The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - The Big Suey: Happy Thanksgiling Pt. 2! (feat. Pablo Torre)

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

"Welcome to sports, Steve." Despite his busy day as the most popular man in sports journalism, Pablo Torre joins the show -- welcomed by top-tier Pablo Drop™ imaging -- to explain the details of his bombshell report about how Kawhi Leonard, Steve Ballmer, and the Los Angeles Clippers are tied to a fraudulent company that may have helped them circumvent the NBA's Salary Cap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, Chris here. Black Friday game day is coming to Prime, and it'll be an epic day of live sports. Black Friday football is at the center of it, with the Chicago Bears taking on the Philadelphia Eagles at 3 p.m. Eastern. That's followed by the final night of the Emirates Cup NBA group play and a doubleheader starting with the Bucks and Knicks at 7 p.m. And the Mavericks and Lakers at 10 p.m.

What a nightcap game that is. But the whole day starts with the return of the Capital One Skins game as four elite PGA golfers face off with $4 million on the line. Black Friday game day tees off with Capital One Skins game at 9 a.m. Eastern before the Big Bears Eagles game at 3 p.m. And it culminates with a double dose of Emirates NBA Cup action, featuring Bucks Nix at 7 p.m. And Mavs Lakers at 10 p.m.

Only on Prime. Welcome to the Big Suey. Presented by Draft Kings. Why are you listening to this show? The podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Lebitard podcast. I'm sorry. I'm not going to apologize for that. In fact, the only one. The only difference seems to be this imaging.

I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries if they're just there. That hasn't happened to you guys? I've done it. And now, here's the Marching Man to Nowhere, Fat Face, and the Habitual Liar. This episode of the Dan Levitart Show with Stugats is presented by Draft Kings. Draft Kings, the Crown is yours. Pablo Torre joins us now. By the way, Greg Cody, Dominique said on his show the other day

that the Colts are a team that is not getting enough attention or respect and that they were his pick for which team would be surprisingly good. I'll pass that along to Greg. I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to Greg. Okay. Nice chatting with you. Pablo, are you joining us right now from the Harvard Club? Why am I, why am I being doxed on, on your program in which I thought I was a friend of the show, a family member, in fact, and now you're alleging, you're alleging these unverifiable claims? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I reported something that makes you uncomfortable.

You think this is, you think this is crimson? You think this red is crimson? No, it's something else. You're at the Harvard Club, aren't you? No, that's, it's off maroon. That's off maroon. Pablo Tori finds out has exploded as a podcast. Today is his first day and its first day. day with The Athletic and he started with a beast of a story that took seven months to report and that he was very nervous that somebody else was going to break before he reported what was in 3,487 documents. So starting first, tell the people what it is that you reported today at 5 a.m. Yeah, so people may recall how there's this, what is happening? That's how we're introducing.

you drop a Pablo. When you drop a Pablo, when a Pablo drops, that's our imaging. Chris Cody has had seven months to produce imaging for this story. It's good, right? And that's what he has produced. This is how we can't. Like Lance Stevenson blowing in my ear. This is how a Pablo gets dropped. This is how we celebrate the biggest story in sports today. So tell us what it is, please whoever whoever just yelped it's good right um i i i i just who said that the sweet nothings the sweet nothings um it's a sweet something is is what i brought you guys today um 2019 the nba investigates okay how do the clippers get kawai leonard they found no proof right this was something that the nba was infuriated by around the league it was the lakers it was the raptors

everybody wondering how did steve balmer and the clippers get kawai leonard we have an episode that explains in I think like 4K detail how it happened in terms of how Steve Bomber, the owner of the Clippers, has paid Kauai Leonard off of the books using, and this is where the story gets wild because this is about the extension Kauai signs in 2021, but it involves, true to the alleged setting that I'm in, to Harvard graduates, to Democratic politicians starting

what turns out to be a $2.3 billion value-wated scheme, scheme around climate change and saving the planet that brings in as the following, a roster of endorsers. Robert Downey Jr., Drake, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cindy Crawford, Orlando Bloom. The list goes on. What has never been reported, though, until today is the most important, most highly paid endorsement deal they signed, which was more than four times the combined value of every other celebrity. that endorsement deal was signed with one of probably, I would say, the worst pitchmen when it

