because it turns out that this sort of beam autographing photo op is something of a time-honored tradition in the stadium construction business. the genre of which brings us to the very place we ended our last episode, which is the house that Steve Balmer built.

So can you now describe what you see in these photos from March of 2023? That's the mayor of Englewood and the owner of the Clippers, side by side, both signing a beam with white chivalwood. sharpies, as opposed to the black sharpie that David Sampson had in the prior picture. That is, in fact, Mayor Butts, the aforementioned mayor of Englewood. And I applaud both of us by just saying that very straight ahead. See more? We're going to see more of him.

Okay. Turns out. And that is, in fact, the richest owner in American sports. They are wearing the hard hats, the high visibility vest, their names, yes, on the back, like jerseys. And if you zoom out, you will see that. Balmer is surrounded by dozens of the Clippers' construction partners and basketball players, all of whom are in attendance. And you can see Balmer pointing to the assembled crowd, including, of course.

Kwai Leonard, front and center there with a do-rag under his hard hat. We've got, who's that, Mason Plumley, a row behind there. You got Russell Westbrook to his right. Yep. All of them listening to Steve Balmer, tell everybody about his uniquely designed and, to his credit privately funded stadium in Inglewood, which is, as of this day in March 23, a construction site, a construction site where Steve Balmer, big numbers guy, seems to have analyzed pretty much every single detail.

Toilets! 1160 toilets! Three times the NBA average number of toilets and euros! The most passionate toilet speech ever. You were there. at the Intuit Dome, right? For All-Star weekend? I was, yes.

Earlier this year, you've been there for games in the past? I have. It is a delightful place to watch basketball, is it not? You know, people ask me a lot of questions about this investigation. And I tell him, one of the things that makes it hard is that Steve Balmer is a very well-like guy. He's well-liked by his peers, the other owners. He's well-liked by players because of things like the Intuit Dome.

A 100% self-financed modern marvel of architecture. And he's not lying. Every couple of feet, there are massive bathrooms, there's a gazillion urinals. How are the toilets? Amazing. Great suction, clean, spacious. He took us time clearly in the designing of these receptacles of human waste.

By the way, you're not alone in that review. Time magazine named into a dome, no less than one of the world's greatest places, period. Clippers owner and former Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer's ambitious game plan, at a price tag of $2 billion, has set the bar for the nation's stadiums, starting with its sustainability initiatives. It's nearly 40,000 square foot halo board, a double-sided ultra-high-definition display with a quarter billion LED lights wraps around the arena. in this arena is where today's A-plot is taking place. Because something else, I mean, that you should know, is that for the last 10 months, I have not just been investigating RIFC, the Rhode Island Football Club,

in parallel to our still ongoing investigation into aspiration. I have also spent the last 11 months on a third parallel investigation in addition to aspiration and RIFC. And our reporting for today's investigation, actually began two days after we published part one of this series. Way back in September 2025. I hate how giddy he is. You have something on your screen right now that you're like,

oh, I can't wait to lay this out. Well, it's actually a call to somebody who is intimately familiar with the house that Palmer built. Is that... Who's in that? In my heart house. So wait, so you're showing... I'm looking at a picture of the Intuit Dome Mid-construction

you're wearing a yellow vest and a hard hat, and you're standing next to, I presume is that a colleague? Yeah, so it's another colleague of mine that you could see just in the background. There's still dirt on the ground. There's not a seat in the arena yet. We're wearing hard hats and high visibility jackets as things are going in. This is from my video call with a high-level source who was under contract for the Clippers and Toadone Project for years. We modulated the voice, animated the face, so they could speak candidly about what they saw and heard without fear of retribution.

And on this call, I mean, we were in the middle of discussing the exact time period that we've been investigating. Right. 2023 into 2024. When aspiration was collapsing and Kauai Leonard, it turns out, was secretly getting into business with Rhode Island for some reason, before taking a shocking pay cut in order to help the Clippers' salary cap. And you should also know that I have met and interviewed this source in real life. their story is to stay consistent over the last 11 months, which takes us back to the start. So you're listening to part one of this series

and you're hearing the story of salary caps or convention with aspiration. And how long does it take you to realize this reminds me of something? Hearing it in terms of what was going on with, you know, the salary caps or convention, right away, you know, light bulbs went off in my head in terms of Oh yeah, this is also going on with other parts of the Intuit Dome project as well. This is also going on with other parts of the Intuit Dome project as well. A part in particular that has been hiding in front of your eyes, I mean, in plain sight.

I mean, it is important to know that in the buildout of the house that Balmer built, the order of operations was extremely careful. Because in order to start the construction on this arena, Steve Balmer had to win a big legal fight involving the city of Englewood. Yes. And you no doubt recall the name of the mayor of Englewood, who was involved in this whole thing. Mayor Butz? The Honorable Mayor James T. Butts.

