The Press Box - The Clippers-Pablo-NBA Megapod With Jason Concepcion

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan and David are joined by Jason Concepcion to discuss the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers investigation. They talk about the findings from the NBA, Pablo Torre's reporting throughout this saga, and a past ESPN report that was contrary to the NBA's eventual announcement. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Jason Concepcion Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to a special edition of the press box. It's Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producers, Isaiah Blakely, and John Not Bones-Jones. We've got a big, big story that crosses from our worlds of sports into media intrigue. Yes. And here to help us, a man who knows all about sports, media intrigue, and conspiracy theories. The host of the Ringer podcast, wait a second. It's Jason Concepcion.

Delighted to be here. Thanks for having me. Welcome back to the press box. Yes. On a momentous day. Truly. Truly, truly, truly, truly. So for those who exist in a different content universe than we exist in,

Wednesday afternoon, we learned that the Los Angeles Clippers were levied, if I may use the only in journalism word, levied a huge, huge punishment by the NBA for salary cap circumvention. They're losing draft picks, a number of people. People are suspended, most notably owner Steve Balmer. This was a story we first heard about from Pablo Torre. Shats to him. Or as the Clippers called him in a statement yesterday, a podcaster. Quite petty.

We also got a 36-page report from the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz. Now, I want to do this in three parts today. Okay. Talk about the report. Talk about Pablo. And talk about the ESPN report from a couple of weeks ago that, got everyone looking in the other direction. Yes.

Let us start with that report. Jason, your first impressions when you read it yesterday. It's quite damning. I was impressed by the amount of first person quotes that they had in there

in the form of text messages and emails, including from a high-ranking Clippers executive who says something to the effect of, I don't even want to be doing this deal. The red flags are everywhere. where like I don't, I'm just doing my job, but I don't like it.

Yeah. And there are numerous other comments like that. There are comments that certainly seem to draw the straight line between the quid, the pro, and the quo in terms of money moving, deals not happening unless money moves, etc. And all in all, an authoritative report that goes even further, really. than the reporting that Pablo put out. What about you, David? What was the most stunning? Yeah, I mean, I listened to piggyback off what Jason said.

I think in a zoomed-out way, this is kind of a technology story, right? I mean, I think on the very, on the media side, the fact that it's like a podcast instead of a news article is really significant to how the story evolved and the way that it was treated, I think, broadly. and I think that from the clipper side, people who text instead of make phone calls now. And that's exactly what got the clippers penalized, I think, at the end of the day. You know, I think that there's, I mean, it was incredibly damning. And it was, and I think that, you know, maybe the most significant thing is the lack of a, lack of explanation from the clipper side, from the group that says they're going to fight, fight, fight, fight.

Like, there was just no rebuttal within the context of the report. And you might say, well, why would there be? this is the NBA report, but like, dude, the NBA should have, would have gone out of its way to, to diffuse any future arguments, right? There was no, I mean, there's no, there was nothing there except for, except for the scandal, you know, and I thought, I thought it was really self-evident. Obviously, like, like Jason said, it has a lot more than, than what Pablo reported, but Pablo reported a stunning amount.

Yeah. And if you really paid attention to his podcast, which I, I think is another modern technology version of this that a lot of people didn't. The idea that this wouldn't have been a damning report would have been, it seemed pretty hard to swallow, which will take us eventually to that ESPN story. I'm not used to saying this about reports from law firms, but this was a great read. It is. Walk-Tel Lipton proved that Longform isn't dead. I heard that Rosen is the real literary scribe of the group.