comes to, like, good athletes in America, and it's Kauai Leonard. And this was a company that was funded to the tune of $50 million by Steve Bomber, another Harvard graduate, and the owner, of course, the richest owner in all of sports. And so we have documentation, we have seven sources, we have a source voice modulated on tape, kind of whispering some facts into your year if you listen on YouTube or as a podcast. It's a story that's an 80-minute documentary we made. And it's, yeah, it's crazy. It's actually a crazy thing to sort of pour through.

Is there any proof at all that Kauai Leonard did any work at all to earn that $28 million, anything other than basketball, play basketball for the Clippers? Which he's only kind of done, I would argue, the basketball part. that's my favorite part is that typically in a story like this you say okay there's no evidence and that's a problem here the absence of evidence is kind of the evidence he was signed to a 28 million dollar endorsement contract and did nothing nobody has proof of anything that he did zero things no likes no retweets no posts no tree plantings this was a company that was supposed to plant trees to zero out your carbon footprint and help save the planet um kawai did nothing that any

could find. There's no evidence on the internet anywhere. And that to me feels like all of the evidence you need in terms of this being a no-show job if you're an endorser of something, I would argue. Pablo, part of the gall of this scam is the stupidity of it. Wouldn't it have been extremely easy just to have Kauai film a couple of PSAs endorsing this whole project instead of doing absolutely nothing it's a great question that uh calais campbell i just asked i believe because who just asked that question um it's a really good question um there's sloppiness in this there's sloppiness all over the place because yes all you had to do was do a couple of things but the whole this is the legend right like people are saying yeah you're snitching on kawai leonard

kawai leonard to me is not the villain of this story kawai leonard is maybe the most clear-cut example of a straight-up capitalist, right? Boardman gets paid. Dude wants money. Dude doesn't want to work. He wants to get paid. And so Kauai Leonard could have done some of that stuff to get everybody plausible deniability.

He preferred not to. He signed a deal in the contract, which we have. We have the signed and executed endorsement contract. And it's Kauai Leonard, his autograph right next to the guy who turns out to be, by the way, the youngest speech writer in White House history for Bill Clinton, Andre Cherney, co-founder of aspiration, in that contract, he has outs that our pal David Samson poured over

in which you clearly see Kauai was also not obligated to do anything. They just didn't count on people like me, I guess, ever caring enough to follow the clues down the rabbit hole and find out that, oh, wait, this was a job that required you to do nothing and you did nothing. And so that feels like a problem. Gotta want to learn. Gotta want to learn. Kauai don't want to learn

Kauai don't want to earn Pablo if if they did what Kaleas Campbell was suggesting which is just you know a little thing here or there for Kauai to do wouldn't that if I could check the counterpoint

wouldn't that have then tipped someone off to this endorsement he's doing and then maybe we would have found out that bomber was funding and of course it's like hey the bell rings that wow that's probably not a good

thing for the salary cap. Yeah, that's also, I mean, logical question. Now, the thing about this story, though, was that aspiration, while totally obscure until really like it goes viral this morning, they were announced to be the 23-year, $300 million-plus founding sponsor of the Intuito. They were announced. We have press conference footage of Steve Palmer sitting next to Joe Sandberg, the guy who is now pled guilty to two cuts of wire fraud, by the way. and a nine-figure fraud as investigated by the DOJ and now still the SEC. So this was out there. It's just that nobody knew Kauai was working for them.