It's so good. It's the greatest name in his entire saga. Greatest name in the sports, technically. You may recall, by the way, that we showed you this footage of Mayor Butz standing near Clippers co-owner and truly rationally inexplicable aspiration investor Dennis Wong at that very same ceremony in the Dennis Wong episode that we did last year. Remember that?

Yes, there he is. But, I mean, there is a more obscure name in this Englewood story that we now need to understand. And it is a name that PBS SoCal reported on in 2018. Documents show how Englewood Clippers Arena Deal stayed secret. Inglewood City officials were secretly negotiating an agreement to build an arena for the Clippers basketball team for months before giving a carefully guarded notice to the public according to newly released documents. The attorney negotiating for the project added that the entity he is representing, quote, will have a generic name so it won't identify the proposed project. And quote, Inglewood residents would see only that the meeting involved Murphy's Bowl LLC, an entity formed in January 2017 in Delaware.

And who, Amin, you may ask now, was hiding behind the evasively named Murphy's Bowl LLC? Who? Well, it's on the sheet? In your folder, there is a bit of paperwork from the California Secretary of State's database. and will you please read the name of the sole manager a member for Murphy's Bowl LLC that was officially revealed in writing years later? Stephen A. Balmer. According to a formal letter to the City Council from the Public Integrity Division

for the District Attorney's Office of Los Angeles County, which is now in your folder as well, this LLC was part of concerted efforts between the city and the LLC to limit public awareness in addition to what? The generic name of Murphy's Bowl LLC was used intentionally to obfuscate the identity of the proposed project and those associated with it. If any of that sounds familiar. But thanks to the statute of limitations, nobody was punished by the DA. Falmer's lawyers got these big legal fights either dismissed or settled or else resolved so that the Intuit dome construction, of course, could begin a pace,

which finally allowed Stephen A. Balmer, a different Stephen A. Yeah. Now I want to do Balmer quotes in Stephen A's voice. Toilets! You know, you can never have too many toilets. It allowed Stephen A. Balmer to focus on the most special and complicated detail of this whole construction project.

It was the thing that he and his right-hand woman, Gillian Zucker, the very important CEO of Balmer's Halo Sports and Entertainment, which handles the Clippers Business Affairs, were so excited to reveal. They had very clear aspirations. Oh, come on. Come on. They had very clear aspirations. They wanted this to be a house of hoops.

What, God. Come on, guys. Get a thesaurus, someone. Look, I can only presume that this was a total, coincidence and or a Freudian slip in the way that a story like this can just sort of burrow into your brain stem. But this was in 2024. Okay. Before the dome officially opened later that year. And this, by the way, what we're talking about is the largest 4K quality, full ultra-high definition LED board in history. It is glorious. A type of super scoreboard that the world had

never seen. So we started going about accomplishing this and we realized that in order to do that, we actually had to map every single pixel and every single seat. And in order to do that, we had to find some partners who were like-minded. People who would tolerate are somewhat unusual and often seemingly impossible aspirations. Come on! Gellion! Maybe you want to take a second take on that. No one in the wings is like, hey, no, maybe not the best. Just, I mean, like, yeah. Anyhow, somehow, the Clippers' seemingly impossible aspirations were realized. And should we look at it?

Yeah, introducing the halo. This is how Christopher Nolan wanted the Odyssey to be seen. I mean, imagine the Odyssey on a double-sided wraparound scoreboard in the shape of a halo. It is remarkable. This thing has everything. Yes. There's a built-in t-shirt cannon. Did you know that?

Yes. The cannons are in the scoreboard, and they shoot with precision because they're trying to get to the fans who are the loudest because they have sensors in the seats, Pablo, that picks up how loud you've been and how consistently loud you've been. And so they want to reward their most passionate fans with freebies. I mean, look, as a content person, these are pretty incredible content offerings. The Halo Board has a whole content portfolio, all of which is thanks to the relatively obscure partner that helped the Clippers achieve those aspirations, a company that I at least had never heard of before. So for the screen itself, we went to South Dakota, where Dactronics sets the standard. Despite numerous challenges, many caused by that pandemic, Dactronics and its strong local employment force shipped every single piece of this board across the country on schedule. Let's hear it for him.

So this is the approximately $100 million halo board. A record price, the most expensive Jumbotron ever created. It is a whole acre, an acre of 4K video, three times length of the Hollywood sign, weighing 519,000 pounds. It is the double-sided oval-shaped crown jewel of Steve Ballmer's Intuito. Look, I've been to a bunch of Georgia Tech games over the last few years all over the country.

and almost every stadium we've been to, I believe the Jumbotron has a Daktronics logo at the bottom because they made it. Yeah, I mean, it's the same company that David Sampson used to build a Jumbotron at Marlins Park. They're the worldwide leader, arguably, in Jumbotron manufacturing. Even though lots of people like me just aren't as familiar with the name. Right.

And look, you may now recall, I mean, how Daktronics' fellow Clippers partner at the time, aspiration, they got their name out by hiring celebrity spokespeople. Sure. Such as... Robert Downey Jr. Leo DiCaprio. Drake. Orlando Bloom.

