Pablo Torre Finds Out - Washing Up the Clippers' Punishment, with Henry Abbott

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

Did ESPN get sold fake news? How much did Steve Ballmer lie? What did Kawhi really know? And what's NOT in the NBA's report? A punch-drunk Pablo calibrates his cynicism to explain unanswered questions from his former editor and fellow skeptic. Plus: The Windhole, honoring the webinar... and journalism in the shower.• Subscribe to TrueHoop by Henry Abbott• Previously on PTFO: Reacting to Clippers Judgment DayFurther reading:• "Pablo Torre 1, Mark Cuban 0" (The Wall Street Journal)• "Sources: NBA has no evidence Ballmer funneled money to Leonard via sponsors" (ESPN)• "Summary Report of Independent Investigators Concerning the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard" (Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz)(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 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. Does that not expose Deep Balmer as a liar? Right after this. I want to get to the whole like sweep of this story, but through your brain, Henry Abbott. And thank you for coming back and vibrating with a similar level of excitement. I want to have you here and have you ask me questions. And I will do my best to also pose, I think, questions that have not been said otherwise. and I don't want to call this a mailbag. It's not what this is. This is not a mailbox.

Yeah. Despite it being shiny, not a mailbox, your skull. I do also want to say that this story is unfolding in the sort of fun house mirror way in which I go to the newsstand this morning because I support print journalism. And I pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal. And I flip to my favorite section, personally, which is the opinion section, because I am fiscally conservative, famously.

For sure, you are. And this is the headline in one of the... Oh, I love that. Pablo Toray 1, Mark Cuban, Zero. I just want to know what got boxed out of the op-ed page in this morning's Wall Street Journal. No Bitcoin today. Somewhere Scott Bessent is furious. Yeah, yeah.

But this is the sort of strange, I would say, say realignment that's happening now? It is. Well done. This is actually wrong, though, because it's for sure Mark Cuban minus one. I re-listened to, with an uncharitable heart and feeling a little prejudgey about Mark Cuban, who I found to be kind of overbearing and annoying conversations with you. No. There's a part where you said, yeah, but they didn't advertise any of these deals.

And he just lost himself with how much you don't understand about business and activations and business to business and direct-to-consumer and all this just horsesh-s. But then in the in the Wachtel report, they're just like, oh, they never activated, which makes no sense. And now Mark Cubans, you know, publicly like, hey, good job Pablo. It's like, oh, because Wachtel said it now. It's real. Like, it was obvious a year ago. And that's the kernel of why we're talking.

Yeah. What did we learn from the Wachtel report? What is yet to be discussed? How do we explain what is by any reasonable metric, the largest punishment in MBA history and in contention for what is, depending on how you tally up a $30 million. that Balmer has been fine, plus the year suspension that he has from his own building, plus Gillian Zucker, president of business, a year suspension, Lawrence Frank, president of basketball, six months, five first-round draft picks. According to Balmer's letter to Adam Silver in which he is threatening litigation,

there's a lot happening here, that's a $50 million legal fee to the aforementioned, Wachtel Lipton, Rosen, and Katz, which has helped save long-form writing as you have the stack in front of you. It's a lot. So where should we start in the timeline here? Because people have been coming to me, and I love that they are coming to me with questions on the back of the report.

But as you say, we've been at this, and there's so much more. And even Wachtel also says, there is so much more. Well, you and I spoke recently on the phone, and I was impressed by the howitzer of, like, unpublished information that resides within you. And so I feel my job here is to open some of those portals

and just let it go, right? As my former editor at ESPN, this is a very funny conversational dynamic that you've just described given the larger dynamic that we're about to get into. We're good. We're going to fill the hour, no problem.

This is what I'm very confident about. So, first thing, let's talk about the ESPN article. Right? So August 17th, Don Van Nata, Baxter Holmes, Ramona Schalbner, people that you and I used to work with and know well and respect, published a story that began the NBA has found no evidence showing LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer funneled money through

team sponsors to pay Kauai Leonard in order to circumvent the salary cap, according to three people with knowledge of discussions between the two sides. And then there was a later paragraph that said, talking about Boingo and Dactronics, it said, but like aspiration, there's no evidence that Balmer funneled money through these companies. And how does that sit with you now? The question that I get asked most often is along these lines. How did we go from the public interpretation being Steve Innocent, no evidence, to there were four companies that he was doing parallel schemes with the circumvent the salary cap.