But Zaz, to your point, like the reason I found out about this is because in the bankruptcy filing, because the company has, of course, collapsed and it's into disgrace and financial ruin, in the bankruptcy filing, you see the list of creditors. And buried there, which was publicly available, by the way, was this line item that said $7 million dollars outstanding to KL2 Aspire LLC. And I looked up what that was in the California Secretary of State Database, and it was, oh, Kauai Leonard's LLC. Interesting. I then Google, did he ever do anything for Asperator? Because I'd never seen that. And it's weird to have Kawhi Leonard as one of your top endorsers. And there was nothing. And at that point, that's when

I'm like, something doesn't add up here. And it turns out a lot didn't add up for anybody. Pablo, this is a bombshell at the foot of the NBA right now and the commissioner. What do you imagine the repercussion might be of this story? Before you answer that, Pablo, let me just hear some Callais Campbell sound to see if Pablo's got it right because he does indeed find out that whoever that is speaking in that modulated voice sounds like Callas Campbell. Well, thank you. I thank you. I think that is a compliment as well. You're so friendly. What other repercussion is going to be?

Yeah. I mean, this is the parlor game that I find absolutely fascinated because Steve Bomber to reiterate has A, denied any wrongdoing, didn't know about any of this, says it's provably false. I await the proof, frankly. But nonetheless, Steve Bomber is the richest owner, not just in the NBA, but all of sports, right? He's the good guy who saved the clippers from noted racist Donald Sterling. He has Barack Obama sitting courtside. All of this stuff means he's both powerful and a good spokesperson for the league that wants to be on the good guy side of things.

But yet, you have this other dynamic where Steve Bomber, who paid for the Intuit dome with personal private money, no public funds, right? Great on him. He has spent so much money to expand his front office because that's uncapped. Here you have the problem of why Adam Silver called in 2019, according to the athletic report on the investigation, a cardinal sin of alleged cap circumvention, in which the NBA, per that report, had outlined possible consequences, forfeiture of draft picks, million-dollar plus fines,

at the most extreme end, the nullification of contracts for the players whose salaries were circumvented. So I go back to history, and I'm like, what's the last time this happened? And the only analogous case in terms of documentation and salary capture convention was the Minnesota Timberwolves, Joe Smith, which I don't know if anybody in the container even remembers, but Joe Smith and Glenn Taylor, the owner of the T-Wolves, had worked out a side deal and it was written on paper because they were afraid Glenn Taylor was going to die before the completion of that contract. It's a total side fascinating story. But this has

the potential to be the biggest salary cap crime that we've seen? Yes, yes, $28 million. And by the way, for the T-Wolves in that era in the 90s, five first-round picks, suspensions for the owner of the team for Glenn Taylor, as well as other punishments down the line. But this, this as tied into again, an ongoing SEC DOJ investigation into fraud by this green bank, this climate change friendly company, whose biggest investor, or at least the most important, influential, notable investor was Steve Bomber who put in $50 million of his own money. I mean, this is not merely a story about caps or convention. This is now a question that the seven sources I spoke to are asking, what else did Steve Balmer know about? How does one

guy have influence over this company in this way and yet total ignorance about everything else? It's just a question being okay. That Joe Smith thing happened over 20 years ago and Glenn Taylor's still around, which is also interesting. It's the holidays and the 50th anniversary of Miller Light. Holidays are all about gathering around with family and friends, so why don't you bring out a cornucopia of that beautiful white can Miller Light or draft? Whatever it is. You know it's going to be a special time when you bring out Miller Light because Miller Light makes special time Miller time, whether it's a late-night hang after the holiday party

or standing around a fire pit with the fam. Miller-like just fits. It's a taste you know you can depend on. Rude for flavor with simple ingredients like malted barley, rich balanced toffee notes, and that iconic golden color. And at 96 galleries and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces, it lets you enjoy the season without weighing you down. The original light beer since 1975 and still hidden different 50 years later.

The best holiday beers are the ones you don't. don't expect. Miller Lite, great taste 96 calories. Go to millerlight.com slash Dan to find delivery options near you. Or you can pick up some Miller light pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Tis Miller time. Celebrate responsibly Miller Brewing Company Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 96 calories, and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. On Fox 1, you can stream your favorite live sports so you're there for the biggest moments as they happen. For me, I cannot deal with spoilers, so I need to see it live, especially on college football Saturdays and NFL Sundays. With Fox 1, you get it all.