Quay Leonard. One of these things doesn't fit. Of course, Coisle Leonard, who, according to our reporting, made more than four times all of those A-listers combined to do nothing in private. Diactronics, by contrast, does not use public-facing celebrity spokespeople or endorsers to promote the brand at all, apparently. In fact, we wound up connecting with a half dozen current and former Daktronics employees, and we asked, could you recall the company having a single sponsorship with a celebrity of any kind?

And as one former Daktronics employee told us in a text message, I mean, this is the quote, LOL definitely not. Dactronics was conservative to a fault for the 20 plus years I was there. I remember asking early on why we didn't do more traditional advertising and promotion to increase brand recognition. I was told, since it's B2B and not a consumer product, it didn't make sense to advertise that way. Individuals do not order Jumbotrons.

These are devices otherwise used to display other people's advertisements in giant public spaces. But this is where I do need you to know something else. And this is something that I initially heard on the phone from the first high-level source I've been talking to for the last 11 months. So when we first first, got connected and he first spoke,

I said, probably you know the big halo board hanging from the ceiling and the Intuit Dome, that's from a company called Daktronics. And Daktronics also had a

spokesperson from the clippers named Kauai Leonard. Welcome to Part 13. Jesus Christ, man. What questions, I mean, might you now have about this apparent sponsorship deal in which Kauai Leonard

is apparently considered a spokesperson for Daktronix? I'm going to play stupid and say, well, what were his responsibilities? Well, I mean, you should know there is no public trace of Kauai Leonard doing anything for dactronics that we could find, and even stranger. It was never publicly announced that he was hired as a sponsored athlete and or a spokesperson and or an endorser and or a partner of any kind. So they ran the aspiration playbook, basically.

If any of that sounds familiar. Yeah. Yeah. How about that? But while Kauai's alleged Dactronics arrangement was unknown to so many of the Dactronics employees that we talked to, perhaps because it was never announced and extremely unlike the company to have one of these things, the deal was apparently not a secret among executives who were working on the house that Steve Balmer built in 2023 and 2024. And we are talking here about the Klippers organization and Daktronics.

And this would make it the sort of deal that is hidden, but also obvious. which once again reminded me of the Kauai sponsor that allegedly preceded it. Aspiration. This was talked about just openly within the organization from people working on the project that Kauai was a spokesperson for Dekronics. And it was just the biggest thing it was just openly joked about within people working on the project that knew about this as it was 1,000% away to circumvent the salary cap.

How else could it be anything else? rationally speaking, how could it be anything else? Is a very good question. I should point out that all of this eventually led me to a different source with knowledge of Dactronics' relationship with the Clippers. This is a person who worked for the team itself in a high-level role

and who was also there in the Intuit Dome as was being constructed during 2023 and 2024. And this former high-level Clippers official also requested anonymity due to fear of retribution, because this amin is what they wanted me to know. Quote,

I know Kauai had a sponsorship with Dactronics, unquote. And over months of vetting the second high-level Clippers source, a former official,

they also independently confirm something else, which is that this Kauai deal was not only talked about by fellow higher-ups at the Clippers and Daktronics as a way to circumvent the NBA salary cap.

This second source was also told that Kauai's Dachronic sponsorship was a multi-million dollar deal, as my first source separately explained on tape. People at Daktronics, people within the Clippers organization themselves, had told me about this multi-million dollar deal with Kauai and Daktronics. They're not a company that you would see a celebrity endorser for. you know, and then it wasn't coming out of their end, that the Clippers were technically kind of funding it, you know, and that it was funneling money from the Clippers

through Dectronics back to Kauai. First of all, I would love to hear the rationale, again, of, hey, why would this company that has never engaged in this sort of marketing, all of a sudden decide, we need a spokesperson to sell what? And the spokesperson has to be the dullest human being, imaginable, I'm going to go back to Article 13. I'm bringing up the CBA on his iPad.

Section D. And it says, a violation may be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence, including but not limited to, evidence that a player contract or any term or provision thereof cannot rationally be explained. This is what we're talking about, right? With all of these things, because I talk to people. in the NBA. I talk to people, you know, agents and people execs for other teams and even media people who cover a team. I said, I mean, what are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with this.

So there's a company and they're sponsored. They're paying them. What's a big deal? And I said, when you lay it all out, we say, can we rationally explain this without using a cap circumvention as the reason? I've yet to hear one good explanation. And that was for aspiration, which at least had a track record. Had other celebrities that they were paying. We do this and we get big names to do it. You're telling me that however many years, Daktronics is, call it 40, 50 years old.

Almost 60. Almost 60 years of being in business. They're going to change their policy and their whole approach to this and they're going to start with Kwai Leonard? I just told you that they're the foremost. jumbo-tron manufacturer in the world. You know how many teams they work with?