And here is 35 pages of evidence in addition to our 14, then 15, now 16 part series on this thing. And I think people need to understand that when we've been reporting the story on this show, we have been interviewing lots and lots of people, human sources, who have been extraordinarily clear from the start what this was, including in a federal whistleblower complaint filed in 2023 under penalty of perjury. And so I remember where and when I read the ESPN story. Because this is embarrassing for me personally. I was in the shower.

Oh, that is a little weird, yeah. I'm a guy who sometimes needs to glance at his phone for journalistic reasons while I am, I guess, cleaning myself. I'm not going to say I've never done that, but I've never talked about it in such a public forum before. I regret doing this already, but I want to be very detailed and transparent about how this article ended up cleaning the reputation, it seems, of the richest owner in American sports. And when I look at what that headline was and what is implied, I just want to say the framing of this, that's the thing that's crazy to me. What this was in retrospect, according to my reporting, as well as the Wachtel report, was the Clippers legal case in response to these findings presented as if these were the findings. And so when they say no evidence, Henry, this whole thing has evidence in it.

We have provided evidence. It's from the first episode. I just feel like how could anybody say there's no evidence? The framing didn't pass the smell test to me. And I say that also because ESPN did not reach out for comment from me before they went with the story. Afterwards, I submitted a comment that said, effectively, we stand by our reporting, we look forward to the MBA's ruling. Our investigation continues. That wasn't included for whatever reason.

But what I can tell you is that the clippers behind the scenes for a year, have been mounting an aggressive PR campaign through their head of public relations, Chris Wallace, who is the comms guy across everything who reports directly to Steve Balmer and Gillian Zucker and Lawrence Frank. He's a C-suite-level guy with relationships throughout the league.

He is very active on the internet. He used to work at the league. He's a guy that people know. Yeah. And then they also, and this is important as well, hired a crisis PR person whose job was to shop around the most exculpate.

version of events to reporters. And I just would like to point out that this ESPN story was not the first time they got the framing of the story wrong. This was the through line of how they saw this from the start. And they were not alone. And I want to be generous insofar as I say, I think, according to my reporting, and according to the Clipper's statement, Henry, which was released within an hour of the ESPN story coming out, and the Clippers' statement was again a recitation of what, in retrospect, seems to be their legal case. This is about failure to supervise, which is bullshit. This is about no evidence, which is now we can tell.

Bullshed. That was something that they fed to these reporters, our former colleagues at ESPN, while the Clippers themselves knew that this was not it. There was more. And I think, according to the reporting, that the ESPN story was a bit of information asymmetry. And I would imagine that if I'm one of those reporters, I would be furious that this is how we were sold a bill of goods and that it ended up being, in fact, based on the evidence, the opposite of the way it was framed. It's clever, because I don't think these are reporters who would just write what they were told to write. They're reporters. And there is insidery stuff in that story, right?

They had some real sourcing about these meeting between Rick Buchanan of the NBA and David Kelly, who's ballmer's attorney. David Kelly is his attorney at O'Melvinney, Balmer's personal attorney. David Kelly, also different David Kelly, head of the NBA Players Association. And isn't one of them like a movie producer? Isn't there a movie producer David Kelly? We're in the David Kelly universe. I'm surprised how the NBA handled this too, though.

I mean, you and I have both been part of many stories where you check in with NBAPR about something sensitive, and there's a whole menu of ways they might respond. Often it involves yelling and four-letter words and belittling your personality and this kind of stuff. But this was a new one for me where they, you know, with three top known national writers. Yeah, and Sean Sironia also contributed reporting to this thing. I think it was five, really. Bobby Marks, another guy. Former Nett's executive, yeah.

Who worked with Lawrence Frank. Oh, good point. When he was there. The Clippers. web of connections through their front office, which, by the way, their front office is massive. It's not just the comms guy. It's not just the crisis PR guy that I hired, who I will get to at some point in this series. Let's do it. Because the crisis PR guy is so fascinating to me, because these are the sort of dark arts dudes who spin behind the scenes that are called in for these

campaigns. But the point is, even outside of that, they have lots of friendships and relationships, and you listen to all of the other ESPN reporters, and they tell you, Brian Winhorst, who I also respect and have worked with for years. What he says is that Clippers officials looked him in the eye. Oh, they got him in the eye. Now we're good. Right in the windhole. Yeah.

That was inappropriate. Brian, I apologize for your former editor. That's on me. That's on me, Ryan. Sorry. But they looked in the whites of these reporter's eyes and said, There's nothing here. In fact, this dumb podcast has it backwards.