NASCAR, the MLB postseason, edge of your seat plays, jaw-dropping moments, and that rush like you're right there in the action. Sports are meant to be watched live, and you can do that with Fox 1. Fox 1, we live for live, streaming now. Don Lebertard. Pablo leads all of podcasting in reading while smiling. If you listen to ESPN Daily, he sounds like he's having the time of his life

Stugats Coming up next I'm going to tell you the Savannah bananas How do you know I'm Spanana bananas How do you know I'm smiling That's how I find my vocal range

Sometimes I just say Savannah bananas Savannah bananas This is the Dan Levitar show with the Stugats Legacy Media, they have to independently verify your bombshell reporting, but the NBA did just announce several media partnerships. They're basically on every night. They have so many big-time media partners. So far, I haven't seen ESPN touch this. story. Do you actually think this gets traction beyond where it is right now? I know you have a big

partnership with the athletic. They're going to be pumping it out there. But do you think the big time partners of the NBA are going to touch this with a 10-foot pole? It's a great question. It's a really good question. We await. We wait. I feel like what is an obvious, obvious decision to, of course, cover the biggest news in basketball today. And by the way, It's not merely, oh, wow, we have to do this whole thing. They spent 80 minutes on this documentary. How can we possibly do that in a segment? The question would be, what should the NBA do if these allegations are proven?

Right? Like, how do you handle this? Capsar Convention and Kauai Leonard. That is a, it's a talker. And so, by the way, like, yeah, I don't know who has or hasn't covered this stuff yet. But I can tell you that the MBA is they were not aware. This is not a story they had previously investigated and said, oh, there's nothing here.

This is catching them with a level of surprise that I think says a lot about how secret this entire operation was. Pablo, you named also celebrities who were listed as endorsers and had some involvement with this company. So were they duped or were they potentially in on what was going on? They seem to be victims. That said, I think the question of like, what are you obligated to know about the thing you give your name to is the thing I think about all the time working with you guys? But also, when it comes to people trying to be good guys who are getting into partnerships with people who are not so good, actually. The question would be, Leon Ardecaprio, did you know, or Robert Downey Jr. when you made that commercial that we put into the episode, did you know what you were really endorsing? forcing. A question that many celebrities have fallen into traps about in fairness to them. So that

seems all logical. But when you're alleged to be the greatest investor of the last 20 years, a guy and Steve Bomber who was a titan of industry, again, the sixth richest person in the world who has a personal relationship to the players involved here. By that, I mean the actual executives at this company that you partnered with them, 23 years, $300 million. right? How is it that you don't know would be the question? And that's a different question for a celebrity than a businessman. Pablo, this is a cap sport. This is an unfair advantage. I imagine other teams are pretty pissed off about this. But also, I got to imagine across all the cap sports in this country, there might be some teams and owners that are a little bit nervous. Is it likely

that Steve Balmer just invented this idea and was the first to execute it? Or do you think the league it has to do some asking around right now in terms of punitive measures, because this might be a bigger problem than just his story. Yeah, if you think about every owner's foremost incentive as self-interest, then the question becomes, what else have ever, what else have you guys been doing? You know, what have you guys been up to? I doubt that there has been a story with this level of documentation and depth in terms of how they tried to do it. That was only caught again because the company collapsed into bankruptcy. But I think it's interesting. If you think about the room where they have to debate this stuff, the foremost voice when it comes to complaints to the league office about how small market teams have basically been crushed by rich guys now, these new billionaires, the new owners, the richest guys in sports history like Steve Bomber, that team has been the Oklahoma City Thunder. Historically, they always raise this stuff. They can tell the difference between what they can do and what they can't. That Balmer,

for instance, could. That team happens to be the team that won the trade for Kauai Leonard, that won the title using the guy that they got in Jake Yilders-Alexander, who won the MVP in the finals, then in the regular season, and won a title this year. And so it's just interesting. I just wonder, like, what does that team have to say, given that their trade partner happens to be maybe the entity that they should be philosophically opposed to, but in this personal context, You know, maybe that's a different calculus. I should clarify some of the word choices I had earlier when I called it the biggest salary cap crime that there is. This isn't an actual crime.