How many stadiums? They had their pick of the litter, and they went with Kauai Leonard, who then never does anything. They don't even put out a press release. I think the key part of Aspiration and Daktronics and their sponsorship with Kauai, as alleged, is that they never announced them.

And so, look, I just got to point out that Aspiration is a tangled web, although I think it's fairly simple to understand now that we've laid it all out over the last, you know, 11 months. This one is pretty damn simple. And so I just got to say here, once again, that we reached out for comment from the Clippers,

we reached back out to Kauai's new agent, we got no immediate response. Although, we'll quote them if we do in the show notes and in future episodes. So this takes us to Dactronics itself. And the way that they handled our questions, I mean, I would say, was far more interesting.

And for this part of our journalistic group project, which previously called upon our local news pals at WPRI in Rhode Island, I now have to turn to somebody who specializes in the analysis of public companies. This is our friend Sam Copleman, the publisher of the independent investigative outlet, Hunterbrook Media,

the investment arm of which, by the way, holds no positions in the Jumbotron space. Yeah, I mean, in the world of stadium buildouts and Jumbotrons, Dactronics is a massive player. If you walk into a minor league baseball game or a stadium all across the country, you might see a scoreboard built by Dactronics. It's a publicly traded family business,

58 years old, from South Dakota, sort of run in a very old school way. Yeah, and my fascination has to do with this alleged sponsorship that they had with Kauai Leonard. And so in your deep diving into the annual reports, the quarterly calls, what do they say about sponsorships? One really interesting line is that they say, quote, other competitors use sponsorships as a way to win business, which to me implies that they don't at least publicly advertise using sponsors at all. Yeah, I mean, like I said, 60 years of policy. It would be, it would, you know what it's like, it's like, it would be like, it would. it would be like if the United States

all of a sudden said, you know what, communism, not so bad. I'm just saying that like, hey, when we had a very particular worldview to change it on a dime and not, again, not for the most charismatic, right, influential game changer

of a person that made us throw away our prior strategy for a guy who's not going to do anything. He won't even retweet. It is kind of like if Mahatma Gandhi was like, you know what I love? Violence. And a burger.

But this is where I want to get to another way that Daktronics reminded me of aspiration, which is even more fascinating, maybe. Because by the spring of 2023, aspiration, you will recall, was on the road to bankruptcy and federal investigation. Following the whistleblower complaint, we

obtained that detailed salary caps caps or convention in writing under penalty of perjury. And around this same time, it turns out, things weren't going that great for Dactronics. Daktronics's balance sheet definitely wasn't the kind where you'd expect them to suddenly decide to invest in a sponsorship deal with Kauai Leonard. You're seeing a company that once had quite a bit of cash as much as $80 million in 2021. In 2022, Dactronics made just over $500,000 in net income. And it owed way more than that in debt. Daktronics was on the brink, not just of not bringing home big profits, but of actually going bankrupt.

And even in 2023, Dactronics had just $10 million of cash on hand. And they had that cash through debt facilities, through revolvers, basically borrowing it just to fund their operations. And when you listen to Dactronics's earnings calls from this period of time, in their second quarter of 23, it's not like a normal, boring earnings call. The company is clearly fighting for its life.

You can hear the company's then CEO, who was the sion of the family business, talk about just how bad things had gotten and just how unprecedented at the time it was for Dactronics. We previously announced recent wins of a new super system for the L.A. Clippers' new arena. having said that in our 54 year history we have not been faced with the perfect storm that these last two years represent I just love that Sam Coplebin was grinding hours of game tape of earnings calls for this episode

somewhere Tom Tibuto smiles I'm the Kobe Bryant of earnings calls I'll just watch this same plan over and over and over again and there was another moment I saw I just kept rewinding which is when the companies audit committee chair, a member of the board, spoke up, which isn't very common. It's like seeing Tyler Kolek at the end of a game or something. And he was speaking because the company's auditor had issued a dire warning. About the company's ability to continue as a going concern, we unfortunately had to conclude that substantial doubt did exist. I will now hand the call over to recent. To be clear, a going concern warning is very bad. That meant that the company might go bankrupt within the next 12 months.

Great time to sign a celebrity sponsor. So this is the part where I'm curious, right, beyond just the ridiculousness of the situation, of, hey, we're going to do this about face. It's publicly traded. So this outgoing cash would have to be disclosed. That is a very good observation. Also, when I was listening to that, it kind of sounded like they were describing building a death star.

Of a new super system for the L.A. Clippers' new arena. Yes. I definitely thought of Director Krennick and Grandma Tarkin and all of them kind of in that little board meeting talking about, hey, man, what are we doing with these people? The empire's fine. We have a new super system coming to protect the Dactronics Empire. Yeah.

And so just in terms of the influence that's... Steve Ballmer and the Clippers had over Dactronics in their operations in 2023. This is how my first source, the person under contract for the Clippers and Tuet Dome Project, put it to me. If the Clippers told Dachronics to jump, they would say, how high? Is there something about a failing business that makes it ultra amenable to caps our convention schemes? Well, unlike aspiration in this case, Avine, because you raise a very good question. Dactronics did a lot more than just survive. They went from being severely financially distressed to, as this 2024 Sportico headline suggests, the opposite.