So give him the credit. He gave it the literary touch that the others. partners might have lacked. I've kind of lost track of the best American sports writing, but there's no honest version of the best American sports writing 2026 that does not include this 36-page report. And I am being deadly serious here. This is a, this is written in a really, really compelling way. There are investigative reporters who do not write as compellingly and clearly as this. It is very, very engaging with a sense of suspense and payoff at the end of every page and it dangles, which like all good writing should, some really interesting threads that

are just, you know, begging to be pulled on, namely, and I think this is the one thing that should be dangerous for the clippers going forward and they should, you know, feel some trepidation about, is it's clear that this investigation is ongoing. Yeah. That there were things in the report that were unearthed, you know, absolutely. hours, days before the report went to print. And that one of the things they're currently still working on is the flow of the money. So obviously money goes from these four companies, Boingo aspiration.

Dactronics. And then the insurance company. These are the fagest companies. These were all subjects of Stephen Glasspieces back in the day. Lockton insurance. These all feel so strange. Who, by the way, did not, the report, stresses did not cooperate. Locked in insurance did not cooperate with the investigation.

So they are still trying to, so obviously money flowed from these companies to Kauai Leonard. What's still being worked on is, did the clippers root money to these companies? And does that money then equal the amount of money that was rooted to Kauai Leonard? And I think if that happens, you could see this penalty become, you know, even higher. But that left me really intrigued. Yeah, I mean, my guess kind of politically is that that won't happen only because I feel like the punishment in some ways was as harsh as it was so as to stop any future conversations on the subject, you know? Right. Like the next time Pablo puts out something significant on the subject and the vast majority of fans will say, oh, this is old news.

You know, they've already been punished. And the NBA, I think, has a vested interest in letting this disappear. I do think, I mean, people keep saying there's a chance that they'll have the penalty reduced. So maybe if it turns out that there's no more there, they'll get a pick or two back or something like that. And if they cooperate with the, I don't even know what the conditions are, it's so bizarre. But yeah, it's, but what you mentioned is real. And obviously there's, there is the potential that there is something out there that is so much more damning that it could, that it would necessitate going back and rep penalizing them. I don't know, man.

I'm kind of mystified by the bomber side of this too because they're insisting that they didn't do anything wrong and I get the like everybody's doing it argument but like if there is a smoking gun out there it's wild for them to be still defending themselves in the public sphere but who knows? Maybe that's the right move. I don't know.

I was struck by the fact that this report from a law firm had a tone to it as well. Yeah, it did have a tone to it. So they're talking about these introductions that the Clippers made to companies that then signed sponsorship deals with Kauai Leonard. And the NBA rules, as I say in the report, are very clear here. If the company comes to you, if Dactronics or locked in insurance says, hey, we want Kauai as our spokesperson, even if we don't want to ever announce it and admit that he is our spokesman, if we just want to pay him to be our spokesperson, you can give them Uncle Dennis's cell phone number. Right. You can give them his people.

but that's where you got to get out. You can't make the deal for Kauai. You can't encourage them to go to Kauai. You can't set the terms of the arrangement because then you are just giving Kauai money outside the salary cap, right? So they're talking about three deals at Leonard May, and I'll just read you a few passages here from the report. And this is what I mean by tone.

Each agreement was signed in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic when according to both the NBA and an expert in athlete endorsement deals, companies were rarely signing any such agreements, particularly with endorsers with whom they did not have an existing relationship. It continues. Each agreement was signed by a company that had never before and has never since signed an endorsement agreement of a remotely the same financial magnitude as the one it entered into with Mr. Leonard. Each agreement imposed minimal performance obligations on Mr. Leonard. None of these agreements were publicly announced defeating the foundational purpose of an endorsement agreement.

and then it ends up, investigators do not uncover or receive evidence reflecting that the companies exercise their rights for meaningful player activation. There's a wonderful skepticism, and I roll in those words, like, come on. Yeah. Yeah, it's not Scalia-esque in terms of the flourishes, but there is a propulsiveness and a momentum to the tone to it. And you're absolutely right. There is a, there is a framing that sets up the excuse, if you will, and just methodically knocks it down with a preponderance of evidence, not always direct, you know, smoking gun type evidence, but just with a weight of examples about what was going on in the broader sports context, nobody else was being signed, this, that, and the other, that, and the other, that really just dismantle. the arguments almost like a person pulling the wings off a fly. It feels authoritative.