That's what the implication of that story was. And so, look, why did it happen? And what does it say? It happened because there was clearly what the article, this part of the article, I think, might have had the most important word in it. It was spirited. Rick Buchanan and David Kelly. Palmer's David Kelly, spirited discussions, negotiations even, around what this was.

And as soon as that article came out, what you discerned was that the Clippers and the NBA are, in fact, fighting right now. And so why do they handle it this way? It's because for the first time in public view, Henry, as I calibrate my cynicism, the Clippers and Adam Silver's League Office and Wachtel Lipton were on opposite sides of this. dynamic and their incentives were not aligned and that spilled out into the public view and so then the next question is so what does this say about where this punishment is headed and that's where what i'm able to report now is that yeah steed balmer was fundamentally uninterested in settling the nbara this is the non-settlement settlement this is what you get when you don't bargain the NBA was looking forward to settling for

for this to not be five first-round picks and $30 million and all these suspensions. This is what you get when you don't settle. And also, in some former fashion, when you actively try to tell a version of events that is not what is reflected in the reality of this report, which I am told, Steve Ballmer and Team Balmer, legal team Blabers, and the Clippers. they were not told a punishment, but they were told, here's what we got. And if you don't go forward to negotiate, given that, you end up getting the biggest punishment in the history of the NBA within a scope. That is so relatively narrow. You mean that there's more? There's more.

And by the way, so people have also asked like what changed as a result of the ESPN story. Were they waiting on the public to react so that they could decide what to do? I am not going to yet wait into that. What I will simply say is that before this report came out, I was fully confident, based on my reporting, that we were not going to get 35 pages. Right. We would just get a cover sheet, a summary of findings, a ruling.

They don't have to release the report. They just don't. And that would come on the backs of a settlement. The whole point was to settle. Right. And after that ESPN story in which Mike Bass comes, out, Chief Com's guy for the NBA, and he says numerous and significant inaccuracies, the question was raised by the league itself, what was significant and what was inaccurate?

Right. And now we got a 35-page document. And that is why I am grateful that this played out exactly the way it did, because we got to see some of what the NBA knew. It's a real story of power in that one of the... biggest executions of power you can have in sports is getting top reporters to write your narrative, right? And so card played and it totally backfired. As you're describing it, this was contributory to this massive punishment. It was part of how the clippers were defending themselves.

And it was desperate in a way that the NBA ultimately rebuked with a clarity that I can't recall. I don't recall a fight like this happening that leads to, consequences like this. Everybody would prefer that this not get out there. It's sort of like mommy and daddy you're fighting and you don't want the kids to know. It's like bad job guys. Now everybody knows. And I can tell you as well, according to my reporting, that the NBA has been mystified by Steve Balmer's refusal to come to the table and negotiate. And what I will say to that is imagine now that there is in fact more. Imagine now that this report, and I loved reading this report, I just got to say I found it well-written, I found it well-reasoned, I found it fascinating.

I didn't agree with everything, but I noticed what decisions were being made and why. And the context to understand all of this is, if there is more, and this annoying podcast continues to report. It's going to... How do we make it so that we can limit the blast radius while also getting enough to get the story in our rearview mirror? And now if you're Steve Ballmer, just remember, according to this report and ours, you know that there's more. And you also are facing a civil suit in Los Angeles by 11 aspiration investors, Henry, the centerpiece of which is you did not disclose publicly your real interests in this company. which you propped up to support your NBA deception, this caps are convention fraud, and therefore these 11 investors are suing Steve Ballmer for fraud in civil court that is proceeding right now.

And I should also point out that Balmer's same attorney, his personal attorney, who sent that very scary letter to Adam Silver, David N. Kelly, he has called the allegations about his client in the civil suit, quote, based on sensational and patently false assertions made in a sports podcast. End quote. It does sound shady, yeah. Don't listen to those guys. There is an SEC probe into aspiration, which is part of the original sin of this whole series

as we've laid it out. There is an SEC probe into Dactronics. Given that Dactronics in an earnings call, their CFO said last week, hours before the NBA released this report and this punishment that they are getting, Dactronics is getting inquiries from the SEC requesting information and they are cooperating and taking it seriously.

And they said they provided documents to the Department of Justice, too. The Clebers did, I believe, one point. So there's something's going on there. Yeah. That's never good. The DOJ had probed aspiration. Joe Sambor, the co-founder,

has already convicted and sentenced 14 years in federal prison for wire fraud. So there is a lot of stuff in real life. Let's separate sports life and quote-unquote real life, although I think that we're seeing how important they are to each other. There's other stuff, man. that Steve Balmer might even be more worried about in terms of his liability.