It's just within the context of basketball. I don't think that we've had anything around the salary cap that has a player of this magnitude or dollar amount of this magnitude. The language there is important. It also speaks to the whole thing. Like, in the NBA, there is a justice system. There are laws that the federal government ostensibly cares nothing about. The difference here in what we report in the story and very carefully report, using again seven sources to work for the company, is that the very thing that is getting the clippers into hot water today because of this reporting is the thing that has caused those seven sources to actively wonder about what else Steve Bomber might have been aware of, which is directly relevant to what the SEC and the DOJ are curious. about. We are not alleging anything. We are simply saying this is a sports story that has

actual resonance. Even if the one thing is not a crime, the question is what else in the world of legality might actually be connected. Pablo, rather than the league possibly voiding Kauai Leonard's contract, would the better punishment be that the clippers have to keep Kauai? Yeah, I thought about this one too. This whole trade, man, like, it's funny. Like, do you, if you're the clippers right now, It's kind of a, it's a bit of a blessing in disguise if you think that Kauai Leonard is no longer worth the max plus contract that he's been signed to, right? If he's not healthy, would be the operative question. All of this, though, it reminds me, right? Like, man, it was such the obvious choice at the time to get Kauai Leonard and Balmer looked like a genius for doing whatever he did to get him because there's no better player than a prime Kauai Leonard coming off a title with the Raptors, two-way player, all that stuff.

And now it's like, yeah, welcome to sports, Steve, is a bit of what's happened here. The double insult, the double bind is this story today for a guy that you may not even want in the same way anymore because his body turned out to be not trustworthy either. Do we know if trees were actually planted? Because like Dan said, like, well, it isn't actually illegal. It's just them getting around the salary cap. But if they're raising money to replant trees and they're just using that money to pay celebrities to do nonsense, then. crimes might have actually been committed. Oh, I mean, there, look, so the co-founder of the company, Joe Sandberg, who is a big Democrat politician in California, played guilty.

Two counts of wire fraud, nine-figure scheme, all that stuff. Guilty to being a glib. There is, but by the way, the climate change pose, right? Like, Trump's administration comes to an end, the first one, and people are like, it's time for the good guys to make some bank. And so their logo, their motto was clean, rich is the new filthy rich. And then part of the investigation, Billy, and it's, again, a very good, a very good thought is, did you guys even plant the trees? And the source that we have in the episode points out that in their experience at the company, in all this documentation, there was precisely one visit to a tree planting site. So, in short, the answer seems to be no.

They didn't really plant all of those trees, despite claiming, by the way, Andre Charny, whose signature was on the contract of Kauai Leonard, he had claimed we plant as many trees every day, even more, actually, more trees every day than there are in Central Park. None of that seems to have been true. I should let everyone know that at 3.30 today, Eastern, Pablo and Amin and Samson will be popping up on our YouTube because I'm sure after seven months of investigation that there was a lot left on the cutting room floor. These are exhaustive episodes.

And so if you want more information than anyone else is going to be able to give you at 3.30 in the afternoon today, Eastern, Pablo will be doing something that, you know, takes you places where I think people might suspect that sports go sometimes. But it's damn near impossible to ever prove this stuff, even when there's an NBA investigation. what didn't we ask you that we should have asked you what are the other things here i don't know how the reporting on this began i don't know what you think the most revealing things are that your

sources told you oh i i just love the fact that like by the way uh doc rivers was uh was a guy who invested in this and so it's like okay we had david to assess the contract language as the former president of the marlins guy who signed many sponsorship deals we had a mean on because if you don't think that we tapped into his Doc Rivers, you have another thing coming. Yeah, we have this whole thing, man. This whole thing is absurd. It's just absurd. He wasn't there for important things. He was just there for his Doc Rivers impersonation. That is important, Dan. It's a good impersonation. Stay focused. I don't think you appreciate how good that impression. He had an Obama in this episode, because Obama comes up. He had a doc in this one. But then, it's like