Scoreboard maker Dachronix hits 17-year high on Intuit Dome's success. And just to consider the stock chart now, you raise questions about public companies and how they must report things. As Sam explains, the stock chart is pretty stunning. The stock went up six times between 2023 and today. And the Intuit Dome marked that bottom. That was the deal that really helped kickstart Dactronics and turn things around for them. Look, I don't fully understand the difference between correlation and causation, but maybe it was a really good decision to pay Kauai Leonard some money,

or at the very least a good decision to take a payment from Steve Boll. bomber and build the Intuit Dome because the Intuit Dome really did help save Dactronics. As far as I'm concerned, that might have been the greatest endorsement deal of all time. I'm looking at the chart right here and right around 2023, it's trading at less than $5. And by the time we're done in current day, it is $20.28. Yeah. I guess you could say Halo Board Man gets paid. That would have been a good ad campaign.

Halo Board Man gets paid. And that would have just cleared everything. See, he did something for them? Once again, an Instagram slide. Could have done a lot of work, perhaps. They could have photoshopped it. They didn't even need him to take a picture. He doesn't even need to be there.

You hire a social media manager, post it, interacts with people, like, retweet, repose, share, and all. He never had to do a thing. even within the context of you don't have to do anything, Kauai. They could have created miles of coverage of plausible deniability. They chose not to do a single damn thing, Boblo. Look, in fairness, maybe Daktronics would claim that there were private secret things.

You know, the things behind closed doors that Kauai would do to fulfill this alleged multi-million dollar sponsorship deal. And because of that possibility, late last month, Sam Copleman of Hunterbrook Media, reached out to Dectronics directly. I always start by looking for a company's number. In this case, Dectronics only had one number on its website,

like the sort of sleepy, 60-year-old company that it is. I called up the number, and I was on with customer service. For sales assistance for new display systems, press one. And then I press zero and I press one and I press three and I pressed all the buttons. Press two. If you would like to speak with an operator, press zero. And I couldn't find a human being to speak to.

But I did find a part of Dactronics's website that was for media inquiries. So I submitted a request for comment. And thankfully, this worked. I got an email from someone who seemed to be a PR person, a marketing person. at Daktronics, who asked me to share more details on the story. I then sent him my number. This is on July 23rd. He then writes back to say,

you know what, I'm not going to call you, but let me introduce you to our VP. But that person was actually the General Counsel of Dactronics. Well, that's not suspicious at all, lawyering up. Had they even mentioned Kauai's name at that point? This elevation of priority to the General Counsel, yeah, I had the same.

question. Had you mentioned Kawhi Leonard yet? I had not. And then four days later, I wrote to everyone, and I said at 4.52 p.m. Hi all, we are preparing to report on Daktronics and its sponsorship deal with Kauai Leonard. Please let me know if you have any comment. Thanks, Sam. And the thing is, Pablo, as soon as I mentioned, the name Kauai Leonard, I didn't hear back directly from Dactronics, but within 30 minutes, I got an email. from someone, from the domain name GFbunting.com. And so, I mean, I want to show you the landing page of GFbunting.com. GFbunting.com, there's a picture, I believe, a shore mic, which is the microphones that we use here in studio.

Correct. And it says, we help clients tell their stories. And if you click over to the team section, you'll find a bio for their founder. president whose name is Glenn F. Bunting. An award-winning journalist at the LA Times turned crisis communications expert. G.F. Bunting and Co.

is a firm, it turns out, that, quote, prides ourselves in establishing and maintaining long-term relationships with our clients. What does that mean? What does that mean? If there's a crisis, you want to call us. And apparently, relatedly, There is a crisis, as further evidenced by the email that Sam received from a GF. Bunting & Co. Executive.

Sam, the folks at Dactronics passed along your email and said you plan to write something. I've helped them on a few things media-wise and can help get you a comment or answers if it's something they can talk about. You have a couple of minutes to tell me about it, and a massive GF. Bunting & Co. logo at the bottom. And so, Sam picked up the phone. His vibe was pretty friendly. I think he wanted to get out of me what we were going to report. And he said very clearly that he was not a spokesperson for Dactronics, though it later became clear that this firm had been hired by Dactronics

to respond to this crisis or other crises or whatever various issues the companies faced. And I'll just say that when I brought up Kauai Leonard and a sponsorship, it didn't sound like this was the first time this guy was hearing about it. And so this conversation, just to be very clear, this part of the conversation as you're meeting each other and you're identified as a journalist and he is talking to you and getting you to say things, is this part off the record?

No. Does he ever go off the record with you in the conversation? Yes, but not before saying a couple of interesting things. One, he says, quote, my understanding is that electronics doesn't have a deal with Kauai right now. Okay. All right, there's a temporal... Right now.