And so what I have to offer everybody in the league who is wondering, why is Steve Balmer behaving this way? Why is he refusing to compromise and admit anything? I would say that everyone should think about what happens when you admit anything in the sports context. What happens to the SEC probes? What happens to the civil suit in which, by the way, discovery, Absent to settlement there will yield even more documents relevant to all of these things.

So is Balmer fighting because he can't concede ground in the other stuff? You're reading this report. What stuck out to you in terms of the scheme? So I first read it, my first take was, ooh, there's a lot of juice in here. This is more sauce than you usually get in a sports investigation report. way more. That's released to the public. And then I read the second time,

I think I'm now up to like four or five times, but the second time I was like, man, there's a lot that's not here, which struck me as maybe along the lines of what you were just saying, which is the league doesn't want Balmer in trouble with the SEC or whatever the other real-life things are.

And it's not their interest. Not their interest. They don't get paid to get owners in trouble with the federal government. To be honest, the first thing that struck out to me was late in the game,

walked up and found one credible source who might be able to establish that this money was paid to these firms for the purposes of giving it to Kauai.

That was in your first episode. I think you had nine. Including... By the end of it. Yeah. Nine sources at Aspiration who attested. Talking with their voice modulated.

And not to mention, did you mention maybe before earlier, the whistleblower report, which is Also, what the f*** not mentioned in this thing? What? So that means to me they met and they negotiated. This is what, to me, most likely, Rick Buchanan

and our guy from Elveney were negotiating was, what can we put in there or what has to come out? And this whistlebrill report didn't make it. I have a bullet list of other things that didn't make it, but those are the big ones to me. The notion that maybe this money went, from point A to point B to point C for the purposes of going from point A to point C, come on. The maybe is a generous maybe.

So generous. And they didn't need to go beyond to levy the punishment, which is what I keep on thinking, which is how could you have a scope? We've been saying the whole time, an independent investigation is not truly independent. This is outside counsel, hired by a league, by any corporation. They obey the scope given to them. They are working for their client. And that scope was narrow. The scope did not go beyond 2022. Right.

The scope did not assess, according to the command effing that I keep on doing. They did not address Balmer's personal investment of $50 million. And what that meant for this company, they did not mention Dennis Wong. Which was unbelievable. To me, for me personally, I was in the gym. That was episode two. And look, I found episode one very, very convincing. I was predisposed to believe you as a journalist,

and I knew that there was tons of work behind the scenes that made me believe it more, etc. So I was trying to listen through the ears of a regular listener who didn't know you and believe in your process. Yes, yes, yes. And the moment that I was like, who could possibly disagree was the Dennis Wong moment in episode two. And the fact that, I mean, when you had a guy who worked desperation saying how crazy the company was going down. They're firing people. They're in full crisis. This guy invests. And then nine days later, whatever it was, transfer the money to Kauai. That was, just no one could possibly explain that to me in a way that makes sense. Or they should try. But the fact that they didn't try,

I'm like, wow, this isn't the truest version of events. So, by the way, this is relevant because Steve Balmer has used a couple of alternate governors when he's not available to go to the big board of governors meeting. And that's happening, by the way, next week here in New York City and I can't wait. It's going to be so fun. So the question is, okay, Balmer is banned

for a year. Guess who else has banned for a year? His alternate governor that he sometimes uses, Gillian Zucker. Other alternate governor, because he is the 1% holder of the team, the only limited partner in a strange arrangement that has not replicated anywhere else in the NBA because no guy typically owns 99% of the team except for the richest guy in American sports.

Who happens to have, by the way, at last check, I miscalculate this all the time. I'm like $145 billion per Microsoft stock. Dude has $174 billion, thanks to Microsoft stock right now. That guy can't make it. Gillian can't make it. Is Dennis Wong going to be there? Great question. This is one question I have.

And Dennis Wong, by the way, you say... Thankfully, because I typically am the only one who has to yell about Dennis Wong, episode two of our series. But when he puts in the 1.99 and Kauai gets paid the 175, nine days later, after he's been months late. And now we know in the report, by the way, what it's like when Kauai doesn't get his money? It's a little salty. You hear from his reps.

You do. You hear from Dennis Robertson. You get, without any ambiguity, a sense of how important this is to team Kauai. And if the business office won't go get it, then they go to Lawrence Frank, right? And we've produced texts. Mitch Frankel, who's, by the way, I'm just going to command F here. He comes up a couple of times, but no punishment for Mitch Frankel. Sure.