And I think that's because some of the evidence here, not all of it, by the way, but some of it is necessarily circumstantial. A thing happened with Kauai and a thing happened with the company and a thing happened with the clippers and they all happen at kind of the same time. So it almost needs a little authorial, you know, shake you by the collar. Yeah. You're seeing this, right? And again, that's part of what Pablo did on his podcast.

Like, what is the other explanation for these events? That was very much his framing throughout was, what do you think is happening? Be a conscious and smart person. This is happening over here and this is happening over here. Draw the line between them. Yeah. Did you guys enjoy the appearance of Lawrence Frank's contemporaneous notes in the report? Lawrence, what are you doing?

He's writing stuff down. What a bizarre career. Yeah, I'll give you a few of them. Mr. Robertson, that is. Kauai's Uncle Dennis and his conciliary, complained to Mr. Balmer that Ms. Zooker, that's Gillian Zooker, president of business operations of the Clippers, was making introductions, quote unquote, for bullshit deals that I can't wait on. I have to get paid.

In another passage, Mr. Balmer responded by telling Mr. Robertson that he and the Clippers person were all collective workers to try to help Mr. Leonard achieve his financial goals. I mean, that's just, I mean, so Lawrence Frank is sitting there typing this out, writing this down. You know, the stringer bell quote comes to mind. Are you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy? Right. And without those, I mean, and again, that quote about, the quote from Balmer about collective workers was one of the most damning pieces in this entire report. It was.

It's also felt to me like David talks about a technological story. It's also a very classic political story. Like hasn't every White House scandal in our lifetime come down to how much do the big guy know? Yeah. And when did he know it? But who's the big guy in this story? Steve Baum. Oh, okay.

So yes, Steve Palmer knew everything. Kauai Leonard, that's, I guess that's the looming question. But that's it, right? I mean, if we go back to Iran-Contra when we were kids and all the way up through every Trump scandal. Steve is boxed in now, right? Because his, I mean, the statement the Clippers put out was quite strident. And as you mentioned, Petty and it's framing of Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Pablo

Torre as a podcaster. And, of course, he went on the air with ESPN, with Ramona Shelburne, who we'll talk about in part shortly. Again, very vociferously knocking down these reports. So to read some of the things in here, the calls that he facilitated, the emails that he was on, people mentioning his knowledge of events. I don't know how he escapes from this corner that he has painted himself into unless they can get one of these other three folks to really just stand up and say, you know what? That's me. Let me take the slings and arrows for this and get pushed off the ledge.

I was the rogue employee who was operating without any knowledge from the boss. That's right. I, Lawrence Frank, of the patchy beard, the increasingly homeless demeanor. It was I who insulated the boss and carried this out without anybody's knowledge. Are there, I'm like contemporaneous notes? Are there NBA rules against paying Lawrence Frank $20 million for doing that? Oh, that's a great question. Can we get Lawrence Frank an endorsement deal?

Yeah, exactly. Lockton insurance have a spokesman that Kauai's gone to Toronto. That's really funny. I saw this tweet too from Mike Ryan at The Levertard show. He says, I find it really weird, the public barometer for the accuracy of Pablo's reporting as the result of the NBA's internal investigation and not the Pulitzer. I don't know. I don't quite agree with that take. I mean, I thought that, listen, I thought the reporting was the weight of it, the preponderance of stuff.

the amount of times he went to that well and how much water kept coming up out of it. It was authoritative to me. But we live in an era in which it's hard to trust. You know, it's hard to trust any source of information. And while the Pulitzer was cool, that's also kind of a niche award for, you know, it's like, is the public really thinking about the Pulitzer in a real way? The Pulitzer for podcasting in particular if they're thinking about any Pulitzer at all. So I don't necessarily agree with that.

