The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Reaction to Kawhi Leonard, Steve Ballmer & Clippers scandal reported by 'Pablo Torre Finds Out'

Episode Date: September 7, 2025

Jason gives his instant reaction to the bombshell story reported by 'Pablo Torre Finds Out' about alleged under-the-table payments made by Steve Ballmer and the Los Angeles Clippers to Kawhi Leonard in order to circumvent the NBA salary cap. #Volume See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off.

And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Volume. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at The Volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. We finally got a bit of NBA news today for the first time in what feels like an age.

So we're taking a break from our player rankings for a bonus episode. I'm just going to give you guys my very quick thoughts on the bombshell report. Dropped by Pablo Tori on his show, Pablo Tori finds out this morning. I'm just going to frame it by reading the tweet that came from the Pablo Tori Fines Out Twitter feed. You can find at Pablo Torr, or excuse me, at Pablo Finds Out. Exclusive, Kauai Leonard signed a $28 million endorsement deal for a no-show job with a fraudulent tree planting company funded by $50 million from Clippers owner, Steve Balmer, according to documents obtained by Pablo Tori. It was to circumvent the salary cap. An inside source says. So we're just going to

very briefly kind of go over the nuts and bolts of the report. I'll give you guys my take on it. And then we'll get out of here today. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter and underscore Jason LT. So you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast fee, wherever you get your podcast under Hoops tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave your rating and a review on that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Facebook and TikTok, make sure you guys follow us there. And the last but at least, keep dropping mailbag questions

in our YouTube comments to get into our Friday mailbags throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's dig into this. So first and foremost, I highly recommend that you guys go to the Pablo Tori finds out YouTube page and watch the full episode. It's about 80 minutes long, but it meticulously lays out all of the moving parts at play in this scandal.

And I'm not going to get into all of the details because, one, it would spoil the episode. I highly recommend you guys check it out. And it's just better to actually see everything laid out. You can actually see the documents. He highlights the relevant material. You'll learn a lot about this process by watching the video. But the short and sweet version

is that over the course of Kauai's second contracts, important detail there, which we'll get to in a minute. Over the course of Kauai's second contract with the Clippers, He collected about $7 million per year for four years to essentially do absolutely nothing for a company called Aspiration. There was some digging that was done online today by some random people on Twitter who found there were some Twitter posts from the Clippers official feed that had Kauai's image or likeness on it with reference to aspiration.

But that was it. There was no direct mention from Kauai's. why, no endorsement, no like, no retweet, no anything of the sort. And yet he was paid $7 million per year as part of a $28 million contract by these aspiration folks. Now the smoking gun came down to two very specific clauses in the contract. One that stated that he basically could refuse to do anything he didn't want to do if they didn't align with his values. So it was essentially a contractual protection that allowed him to collect his $28 million without ever actually doing anything. And the second part of the smoking gun was a clause in there that specifically nullified the

contract if Kauai ever left the clippers, even for bizarre situations like a buyout or retirement. So the interesting kind of difference there being like, oh, if you don't do anything, you're good. but if you leave the clippers, we're done paying you. And so that's the real smoking gun in all of this. As you guys know, why would they care? NBA stars are an entity separate from anything having to do with the franchise. I mean, hell, they appear in commercials all the time wearing blank jerseys, right? So like, why would they care if Kauai was actually employed by the clippers as part of this endorsement deal?

So from there, the only remaining connection that Pablo needed to establish was the connection. was the connection between Steve Balmer himself and this company aspiration. If you're trying to say that Steve Balmer paid Kauai, but all we see is aspiration paid Kauai, you just need to connect Steve to aspiration. And you have yourself that in the pod they called it the transitive property in finances. So Pablo meticulously laid out in his episode showing documents that essentially proved that Steve Balmer gave 50 million. of his own money directly to aspiration. And the timing of it conspicuously was almost immediately before Kauai signed his own deal with aspiration. Now, the full story, again, gets way more complicated.

Aspiration is currently under federal investigation for fraud. One of their two founding members was arrested as part of that investigation. The other guys attempting a journey into the world of politics with the Democratic Party. Aspiration's old business model was planting trees for carbon neutrality, but they weren't even verifying regularly if the trees were planted. They were, there were allegedly a bunch of fraudulent letters of intent. It's a whole mess of fascinating stuff. So again, I highly recommend you guys go and check out the full episode. But there are two elements here that I want to get into. We are extremely excited to announce our new presenting sponsor, Hard Rock Bet. Everyone knows and loves the Hard Rock Hotels and Casinos. And now you can use the

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The first is the timing, and this is something that needs to be emphasized up front. this whole situation seems to be centered around Kauai's second contract with the clippers, not the first. I saw a lot of people on Twitter this morning saying like, oh, this is how they got him over the Lakers. As far as I can tell, there's no evidence that directly ties those two things together. We all saw the reports surrounding that time. Uncle Dennis requesting a private jet and requesting guaranteed.

off-court money, a bunch of these, like, ridiculous requests, right, that were directed towards the rafters and the Lakers and the Clippers. I even vaguely remember reading a report about, like, a house that may or may not have allegedly been purchased for him. But the true story there is that the NBA did conduct an investigation surrounding that particular signing and didn't find anything. So this particular string of evidence is more directly associated with this second contract. The reason why I think that's worth mentioning is for all of the reasons why Kawhi chose the Clippers over the Lakers, we still don't have anything that's concrete that the Clippers did for Kauai that poached him away from the Clippers. And I just think

that's worth mentioning because I think that those are two separate issues, right? But the second issue remains regardless. This is a compelling set of evidence that leads us to believe that Steve Balmer and the Clippers circumvented the salary cap to give Kauai Leonard more than the collective bargaining agreement would typically allow a team to pay somebody of Kauai's ability. Now, even within this second issue,

I think there are two different ways to look at this. The first is the obvious one. Fairness. You obviously in competitive sports won a level playing field. You don't want teams breaking the rules to accumulate more talent than they normally would to give them an unfair advantage. I see that point of view.