truly, and for the David's side of things, like, just imagine the absolute, just like the pig in dynamic of David getting to just put on his little glasses and read a contract that he has no idea what's in. And he gets to point out all of this stuff. That's crazy. Like there's a part of the contract, right? So Quiliter does nothing, gets paid more than anybody else combined more than four times as much as all the A-list Avengers we mentioned. DeCaprio, Robert Downey, Jr., just the A-list of A-list. Drake, Drake, you know, Orlando Bloom. So, mean, while, Kauai Leonard has this clause in his contract where he doesn't have to do anything if it's not in accordance with his, quote, beliefs. And it's just an incredible, and also,

he doesn't get paid if he doesn't play for the clippers. So I'm just like, they can try to spin this in lots of ways, but on some level, there's an IQ test dynamic. Here are all the facts he reported. Here are all the documents. Here's the source on tape. Here's a guy doing a weird Doc Rivers impression. Here's a guy telling you what these endorsement deals are supposed to be like. What do you think? I can't really do much more to the NBA than give them all the things they need to allegedly care about the justice

that they talk about being a cardinal set. Pablo. You and Santa? Best rappers out there. But Rees' wants to know, what about the best unwrapping moment? Reese's peanut butter cups put your unwrapping skills to the test.

And with three cups of creamy peanut butter and smooth chocolate per pack, You get your practice in. Experiencing that sweet and salty satisfaction again and again and again. Santa gets cookies. You get Rhesus. Nothing else is Rhesus. Don Lebatard.

This is the quickest it goes. Hey, this is the quickest it goes. Stugats. Everybody, this is the quickest it goes. Yeah. This is the Dan Lebatar show with the Stugats. I love the picture that's behind you that they're going to put on the full screen, Dan, of one, David Samson looking through the contract and the context of, like, O.J. Simpson,

if I did it, like, this is how I would have done this exact thing. And then I'm also looking at the setup on that screen where Pablo, those are props. Like, that's blank copy paper that you guys stacked up. It's like, here's 7,000 documents we go. Like, that's insane. That's freshly taken. Those are like just reams of paper, correct? Absolutely not.

Absolutely. How dare you? How dare you? You guys put one paper clip on one little stack on the top and everything else. It does look like in the movies when they put $100 bill on the top of the suitcase and everything under it is just a bunch of confetti. The prop person did barely more than Kauai did for trees. In fact, they did worse for trees because they wasted trees on all that paper. It looks like a prop contract.

Wow. prove it. That's what I have to say to you. Prove it. You think you can find that out? Prove it. Pablo, to your point, the absurdity of all this, if they do one commercial with Kauai Leonard,

you already said that. All right, we got that, we got that, thank you. It's absurd. Pablo, see you later. Pablo. He's one of the great defensive tackles in South Florida history. You're going to treat them like that? You have real questions.

Thank you, Pablo. Defensive end. reporting. Pablo Torre finds out, go check it out. It's already exploded. The original tweet this morning about the Pablo episode is over 3 million views because he's the only one who has this information. He's going to be the only one for a while. He'll be ahead of this story. 3.30 live on YouTube. He will give you more information. We're going to get out of that now because we've got football to get to. Good see you, Pablo. Thank you for the reporting. Thank you for the work from the Harvard Club.

Having seen the episode, I will tell you guys that this part made me laugh because if you don't know what the story is about, Amin, David, and Pablo talk for 15 minutes, a full 15 minutes at the top of the episode without telling you exactly what the story is about. And it reminded me of a mistake I made many years ago. My reporting on the Dallas Cowboys White House many years ago where Michael Irvin had a home where the players away from their wives partied, I put that in a column about 20 paragraphs in in a story about Eric Rett going to a nightclub and Super Bowl partying. So 20 paragraphs into a story.

I didn't actually put in that the Bucks had one of these two that they called the Batcave. What? That is correct. And the thing that the Dallas Cowboys did that I was reporting, I thought wasn't as important as what it is that you're reporting.

I don't understand why it is you guys talked for a full 12 minutes before telling us what the hell the story was. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Because, hold on, Dan, did you watch the sixth sense and be like, they waited till the end to tell me that he saw dead people? Whoa.

Come on. What are you, what are you mad at? Spoiler alert. Also, there was a bat cave. What? Get out of here. Why are you holding out on me? Good talking to you.