But I understand where he's coming from. I do too. I understand where he's coming from. But David isn't what made this so striking is there were tons of new damning facts in here that followed Pablo's lead in a lot of cases and then also went into different areas that Pablo hadn't covered or haven't gotten around to covering yet.

You know, you and I have probably talked off Mike about how prior to this story, prior to the penalty coming down, how whether or not you believe Pablo's reporting became a weird like, like, identitarian issue online,

right? That people were picking sides. And I think that that was largely possible, feasible, because most people hadn't listened to a show. And it all kind of existed

in this vague, like, you know, retweet a quote and a piece of a video form of existence. Which is a long way of getting back to, you know,

your original point. I mean, I think it's, I think you can make the case, Yes, that he doesn't have a lot of control over people's opinion of him because people, not a lot of people really engaged, I mean, compared to the number of people who are reading this, you know, reading news articles now, not a lot of people fully engaged with what his reporting was. But you could probably say that about any Pulitzer Prize winner, you know, over the past 50 years, that like how many people actually read the story, you know? Like, it's, it's a public perception just can take on a life of its own now. also I'm not defending the trolls here, but I think when you do something over the course of 15-ish podcasts, it is a little hard to keep track of everything. This scandal is complicated.

Yeah. It's very, very complicated. And there's a sense of just not having it written down in the way that a big New York Times report would be written down. It is hard to get your mind around a lot of these facts. And I think it's also a story that unfolded according to almost like an old-timey classic news story cadence, you know, where drip, drip, drip, and then something happens 15 months later. We are used to now either big splashy story, then a follow-up, and then either something or nothing, and then it goes away no matter what. The fact that this kept going for

a year, I think probably led some people who, to David's point, didn't actually listen to the podcast episodes to conclude, well, nothing's ever going to happen with this. You know, we're still doing this. We're still talking about this. Nothing's happened, right? Like, we're just going to. And then you hear people opine, I think, with some reason that it's going to be a slap on the wrist. They're not going to find anything. You know, the smoking gun burden is one that is quite hard to clear, et cetera. And so I think that it was quite reasonable for people to kind of tune out to a degree. Doesn't the way he reported this remind you a little bit of old Deadspin?

Oh, for sure. Yeah. Like, we almost get hung up in the technology of it, the mystery box reveal of Pablo being like, you never believe. And then his co-host going, whoa. But what Old Deadspin used to do would be like, hey, we're not to the end of this saga, but we will give you everything we know. Right.

And we will often point at a thing and be like, this doesn't make sense. Yeah. Here's everything we can report about a thing that doesn't make sense. And then maybe once we publish this, other things will shake loose. And we'll get home at the end of the day. Yeah, I mean, that was part of that became part of the larger Gawker model. And I mean, I'm just like talking about things that nobody remembers. But it didn't.

That long ago? It didn't shake out to being a uniformly positive move, right? I mean, towards the end of the Gawker era, there were a lot of like 8,000 word pieces that were like telling me about the investigation of a story that did it up. it didn't end up adding up to anything, right? And there was like that kind of performative shoulder shrug at the end. And it was almost like the writer was justifying the last six months of their life by turning in something. And of course, they were going to publish it. But yes, the other way it's really similar is it kind of starts with a blog post, right?

Like Deadspin would have had no problem saying, we got this one really weird small story. Let's put up a post about it, right? And then watch it grow over time because you do more reportage or whatever else. We saw that's exactly what Pablo did. And we see that. We've seen that in the mainstream press a lot in the Me Too era, you know, and sort of like people going with like the one verifiable piece of a story and then letting the rest of the story accumulate after the fact. But traditionally, that's not the way things are done, right? You wait for the preponderance of evidence before the big piece comes out.

You know how else it was like the Deadspin Gawkerverse is there was a real glee in check this out now. guess what we got now. Oh, my God. Which was a real, you mean, talk about tone, that was a real shift from the reporting that came before it, which was, you know, like we're going to lay out some damning evidence, whether it's around contra or whatever, and it's going to be, but it's going to be straight down the line. It's told in a very dry way. Whereas it's Finn and Gawker, and certainly Pablo's excavation of this particular story was done with a showman's delight. And isn't that what rubs some people the wrong way? Perhaps.