Let's put a pin in that for now. What do you mean the guy who owns the Rhode Island Football Club? RIFC part owner, Mitch Frankel, to you. Kauai's actual licensed agent who is no longer representing him, incidentally, even though he is not being punished in the text of this report. Also interesting. we have communications, but I think the communication that Wachtel gives us, which I am deeply grateful for, is something that I had heard about. So, Henry, if you could turn to page 30.

Oh, I see where we are here, yeah. So we're in March of 2022, Henry, here on page 30. And Mr. Sandberg texted the following to the business agent, who, at Ms. Zucker's suggestion, had worked on the Leonard aspiration endorsement agreement. If the form agreement isn't fixed, I will tear up the Clippers contract. We will do nothing with Kauai, and we will go into litigation. Should I call Dennis and Kauai and tell them the deal is off because we got f***? If the agreement isn't signed tomorrow, that's happening next. And I swear to God, I'll be totally honest with Dennis and Kauai about why we aren't doing a deal with them.

End quote. Later in the text chain, though, Joe Sandberg makes clear that he had communicated this message, additionally to Clippers executive personnel, not just the agent that they mutually shared, which was quite convenient for purposes of information sharing, but he goes on. I told Scott Sondonberg, they'll need to break the deal with Kauai and explain why,

which is that we got f***ed by the Clippers. Scott asked me not to do that. But if this isn't signed by tomorrow, there'll be no choice but to do that. Kauai deal is not happening without this forum deal. Spoke again just now with Alex, that's Alex Winsberg, then Clippers General Counsel, and Eric Chan, who's a CFO.

And they have no solution. If this isn't fixed, we are burning this whole relationship to the ground. Do you understand how serious this is? This is the ball game. If this isn't fixed, the Clippers-Balmer-Sandberg aspiration relationship is being burned to the ground, and so is the Clippers-Kawai relationship. Zero chance there is a Kauai deal if this isn't fixed. You know that, right?

End quote. Walktel goes on to say right after, Internal communications among Clippers executives confirmed that they were aware of the linkage between the forum agreement. This is the LA Forum. This is Murphy's Bowl LLC. Another thing that's not in the document.

The LLC. Steve Ballmer personally started to mask his identity according to the district attorney's office in L.A. when he acquired all of the land needed for Intuit Dome and the L.A. Forum was part of that deal. I digress. Clippers executives confirmed that they were aware of the linkage between the forum agreement

and the Leonard aspiration endorsement agreement being asserted by aspiration. And then it goes on to say, in a March 30, 2020 message sent to Brant Vaughn, then chief investment officer of Mr. Balmer's personal business office, who has come up in our series before, Mr. Chan, the CFO, stated, Henry, quote, Sandberg's last comment was if we don't sign this deal, he will sue Steve, the clippers, and burn everything down. But let's chat when you can.

He will also call Kauai and tell them how the clippers screwed everything. That is, the CFO to Steve Balmer's. chief investment officer personally. It goes on. And in a March 31, 2021, 2022 email exchange between these same parties, Mr. Chan stated, Steve knows that when this deal blows up, Joe is calling Kauai and telling him his $12 million deal is no longer because of Clippers management, right? I think so, but just double-checking. Me too. I am just double-checking. So why do I bring this up now, after you mentioned Dennis Wong? That was March 30, 2022. Most generously, the Clippers are learning that they have partnered with a guy who is going to exhibit scammer-like behaviors.

Remember, Balmer puts in the $50 million personally in 2021. Aspiration has a $300 million jersey patch sponsor, founding sponsor deal with the Clippers in 2021, right? March of 2022, this all happens. Kauai signs his contract with Aspiration. which we publish in episode one in April 2022. They go forward with that contract days later, and guess what happens as the months proceed and aspiration enters default,

is being probed by the SEC and FINRA, as it's firing its employees left and right, all of which my two sources put on tape under voice modulation. Dennis Wong says, I will be the only outside investor to donate $1.99 million, nine days before Kauai Leonard gets paid 1.75 by this broke-ass company that is being probed

by the SEC and FINRA is in default. And I know these things because it's disclosed in the purchase agreement which we published on the show with his signature on it. He knew it. And he knew the background of this because he was the limited partner of the Clippers. According to our reporting, he knew this.