See you later. Thank you. Good, good tip. Good work. A tip into the, into the populatory finds out tip line. Back cave? You didn't even answer how the reporting on this started. Maybe we'll find out at 3.30 when he sits down with David Sampson and Amy and Al-Hasson.

So you guys are in agreement because you guys are all, you're all saying, oh, this happens all the time. But we don't have very much proof of this happening all the time. I don't think it happens all the time. I don't think so. I think eventually, look how sloppy this was now that we're getting this information. and we're just finding out about it now. Like, I don't think that this happens all the time. There was one high-profile incident of this happening in the NFL,

and it was a little slap on the wrist. There was salary-capped circumvention with John Elway and Terrell Davis. The league docked the Broncos a third-round draft pick and find them $2 million. I don't know what the penalties on this are going to be. The NBA, as Pablo just told you, is going to be scrambling to figure out how to penalize the clippers for this because i will say to you once you're screwing with the integrity of the structure of the league the lakers were going to get kawai leonard put him with lebron and change how the league looked and the clippers the laughing stock of los angeles for the entire time they've been in

Los Angeles before Kauai Leonard did something that landed Kauai Leonard. There is no way that the league handles this in a way that is soft. Something is going to come down on Balmer, and it's not because Silver's a badass. It's because of how mad all the other owners are going to be about finding out about this. Mickey Harrison is going to go into the Hall of Fame this week, and I assure you that the other owners are going to be infuriated, that there is something that looks like proof on, oh, that's how they did it. That's how the laughing stock clippers managed to convince Kawhi and Uncle Dennis to go to the laughing stock Los Angeles franchise. I think it's fun to imagine how David Stern would have handled this if he were a commissioner. Because Adam Silver,

I mean, come on, you know. It's not going to be silver, though. It's going to be the owners. Like, silver works for the owners. The owners are going to dictate what the penalty is on this, and I don't think it'll be soft. Do you guys, we remember a couple months ago, we were talking about, do you remember where you were when the Kauai transaction went down? And most of us actually had a memory of that. You remember why we had a memory of that? Because it was being positioned as the Clippers just saved the NBA from the next big super team because it was well assumed that Kauai was teaming up with LeBron and going to the Lakers. There were all sorts of reports of meetings and what was being asked.

And then like a thief in the night came Steve Balmer and the Clippers. and it was all predicated on that Paul George trade and then we saw the whole picture come together. But when this deal first happened, everybody was super thankful that it did because the league was saved and it was going to be more parity, especially in Los Angeles. And don't forget, there were all these rumors at the time of what the uncle was asking of teams when it came to signing his nephew. It was, you know, potentially private jet whenever he wants. was buying a home and it was endorsement deals.

It was ownership stake and it's like, we can't give you any of that. You're starting to look at Kauai's entire career a little bit differently because I think if I fell on one side, I was pro Kauai in what happened with the Spurs, this is just another element of shadiness that makes you revisit that. Oh, but I don't, I'm with Pablo on this in not blaming Kauai for being max capitalist mercenary. The salary cap in general is a stupidity. It's because guys like Balmer

can't control themselves. When they want something, they know exactly how to buy it. And so I'd like to see all of those people bidding maximum amount of dollars because you want to pick Jerry Jones against Daniel Snyder and see who wants the quarterback more and see how much that money's going to rise. The salary

cap is a stupidity because these owners, all powerful owners, cannot control themselves when it comes to this sort of thing. And seeing Steve Ballmer want to get in this game so badly when he's the sixth richest man in the world, you know how these owners work. These are their playthings. But you think they're going to be less competitive with their playthings than they are about money? These other owners are going to read this this morning and that's going to dictate the penalty.

It's not going to be about stern, silver, any of that. It's every owner waking up this morning. Imagine Ishbia or, well, this is pre-ishbia, but all of these, somebody with Ishbia's mindset, seeing this and being like, wait a minute. It looks like they cheated to get somebody because they don't care about our rules when it comes to keeping things equitable. If the punishment is not as punitive as maybe you're making it sound it should be, would that be a sign that other owners don't want their business to come out as well? That's why I'm super curious because I'm sure you have some small market teams that understand what they're going up against in that league.