Perhaps. I'm not talking about the trolls. Again, I don't want to defend Ty Lawson on this podcast. Ty, we don't want you as immediate critic here on the press box. We're actually all good. We've got Jason and David and Joel, so we'll be fine. But the way he presented it. And Pablo's case was, hey, if I present it this way, I'm going to get the youngs to actually be attention to what I'm doing on like 60 minutes.

Right? I'm going to do this in a way that is digestible and fun and different and interesting. But it certainly made people in the industry. And I know because half of them seem to be in my texts during this whole year-long saga go, dude, this guy, is he really doing mystery box again? I think there certainly was an aspect of that within the industry. Within the industry. Within the industry, people who would say, great story.

I wouldn't do it that way, something to that effect. But I think the thing about this is, I don't think this story would have been reported in the New York Times or ESPN or those conventional media outlets and Apollo is tangentially a part of the New York Times. But like they would have waited until they got all the way to the end.

So I'm not sure this story would have ever actually seen the light of day. I don't think they would have done that. Here's the portion of it. Here's another portion of it. Here's another portion like he did very patiently to get to the final destination. I completely agree. And as a podcaster, I think this is

a medium of of authenticity, real or perceived. And when somebody comes to you through a podcast medium with a story that they seem really excited about, you're going to lean in, right? You're more often than not, you're going to lean in. And so I think you're absolutely right. I think it was crucial to this story catching on.

No, you and I have talked before under totally different circumstances about how, you know, news consumers would love to see, you know, a video of the editorial process, just get into the bullpen, you know, watch people talk. But the fact of the matter is, if we had video of the bullpin, then that would give all the critics, all the ammunition they needed to say, this is why they're all full of it.

This is why they're biased because you see them deciding the headline. It doesn't fall from the heavens, you know what I mean? And yeah, I just think that there's a lot of that, too. It's the way that Pablo presented the story was like three smart people sitting around a table and talking, right? And just like like two of them kind of learning this stuff, real time. It's a great production, but it's not traditional journalism. Like, the presentation wasn't, right? The research certainly was. And sure, I mean, I think that gives people the opportunity

to dismiss it. And I think that was probably a lot of that point of view. But again, podcasting, like Jason said, it's personality driven, you know? I mean, it's it's about finding an audience and catering that audience, right? If they were, if Pablo were just doing the ESPN Daily here and just like kind of reading the news, I don't think, I mean, I don't think Pobla Tore finds out would have lasted long enough to break the story. You know, I mean, you have to do your thing. Was Pablo vindicated? To the extent that he had doubters, I guess, you know.

The Pulitzer, I think, is immense vindication before this. Certainly, this is a great one-to punch. So, yes, I think I would say yes. You know, he's, I watched a little bit of the live stream. I don't know if you'd call it a victory lap, but I certainly perceived it that way. I think it was a victory lap. I think he'd call it a victory lap. And good for him.

A much deserved victory lap. I think he was vindicated not by Adam Silver's punishment, but by the facts that the lawyers amassed. For sure. Because this got into a really weird place where if Adam Silver had merely given Balmer a slap on the wrist, therefore somehow people thought that Pablo's reporting was bullshit. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Right. That's not the way this works.

Just because the commissioner doesn't decide to levy a punishment that maybe a lot of us think that Balmer deserved or the Clippers deserve, those two things that do not connect. So to me, what was much more vindicating was all those details in the report. We were like, hey, look at this. My theory of the case, the thing I was reporting out over and over again and saying, this is what this looks like, there's a lot more. this is what this looks like and even beyond that. To Jason's point one, I give Pablo maybe more than anything else an unbelievable amount of credit for not

just wearing the Pulitzer Prize around his neck like an Olympic gold medal at this point. I mean, like, that's what I would be doing if I were him. Are we sure it's a metal, by the way? No, I mean, it is like a thing. Maybe it's a coin, but it is a circular metal. Do they place it around your neck at the Joe Kahn appear on the stairs of the New York Times?