Right. And then, Henry, in March of 23, while you know this is how Joe Sandberg operates, what else happens? Steve Ballmer puts in $10 million more dollars with those same disclosures, with the same knowledge that this company is an enormous cluster. And when they put that in, they don't put it in as if, you know what, this is a good opportunity for a discount. We're going to negotiate a good rate for ourselves because we know all of this. They go in as if this company is exactly as real and exactly as normal as everyone presumed when they were the anchor investors in the headlines on CNBC back in the fall of 21 when Steve Balmer became the most famous investor in aspiration in the first place.

Because there's no doubt what this was. And so, by the way, does this seem like evidence that reflects not. knowledge by Steve Ballmer of a caps or convention scheme. If you read on, and I credit all of the effort that went in, all the $50 million of billable hours that went into this, because I got to renegotiate with Levitard. You didn't get that kind of money for this? Unfortunately not. Huh. Weird. Unfortunately not. However, where this goes now, right? Because the investment stuff, that flow wasn't even in here. Oxtel didn't even need that. And so then at this point in the story, you're saying, all right, hey, man, but that's a scam company.

That was the Clippers' main public defense, but that was a scam company doing scam things. We got scammed. Everyone got scammed. And I say as well, of course, yes, there was a scam, but you trusted the scammer on a different scam. And we know that also because there were three other schemes. And so how do we get to this report's 35-page tonnage? One entity that did participate with the NBA is Dactronic. which has lots of MBA clients.

They build the Jumbotrons. They need to rely on the MBA's good graces to let them operate, presumably, in their buildings. And so what we get from them brings to life what we'd reported on the show about Dactronics and how this multimillion dollar hidden thing, it's the parallel version of this. But with this caveat, which I did not fully appreciate,

as it recurs. This wasn't just a story about paying Kauai Leonard. This was a story about businesses, the clippers were negotiating with, to become partners in the Intuit dome. Yeah. And hanging in the balance, Henry, was the actual Jumbotron Halo Board contract itself. You learned this. A reported $100 million contract that saves Dactronics, according to earlier episodes we did,

was contingent. They didn't think they would get the deal if they didn't sign up for this. first a deal with Kauai and then a renegotiated deal with Kauai, right? And that's how you kind of know what's going on, maybe. That looked a little bad, yeah. We're going to come back for more. I'm going to need you to pay Kauai more,

but we're going to up the amount that we pay you. And what there's a phrase for it? Spend back. Spend back. Is that what it is? I was like, oh my God. You know the industry's in a bad position when it has a handy little term for this. It's like, hey, we're going to spend back the money that you give us.

We'll spend it on you. Yeah. One thing that really happened here that I'd like you to weigh in on is Balmer spent most of the year saying that he was scammed by Joe Samberg. And Cuban took this line too. Meaning like you give your money to a guy like that. Who knows what happens to it? Everyone else is innocent.

And that was the rationale for a long time. That's Steve Balmer on ESPN TV talking to Ramon Shelburne. And that's all gone now. They're no longer saying that. Why? Because there were four companies, not one. But to me, like, does that not expose Deep Balmer as a liar? I think it's even more effective, actually, on the did he lie question to just cite the report.

This is page 26, Henry. Based on the foregoing evidence, investigators find these statements to be inaccurate at best with respect to Mr. Balmer. End quote. So just to give us the spectrum of best tools. worst here. Inaccurate is the best version. I think you can now imagine what the worst might resemble. Let me read this. Our friend John Hollinger, I know the most boring and stupid part of this is this argument about introductions and what does the CBA allow and blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't care about any of that, to be totally honest. I will only say that John Hollinger worked for the

Grizzlies for seven years. As a C-suite guy. He was a VP, yeah. And he was a VP. And he wrote, recently on the athletic, I can't vouch for anyone else's experience, but in seven years with the Memphis Grizzlies, the, quote, ordinary practice happened with me zero times, probably because, as the report notes, it's illegal, and everyone knows this. Teams are periodically reminded about that by the league in case they forgot. There was one time in my tenure that the topic even came up, and it was immediately communicated to the person who asked it would be blatant caps Convention that would put us at risk of getting Joe Smithed by the league office. Yeah.

This is what the NBA's position was, it turns out, early. It was, this is a novel interpretation of what the rule is. 2015, you're punished. For Capsir Convention, you're fine. D'Andre Jordan, Lexus, team sponsor. This is all now a familiar kind of attempt. 2019, of course, is when the Lakers and the Raptors accuse Dennis Robertson of asking for these things. that have now been born out in this report, as well as in my reporting.