Yeah, see, it's... Might have had. Could be in the future. Right now does not exist. Well, remember, Sam's email to Daktronics PR and its general counsel had said... We are preparing to report on Dactronics and its sponsorship deal with Kauai Leonard.

Please let me know if you have any comment. And so for this crisis comms guy to call back and say... Quote, my understanding is Dactronics doesn't have a deal with Kauai right now. Is kind of like if someone asks about your girlfriend and your response is, my understanding is that I'm single right now.

We're not together right now. Another possible answer, by the way, might have been. I don't know what you're talking about. But that's not the answer I got from these professional crisis comm strategists. When I followed up on it, what he said was, quote, I don't know what the company wants to say or can say, given the Wachtel investigation and all that.

And it was clear to me that that investigation wasn't something that Dactronics was loosely following, but it was something they were intimately involved in or asked about. You ever given a deposition, Pablo? I have not, although I like to play a deposer on TV. I have. and the first thing, you know, when the lawyers were prepping me for it, you were like, do not provide any added material. Just yes or no.

Yes or no, yes or no. Don't give them any extra exposition that they didn't ask for. This guy, who's job, you're a crisis management, PR firm. A direct, straightforward premise is presented. And you get a reference to the NBA's ongoing investigation, which is a strange thing to have a thought about if you're not involved in the investigation. Do you know how locked in you have to be

for the name Wachtel to come? I mean, not like the investigation. Not the NBA investigation. Wachtel. He knew the name of the firm. Almost like you listened to podcasts about it. I mean, a time on a tradition that has followed us this whole time

from the Clippers to Aspiration to RIFC to Dactronics now is the conspicuous evasiveness of the people who allegedly have secret deals with Kauai Leonard when they are presented with these straightforward questions and premises about said alleged deals. And RIFC, at the very least, they came out and said they have not been contacted by Wachtell, Lipt and Rosen, and Katz as part of the investigation into the L.A. Clippers and Kauai Leonard. But here, we're not getting that. We're getting that the whole MBA investigation means that he's not sure what Daktronics wants to or can say. And so, why would a company that's not being examined by Wachtel for an alleged

secret deal with Kawhi Leonard be concerned about said investigation? Well, for his part, Sam did try to get clarity. And so I gave Daktronics the opportunity day after day after day to deny its sponsorship, deal with Kauai Leonard, to explain it. And then very explicitly, I asked repeatedly, if there was even a single instance or example of Kauai delivering any goods or services to Daktronics in exchange for this sponsorship deal, which we understand to be worth millions of dollars. And day after day, request after request, Daktronics didn't respond at all. If any of that sounds familiar. Very. I mean, we've now found what multiple high.

level sources have identified as another multi-million dollar sponsorship deal for Kauai Leonard that was never even announced publicly in any way by a sponsor doing business with Steve Ballmer that happened to be in financial distress during the alleged partnership, which took place while Balmer was building the Intuit dome. And if anyone can explain this to us outside of the salary cap, aka the rule that makes it so that billionaires ostensibly cannot spend whatever they want to win, I welcome them to do something. so, because in the meantime, I mean, I just have to keep quoting you from a previous episode, quoting the GM of the Clippers during this time period.

How many fucking side deals have we made with Kwai? I feel how Michael Winger felt when he said that. Exactly. How many side deals do you all fucking have, man? I should say that we hear Pablo Torre finds out took a detailed list of questions back to Dactronics proper to that PR staffer and general counsel that Sam had been trying to deal with before we publish this episode. And Dactronics did not respond before our deadline.

But again, we'll quote whatever response they give us in the show notes and in future episodes. I'm speechless. I'm speechless. Well. Because it's the same coin. There's two sides of the same coin. One side is incredibly creative and sophisticated, allegedly. And the other side is horrible.

execution. And I can't, I can't come to grips with the idea that these people are really smart. Why are they doing it in the dumbest way possible? But the other thing that sticks with me here is the name Lynn Bunting. And I say that because the founder of the crisis comms firm that Dactronics hired, it just sounded familiar to be. G.F. Bunting? It had been rattling around in my head for the last couple of weeks like I had heard it on television or something before. And then, eventually, I found out where. Let's hear it for the fabulous Clippers and a new coach. Don Rivers! Shout out to Ed O'Neill.

Shout out to Lawrence Fishbird. Yeah. Two things about this. Number one, Ed O'Neill, for those who don't know what Donald Sterling was like, he nailed it. He nailed it. Like, it was eerie to watch it on TV. The other thing is that Lawrence Fishburne, one of my favorite things is about this role. They asked him, oh, you know, how excited were you to play Doc Rivers? He never heard of him. Is that right?

He'd never heard of Doctor. He took off his Morpheus glasses and was like, who? He handed his morphia's glasses to David Samson. So, hold these for a second. You said, wait a minute. You're talking about the aspiration investor, Doc Rivers? So, okay, while I remember that show and I remember it fondly, where does Glenn Bunting fit in in that clip?