They don't have certain advantages. And now the large markets are going above and beyond the league rules to acquire some of these people. They're a part of the league too. They are shareholders in the league too. But to the question that I asked Pablo is, I got to imagine Palmer can't possibly be the first person that considered something like this. And nor is Kauai the first person asked.

I've told you guys before, the amount of ask that LeBron's people made when they got to Miami because they knew what they were bringing. to Miami? The answer was no. Please give us hundreds of season tickets. Hundreds. You know what those were worth the first year? Hundreds of season. Imagine what hundreds of seasons of tickets, season tickets would be for the LeBron James Cruz. There's nothing wrong with making the ass. I learned this. I told you guys this story. I don't know if you remember this at the Clevelander. One of Stugats's friends came in one day, and it was Stugats's friend. And so that person came in and made me take, I'm going to say, 45 minutes worth of pictures with him and his

kid, 45 minutes. But because it was Stugats's friend, I did it. And then at the end of it, I was 40 minutes past my expiration date. The guy looks at me and says, can you call your father and ask him to come in? And I look at Stugat's, and Stugat's response was, yeah, you just keep asking until they say no. Like, what was going on? Like, why would you take so many photos? New pose, like, different spots in the studio? Like, what happened?

It's a good question. You can be an awkward photo taker. About, like, 70% of the times the eyes are closed. I don't blame a player for wanting more and more money in this situation. I don't think that this is going to do anything to Kauai Leonard's legacy that he wanted more money. He blinked, obviously. Yeah, yeah, differently. No one would just take 45, like, for fun.

I remember a lunch we had where a kid came, and we took a couple pictures with the kids, and that got really, that got dicey because the kid sat in Dan's seat, and it was a whole thing. Gary was talking to us about Nazis. It was a crazy meeting. What? What's on me? That's on you for, you know, agreeing to pose for 45 minutes worth of photo. That's ridiculous.

I mean, come on. You know, and the other thing is, we're still trying to wrap our head around you burying the lead on that story where you got the Irvin. White House in the 20th paragraph, where's your news judgment on something like that? I mean, it seems like an immorality. It seems like something that players having a house where they have affairs. Yeah. So why wasn't that your lead? Again, an immorality, it's just a, I mean, it's a little thing on the side. It's not this story. It's not a story that has those kind of ramifications. It's just a gossipy TMZ thing. It's bigger. It was bigger because it was the Cowboys. If I'd reported that it was the Tampa Bay Bucks at the time, nobody would have

cared. Zagaki. That's the way you do that. That should have been in the documentary, the Jerry Jones documentary. I didn't see that. It was. It was in the documentary because there was nothing fresh in that documentary that stole everybody else's reporting. I'll mention that to Greg. I think he saw it. Is there any reason that you don't remember Greg's signature lines? Because Zagaki is something I was expecting you to say. Even though he's very much on camera as Greg. That kind of thing. Can we come up with a contest to get you a new expression to utter? Because you're using the old recycled tired ones.

And I'm wondering whether it is we should just have a contest where you take applicants for a saying you're going to start using now. That sounds like something Greg would be interested in. Trailer's for sale or rent. Room to let. 50 cents No food, no pole, no pets I ain't got no cigarettes Thank you

Thank you everyone That applause is really heartwarming It's the holidays and the 50th anniversary of Miller Life The holidays are all about gathering around with family and friends So why don't you bring out a cornucopia? of that beautiful white can Miller Light or draft, whatever it is. You know it's going to be a special time when you bring out Miller Light because Miller Light makes special time, Miller Time,

whether it's a late-night hang after the holiday party or standing around a fire pit with the fam. Miller Light just fits. It's a taste you know you can depend on. Rude for flavor with simple ingredients like malted barley, rich balanced toffee notes, and that iconic golden color. And at 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces, it lets you enjoy the season without weighing you down. The original light beer since 1975 and still hidden different 50 years later.

The best holiday beers are the ones you don't expect. Miller Lite, great taste 96 calories. Go to millerlight.com slash Dan to find delivery options near you. Or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Tis Miller Time! Celebrate responsibly Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 96 calories, and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.