We all as competitors should believe in that sanctity of fairness. And I am completely okay with the NBA and Adam Silver taking any action necessary based on the proof to punish the associated parties appropriately. Right. Now, again, like, you know how it gets with these legal avenues? It could very well be that they get in there and they're like, well, what about this? name image and likeness post from the Clippers account feed. This counts as a service directly provided by Kauai. They may find a loophole to escape this. And this may very well end up not ending in any sort of legitimate punishment.

But anybody who's done any research or been paying any attention to Pablo's recent escapades, the NFL is still reeling from his investigation into the guaranteed contracts that were being avoided by many of these teams. And obviously we've all, we all remember the Bill Belichick saga that kind of broke, Pablo Tori finds out that show on to the national stage. You would be foolish to think that this is just going to go under the rug. So I would imagine that there will be some kind of fallout of some sort.

Pablo even in his, in his full episode, when about bringing up the quote from Adam Silver after the first investigation where he basically said, we take this very seriously. Adam Silver specifically referred to it as the Cardinal Sin in the NBA, and he said that if they discovered any additional evidence, they would reopen the investigation.

And the NBA spokesperson came out today and said that they were going to restart that investigation. So my guess is that we will see something come of this. And as I said, I believe in the sanctity of fairness and competition. and I believe that the associated parties should be punished. But life is full of gray areas. And the second way of looking at this is very much one of those gray areas. Do I think the clippers are the first team in the NBA to inappropriately pay a player underneath the table?

No, I do not. We see so many examples throughout the world of sports of well-known entities in those leagues cheating. Whether it be the Houston Astros, whether it be the New England Patriots multiple times with the SpyGate Saga and the Deflate Gate saga, whether it be the Michigan Wolverines and sign stealing, whatever it is, illegal videotaping,

sign stealing, the illegal signal sending to batters in Major League Baseball, we've seen this a ton. And by the way, I'm not excusing cheating by any stretch of the imagination. I think it's super lame. And I am 100% on board with the leagues punishing the hell out of these people when they do it. But the reality is super competitive people are always looking for an edge. Even in gray areas that aren't necessarily cheating, like foul grifting like we talk about. Do I think Jalen Brunson and Shea Gilderzsche Alexander and Luca Donchich and Austin Reeves foul grift

because they don't believe in the sanctity of basketball? No, I think they do it because they want free throws and free throws are worth points and points help you win basketball games. And getting to the foul line allows your team to rest and get their defense set. Getting to the foul line is a huge asset. We covered that in detail

with Jimmy Butler and the Warriors this year. So like it's just competitive nature manifesting in them looking for an edge. But if you get caught, you have to be prepared to face the consequence. I just think it's funny because when you look at it, I don't think it's a coincidence that the Houston Astros went on to win a World Series anyway after the cheating scandal.

Or the fact that the New England Patriots won multiple Super Bowls after SpyGate. Or that Tom Brady won multiple Super Bowls after deflategate. Manifesting that original idea that I just brought up, which is that supreme competitors are always looking for, an advantage. If you're Steve Balmer and you're looking at the playing field and you're like, I have more money than Jeannie Bus. I've more money than all these guys. I'm one of the richest MFers in the world. And I can use that to help me win basketball games. It's not really hard for me to see how that ended up taking place. It's no different than, you know, with the Astros or the

They just, they just think they're smarter. They're like, we're smarter. We're going to find a way to find a way to win even more by circumventing this rule or that rule. And again, I'm not defending it. I'm just saying, I understand it. I understand how it takes place within the minds of these apex competitors. They're just, they, they want to win at all costs. Steve Balmer did a lot of winning in life before he started winning with the Clippers.

Now, the joke will be, and it's apt, there's all sorts of hilarious jokes that were going around whether it's Kauai doing a no-show work with the clippers as a basketball player, let alone for aspiration or the jokes about the clippers in general having never won shit. And, you know, that's the other part of this is you get made fun of. But I just, it's always just been a part of the world of sports. It's just if you get caught, you have to be prepared to face the consequences. And I 100% support those consequences because I believe in the sanctity of fairness. I just think this is the latest example in a long line of something we've seen all over the place.

There are clearly some, I guarantee you there are people in the league right now that are just doing a better job of it. How is it any different than LeBron getting his son to play for the Lakers or Janice Santinacompo getting his brother to play for the Bucks again? Like there is inevitably in this business, people are looking for loopholes. They're looking for gray areas. They're looking for ways to appease people to build relationships. to stack talent, to stack advantages so that they can win more. And this is just the latest guy to get caught. And it'll happen again.

It'll just be someone else in a different way. But I just want to shout out, Poblatoria. I thought that was an unbelievable piece. I really enjoyed listening to it this afternoon. You'll learn a lot about some of the back-end stuff involving, like, team sponsorships and the way these investor groups work. And, like, he drew some interesting lines between Steve Balmer as an incredibly savvy investor, but ignoring some obvious red flags within aspiration that nobody of his ilk would have missed under

normal circumstances. It's just awesome. I highly recommend you guys check it out. It's all we have for today. We'll be back tomorrow with our player rankings mailbag and I'll see you guys then. Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. First people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but, you know, tired and sick. Tired and sick.

Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's. Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was funny.

You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come in to you, he's like, you know, I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning story. I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off.

And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.