So when all of this starts happening during the pandemic, it's not just that the rules are obvious to everyone. They are particularly obvious to the people who broke cap circumvention rules in 2015, and were investigated and warned in 2019. And we're apparently, per the MBA's version of events here, we're shown what I can only imagine are the equivalent of what we got to click through as, like, webinars. Is this cap?

circumvention. The fact of those webinars was Gillian Zucker wrote these like easily disprovable emails that were phrased as if they had just the firm had asked for an introduction, even though there was nine days of communications with an unnamed business agent. And by the way, let's talk about that for one second. Yeah. Why not named the business agent? Yeah. What a weird move. Why protect that person? What Wachtell offers for their explanation is, quote, certain cooperating individuals and entities requested confidentiality or non-disclosure commitments as a precondition to providing information. Those are decisions that I don't share. Yeah.

We will continue to investigate and report who all these characters are. But if you're protecting a source, you know, presumably from, like, retribution from Balmer, Bomber knows that agent is already. That person was hired by Gillian Zucker, right? So, like, to me, it seems to me like, ah, this feels like the league just saying, like, let's not air all of our dirty laundry. Let's Not Air All of Our Dirty Laundry is a really important way to view this. And it takes us, by the way, to Kauai. That's what I was about to bring up.

Yeah. Yeah, so he got $700,000 fine, which feels dissatisfying. Are you dissatisfied by that? The guy is the, in some ways, we did not have him centered in the story, weirdly. We had, of course, Balmer and the Clipper centered because of the investment flows. And the federal investigation stuff, which we always ranked as like, that seems the most interesting. But Kauai is the reason why the clippers were doing all of this.

He and his representative, Uncle Dennis Robertson, and his agent, Mitch Frankel, and his whole, like, squad, they extracted an unprecedented amount. So $48 million guaranteed by aspiration, 28 in salary, 20 in equity, plus, according to Wachtel's accounting, with Boingo, with Dactronics, with Lockton Insurance, you got at least 18 million. It's a lot. 66 million off the books before we get to the unacknowledged expenses, right, that were not... It was specifically called out as a cap-sick convention that they gave him all these stuff that they said was worth a lot.

And I'm wondering, like, did he pay that back? Well, when I read all of that, again, my brain went right back to the companies, and I was like, wait a minute. So he got fake no-show... And that's, by the way, the other part of this. all fake jobs, obviously. We can now say that clearly. Wachtel confirms he did almost nothing except for one autograph signing. And he went to one military base. But maybe he signed some autographs for like some memorabilia at some point. And in exchange, you got 66. What we're thinking, like, like, an hour and a half of work? If that. Something like that. That's a great rate.

So you're at $66 million, plus the expenses, plus whatever else, because this timeline ends in 2022. Right. Right. Right. Rylein Football Club, that's January 2024. He makes those LLC. then ahead of his next extension, a sub-max extension with the clippers, right? Point being that what Kauai got is vast when it comes to precedent for how caps or convention schemes have revealed themselves to the public. So, yeah, this is a slap on the wrist, just in terms of the financial, like, accounting of it, $700,000 against the 66 that you were pledged via these fake jobs. And by the way, I should say, where does my attention go when I hear about the fake jobs?

They go actually to the fake consulting services that the companies that were the funnels got. It wasn't as fake jobs for Kauai. It was fake jobs for the literal companies that were giving him the fake jobs. That was how A to B to C tracked. And so anyhow, Kauai personally, $700,000 fine, no avoiding of the contract. and he, according to a statement, is off to Toronto. Peace out. He's sorry that people in his circle had bad judgment, though.

I got to find this quote because it's just, I want it on a t-shirt. Here we go. Quote, I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle. I'm so sorry, I'm stranded by idiots. Notably, to his credit, though, not something that Steve Ballmer has said. That's true. But that's not that much credit. I can't give it quite a lot of.

But to me, like, at least, so in the scope of how the NBA Constitution works and how the rules works, you know, Kauai is supposed to try to get everything he can. And the place it's supposed to stop is what John Hollinger is describing, right? The people who have to click through the webinars. The people who click through the webinars have to honor the webinar or at least pretend to honor the webinar. Please pretend to honor the webinar. That's the last webinar slide. Will you pretend to honor this webinar?

You have to get at least three out of five on the multiple choice, you know? Like, Kauai doesn't have that job. Now, the Dunkel Dennis and Kauai engaged in very schemy stuff. Did they ask stuff that made everyone uncomfortable? Was this egregious? Yes. Am I worried about a flood of that moving forward because of Kauai's illicit income? No, because I think players have always wanted money.