On the TV show Clipped, the clip of which we just saw the trailer, which aired on FX in 2024, Glenn Bunting was admittedly overshadowed by the other Glenn, Glenn Doc Rivers, played by Lawrence Fishburn, and that guy with the red hair

who played Blake Griffin? Oh, yeah. How are you not doing your doc impression? Well, first of all, I'd never heard of Lawrence Fishburn. How about that? But here is the other Glenn, I mean, in real life, split screened with the actor playing him, Jason Butler Harner. So Glenn Bunting is a character in real life and in the show

because long before Glenn Bunting and co got hired by Dactronics, Glenn got hired as the crisis manager for one Shelley Sterling. I remember now. The then-wife of Donald Sterling, notorious former Clippers owner, who, after TMS, published a record, according of his racist remarks to his mistress, was forced to sell the team by the newly installed NBA commissioner

Adam Silver back in 2014. And Glenn Bunting is the dude who helped Shelley strategize as she eventually got control of the Clippers. And ultimately, decided to sell the team to none other than Stephen A. Bama. And once I started making calls

about Glenn Bunting, out of Clipper-driven curiosity, I found myself talking to three people with direct knowledge of Stephen A. Balmer's legal fight in Englewood. The same legal fight we told you about before with the Honorable Mayor James D. Butts. And what those three sources told me was something that apparently had never been publicly reported before. Which is that during that controversial Englewood legal fight, Abin, Glenn Bunting was working for none other than... Stephen A. Balmer?

And so we asked Sam Coppelman to ask Glenn Bunting's colleagues, the crisis comms guy working for Dachronics, if Glenn Bunting had ever worked for Steve Balmer. He said, quote, we have never represented the Clippers or Balmer. We did help Shelley. Of course, referring to Shelley Sterly. Now, that is definitive language.

Right. We have never represented the Clippers or Balmer. Right. In this whole saga, this has been an endangered species. Direct answers to direct questions? We are watching a snow leopard in the wild, marveling at it.

Oh my God, we got it. But then I remembered something. I remembered that whole thing with the LADA's office and how they wrote that this LLC had this weird generic sounding name. Yeah. And part of, quote, concerted efforts, including to obfuscate the identity of the aforementioned Stephen A. Balmer. Do you remember the name of that LLC? It's called Murphy's Bowl, LLC. A great memory.

And so then, just to be safe, we asked Sam. to ask diktronics crisis comm's guy a deliberately specific follow-up question. If Glenn had ever worked with Murphy's Bowl LLC in connection with Englewood litigation. He checked in 10 minutes later, he said,

quote, I'm told we did some work with Murphy's School. Another use of the word never gunned down in its prime. But like, you know what? There's a part of me like, I believe them. Oh, but this is what's so fast. fascinating about crisis communications. Yeah.

It's like, look, we don't want to lie to you, but we are going to keep ourselves from telling you the truth that you're clearly asking about. Right. And it's tricky, right? So, like, we don't have a deal with Kauai right now. Here's one thing. The reference to the Wachtel investigation

also feels like it's not random through the same lens. And when we hear a Pobitori finds out, reached out to Glenn Bunting directly, asking about the extent, of his previous work with Balmer's LLC, if he was connected to Daktronics by Steve Balmer or the Clippers or the representatives, and how long he'd been working with Daktronics, and if he saw any conflict of interest between the two,

or if he'd talked with Balmer or his associates about aspiration or Dactronics or the NBA investigation, he did not respond in time for our deadline today. But in fairness, to Glenn F. Bunting, it's hard to be asked questions that there are no good answer. Yeah, especially when your job is to make lemonade out of these lemons. Is to make it so that your crisis goes away. And in fairness, again, I should say that maybe all of this, as always, is merely a series of giant coincidences.

And misunderstandings. This is a big misunderstanding. Maybe Dactronics, which is this family business based in Brookings, South Dakota, just happened to be using the same L.A. based his comms firm that Steve Balmer privately used when he was trying to get the Intuit Dome built. No, he didn't. He didn't use it. Murphy's Ball used it. Excuse me. I defer to both you and the LA district attorney's office on these matters, I suppose. But maybe also, it's a coincidence that while Dactronics was, according to our high-level sources, helping the Clippers circumvent the cap with this unannounced sponsorship for Kauai Leonard during the buildout of the Intuit Dome

as a kind of replacement for the failure of aspiration. Yeah, diktronics happened to have another client we've discussed that was building their own new stadium during the same time period in 2023 and 2024. You better not. And I mean, speaking of paying close attention to our words. Don't you dare. I happened to mention this parallel client to you last week.

Because at long last, we get to opening day in Patux. where Brett Johnson is finally opening Centerville Bank Stadium. There's a sellout crowd of some 10,500 fans in attendance, that's capacity. People gazing up at the brand new Dactronics Jumbotron. Ooh, seen here, manufactured by the same company that made the Intuitome's enormous halo board.