Whatever it is. Tire rope to it and wear that thing, man. But But I do think that there's, I do think that there's a vindication in, and maybe this is just kind of too vague, but as a podcast or as a content producer, the real vindication is what I did mattered enough that someone as important as Adam Silver had to pay attention. You know?

And I think that if he had given him a slap on, if he had given a bomber a slap on the wrist, regardless of the facts not being on his side, not being on the NBA side, I think that it would have felt like, well, probably you were right, but at the end of the day, you don't matter. You know, and there is some sort of level of vindication in just how much you've made this story matter. That's the thing. It's like the outcome in the popular imagination does matter quite a bit.

Like, I think he is vindicated, broadly speaking, for just people who are kind of half paying attention by the severity of that punishment. For sure, I think that there was a perception, probably, pretty widely held that the deck is stacked towards Steve bomber generally. And rich guys. Rich guys generally. There were stories about him that were

presuming that he was negotiating his punishment with Adam Silver while this stuff wasn't happening. We'll get to that. It seems like Steve might have thought that. Yeah. It's like the negotiations over. Yeah. And that the hurdle and that while you know, Pablo had

really shown a lot, that the hurdle, the heights to which he would have to pile his evidence, was so consciously calibrated to be something that would be really tough to. Just like you couldn't get there. And to show that that was wrong, in fact, and to David's earlier point, Anna Silver doesn't want to be doing any of this. He does not want to be doing this at all. He doesn't want to be punishing rich guys.

No. And for Pablo essentially to force him to do it, I mean, that's huge. Come on. Another fascinating aspect of the story. I think in our imagination, investigative reporters can cause outcomes. Woodward and Bernstein print their story in the Washington Post and Richard Nixon resigns and gets on Marine One and flies away. That's not how Watergate happened. And this is let's not puff anybody up here. This is the last time I'm I'll mention Woodward and Bernstein. What actually happens a lot of the time is the investigative reporter gets you to the 15-yard line. Right. And then some outside entity has to come in.

And Pablo talked about this on his live stream victory lap yesterday. He could not compel the clippers to cooperate with him. The NBA can, at least up until a point. That's right. He could not go get some of those documents in the way that a law firm that was tasked with the NBA by that with that goal could do. So again, like we love, and again, I love to imagine that investigative reporters can change the world by themselves. Sometimes they get you most of the way there. Yeah.

But then it almost requires an official entity to come in and say, actually, here's the subpoena. Here's where we're compelling you to cooperate with Adam Silver in his investigation. That's what gets you into the end zone. The dachronic material in the report to me is emblematic of that. You know, it was one of the more recent episodes at Pablo, did about it was the dactronic stuff. And, you know, it was, it was pretty vague, although it seemed like more smoke. And certainly, you would imagine there was fire there. But then to your point, the report goes into detail about how this money flowed, conversations that were had about the money, ways in

which the deal almost falls apart. The pressure put on various parties to keep it going from Uncle Dennis and from the clippers. And got really. negotiated at one point two. Right, right. If you're going to be paying more, we got to cut them in more. So to your point, yes, that's exactly what happened. Is Pablo just kind of opened the door and the investigators walked all the way through? Yeah, I mean, I just, I don't disagree with anything that you said, but there is a piece of like, I think that the podcasting does the whole thing cuts both ways because I think you can definitely make the case that this story wouldn't have gotten the attention it got. If it hadn't have been for the semi-misleading clips that everybody

saw on Twitter before they listened to the podcast. asked and just the sort of excitement that the format generated, right? I mean, it's like whenever we talk about investigative journalism, at some point, the line goes back to a novel, the jungle, you know, up in St. Clair, and the novel is not, a novel is not investigative journalism, and yet it was, right? I mean, he went on to become an incredibly significant investigative journalist. Sometimes changing up the format can be what really makes it get attention. Does Pablo still need the New York Times?