Exactly right. You have in this league, and you cover this all the time on True hoop, you have these incentives that conflict, but maybe if they're all being investigated for, accounted for, they can balance into something resembling competitive balance. That's what we like to watch. Yeah. Players want money.

Teams must abide by the rules. Let's throw the ball up. Yeah. Yeah. And in this case, Kauai got what feels like a slap on the wrist because not merely that philosophical framework that I personally also enjoy. This is where it becomes very clear why the Wachtel report is not.

the same thing as reporting, as journalism. This report, in all the ways it's left out stuff but introduced new things. This report in all the ways in which it was very careful around Kauai and issued him a punishment, according to the NBA's discretion, that seems disproportionate to his centrality to the story. What this reflects is the sort of negotiated settlement that might be available to you if you say things like,

quote, I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle. Yeah, you got like a 5,000% discount on the fine if you play along in this manner, is what you're saying. Well, what happens because of the settlement,

as we've talked about, is the union, which had previously saber-rattled almost as loudly as the clippers. In ESPN's on reporting, by the way, which is so interesting. The union threatened, we're not, I believe that David Kelly, we quoted him on a previous show.

He even said something to the extent of, we don't think there's a there there when it comes to what this investigation was finding in terms of the Clippers' liabilities. They identified themselves on the same side as the Clippers. But then, when presented with these findings, the union, which represents Kauai, they say, discretion is the better part of valor. let's settle. Let's accept that. Let's get what we want. And in the process, guess what's off the table? Arbitration. Right. Which was the thing that Steve Balmer was threatening from the start through all of these media proxies. We're going to go to arbitration on this. And this was a confusing part of the story because it turns out you can only go to arbitration for the player's dispute, right? Like Balmer can't go to arbitration. Is that correct?

Yes, because collective bargaining and the CBA document 500 pages in all of its glory, it indicates that, But yes, this must be activated by the player and his union. Yeah. And so once they agree that there were... It's a pretty good deal for Kauai. I mean, all you got to do is tell the truth enough. Yeah. And so one question as a result would be,

so what did Kauai really know and what has he done? And I've seen this theory proffered by Shams Sharani on ESPN, for instance, saying he didn't know anything about this CAP circumvention scheme. And I just got to keep on pointing out that in fact, his signature is on the documents. Either Uncle Dennis stole $66 million, in which case he'd probably be suing him, or this guy got the money. All of this rule breaking was for the purposes of the money going to one place, and he got it.

It's very unusual that people have a secret backroom deal, and that the person who gets the proceeds of that isn't in the back room. Very unusual. I dare say that one of the things that I really like to do in the course of reporting this story is hold everybody to the standards of being an adult. Steve Balmer, you're not a little baby with $174 billion. You're a guy overseeing the thing that you care about more than any other in which you've measured the distance between toilets in the building.

And here, of course, we have knowledge of your knowledge now. With Kauai, same standard. You're 35 years old. And I'm not saying that you will not make it past the pearly gates because you did caps or convention. Let's leave that aside. Let's leave all the real world implications aside. I just think it's insane for you to be signing documents over and over again and then claim, I didn't know about this. Especially when you were also in meetings alongside your uncle in which you were asking for this.

And by the way, in WalkTel's report, they do have this one point that I thought was really interesting talking about what did they include, what did they not include? They did include this part. And I want you to quote this, Henry, for me. If you may turn to page 25. Over the course of the negotiations for the Leonard aspiration endorsement agreement, the amounts of the cash and equity components were swapped at Mr. Leonard's request. So the final agreement required aspiration to pay Mr. Leonard's $7 million in cash and $5 million in equity per year for four years, a total of $48 million.

Yes. So what is it saying? Originally, according to Wachtel, Aspiration said, hey, how about $7 million in equity per year, but $5 million in cash over those four? And this is saying, Mr. Leonard requested the opposite. Give me the cash. I want that more. It does say Mr. Leonard's request, specifically. That sounds like Mr. Leonard.

And you'll notice that Wachtel Leptin is very attentive to minute detail. They are. This is kind of what you get paid the big bucks for. And so they had him on this. And was there more? Let's just say that our inquiry also continues. Henry Abbott, thank you for hopefully clarifying some things for our audience through your curiosity. And I got to hit the shower, I think.

I knew it was going to get weird at the end. I just knew it. Yeah. It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me. This has been Pablo Torre finds out, a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.