This is worse than Game of Thrones. Last week I said it's like Game of Thrones, this throwaway line. It turns out there's a whole backstory. You gotta stop doing this. You have to. I mean... You were laying it up.

I'm just trying to be very careful on the record at every possible opportunity. You set me up, you son of a bit. Look, they're the worldwide leader in Jumbotrons. Maybe all of this again, timeline even accounted for is just a coincidence. And so I will simply remind you, neutrally, that Kauai Leonard started two LLCs

for a secret Rhode Island football club Club side deal in January of 2024 the week before agreeing to what was at the time a shocking submax extension with the Clippers. For the 13th episode in a row, I mean, I guess I would just like somebody anywhere to give us a rational explanation of how our rigorously vetted sources are getting this all wrong. And by the way, like the names here, I also just want to observe, like the names Halo Board in Halo Sports and Entertainment. They do not simply echo the branding

that we keep encountering in this series through aspiration and fortuitous partners and benevolent capital. And now, in this case, with a halo literally over the heads of the Clippers. Literal angels. Stephen A. Balmer's unprecedented Jumbotron was also so enormous.

This is fascinating to be that Dactronics needed to help the Clippers engineer the entire roof of their stadium in a very special way. As Balmer himself went on to explain. The panels that make up the roof, I didn't know what they'd look like. So they brought the panels

and we looked at them at the daytime, the nighttime, lit from the back, unlit. Is this really a good idea? Great. Is this really a good idea? That's the whole Quietlyneard saga with the Clippers. Is this really a good idea? That's the same presentation that he was giving

with Gailien Zucker that we showed you, before. And by the time, Balmer ceremonially raised his autographed steel beam to the roof of the Intuit Dome in March 2023, alongside Gillian Zucker and Kauai Leonard and Mayor Butts and Dennis Wong and all these folks that we showed you before, that autographed steel beam became part of the architecture of the Halo Board Super System itself. The super system, as described to me by the people who worked beneath it, formed this interconnected network of support that Steve Balmer needed to keep the whole thing, like the whole building itself from collapsing

under the sheer weight of the halo board and his own seemingly impossible aspirations. This is oddly apt metaphor for everything that's happening. But there is one more thing that I mean, that I need to tell you about. Because speaking of metaphors, we've been talking this whole time about stuff hiding in plain sight.

And so I want to bring you the photo we showed you before from March 2023 inside the Intuitome construction site with the missing panels Balmer was referencing and the dirt on the ground that my source described. And oh, by the way, yeah, look, there's Steve and there's Kauai. We're back at the roofing ceremony,

the topping off ritual where we started. But I want you to look closer now and tell me if you notice anything. You've got the front row with the players there, other people I assume are Clippers employees, maybe some construction people who are actually there. And Steve Balmer is standing triumphantly pointing to the heavens, hand on his hip, other hand in the sky. There's an American flag there.

I feel very patriotic at this point. Bob, what am I looking for? What's the other thing behind Steve Balmer next to that American flag? It's a sign, but I can't make out what it says. What's the other thing to the left of that? Oh, no! No! Is that a tree?

I mean, when a steel beam like this is raised to the top of a new stadium... Why is there a tree? Another time-honored tradition holds that you don't just autograph the beam. You got to put something else on top of it. And to answer the question you just asked, I will now turn to Gillian Zucker, Stephen A. Balmer's right here. woman and his CEO of Halo Sports Entertainment, who happened to speak at this very same ceremony in her high visibility fest.

You may notice a band of the building behind me. There is a tree. It's not just any tree. It's a five-foot-tall lemon cypress tree. It is native to California, and it will grace our arena and construction today with good luck. Then it, and 99 more will be planted in the soil. throughout Englewood, in partnership with Intuit and aspiration to commemorate this milestone, to absorb carbon to beautify and bring shade to the city.

It represents our commitment to sustainability and Intuito. You cannot have picked a worse good luck charm than that damn tree. Bringing shade to the city, indeed. And I want you to tell us where that tree went. as we watch it here at the end of part 13 of this endless fucking series

ride this bean where is it going to me they're raising it up to the roof like it's like it's a banner and it's actually going to the roof no come on come on the tree don't tell me it's on the halo board went on to the roof

right where the halo board and its super system of beams would replace them it. Unbelievable. By the way, we must correct our reporting because months and months ago we said not a single tree was planted. Amended. Capitulate. Tawa. I'd like to offer a correction that now we have actual proof at Steve Ballmer's Clippers with Kauai Leonard right there, smiling right behind him, actually planted a tree. They put it right up there hanging over the clippers. That's unbelievable.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Arc Media production with additional reporting for this episode by Michelle Serra, Andrew Ford, Eli Sherman, and Matt Sullivan. For breaking news updates, by the way, on Kauai Leonard, the Clippers, and more of the storylines that we continue to investigate, please do make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. And a friendly reminder that our tip line is always open at 513-85 Pablo.

Till then, I'll talk to you next time.