Well, his, the relationship, he doesn't really work for them, right? He's a contractor, so. They license his podcast or specifically the athletic licenses his podcast. So I think by dint of that structure, no, right? I don't think so either. Yeah. I'm kind of like what's in it for him at this point, with the notable exception of the lawyers. Are they included?

So that's something I've worried, I've kind of wondered about. and talked about with other people. I would imagine that would put the legal department, the vaunted legal department in the York Times at his disposal. Good only in journalism. We're there, vaunted. Yes. And there's also just the banner,

the fact that you were associated. The association carries a lot of weight. But does it? I think it does. For Pablo? I mean, look, it did at one point. Post-Clippergate. Maybe not.

Yes. Not in this world. Post-aspiration. Does it anymore? Can he just go off and do his own shop? I mean, what I would, what I'd be interested in is, like, if you are playing in this end of the pool and he seems to want to play into this in the pool, he does tuck in like a, here's the Looney Tunes guy episode into the stuff because he has fun too. But if you're doing this kind of investigation, the lawyers, the libel insurance, that to me would actually be the reason I'd want to stick with a big media company. I would look at it, I think we're looking at the wrong middleman that should be cut out of this potentially because Pablo's not independent, right?

he's with LepaTard's company. That's right, metal art media. Why does he need them? Good question. That would be the question that I would ask before, why does he need the New York Times? There was a report in Puck the other day that said there were some unease at the Times

or some angst because Pablo is reporting in a very untimsy way. And that's also fascinating to me about this because from what I know about New York Times podcasts, they are very shaped it's not just hey let's cut up and talk about the news today it's like oh oh is that right do we need to re-record that bit and Pablo again it's a reported podcast but it's very very different tonally than anything else sure newspaper yeah you're right and at the same time it's hard not to have

noticed aesthetically changes within the video presentation of new york times podcast offerings their opinion podcast, do that's podcast, may it rest in peace. I do think, now, whether this is coming from the influence of Pablo and that success or elsewhere in the space, it does feel like some of that podcast energy is by osmosis influencing the way they present. Maybe not the way they put everything together, but, you know, the three video screens, people in the room, the whole thing. It does feel like there is some influence happening there.

Oh my God, David, when you go to the Times homepage, don't you love that inevitably you see a reporter sitting down? Yes. Or you are sitting down, and now you will tell us what is in your story. It's the first shot of every documentary. Yeah, we recreate it on the Times homepage every day. I don't know. I mean, it's got to be interesting.

I've got to wonder what Pablo is singing right now when you look through. I mean, the athletic is sort of hard to parse because it's just so many, like, competing voices at the same. same time. But their earliest reportage of the penalty that the NBA handed down, it seemed like Pablo got kind of short shrift all over any NBA, I mean, New York Times properties. He was mentioned in everyone, but he's almost mentioned as if he was a whistleblower or like an actor and it's one mentioned and then they go on to tell the story.

Not at all what they would have done if like the Washington Post had broken the story or whatever, you know. And I mean, I think they would have been much more sensitive about the attribution in case. So I don't know if he still needs the New York Times, but there may be other factors that are that are a part of that relationship right now. I have no idea. It's crazy, though. I mean, watching, watching as much as we have these conversations about legacy media places, letting talent walk out the door, or, you know, letting visionary talent walk out the door. Dude, I mean, the New York Times should be building a wing for Pablo Tori and the

in the office, you know? Like, let's just like give this guy. Don't just give him a desk. Give him a team. Like, see what else this guy could do. Because that could be maybe if you, maybe with your forces combined, he could be like one of the most important journalists of the next 20 years. If you had to bet, Barry Weiss reached out for the new 60 Minutes launching soon. Not a chance.

No? Not one chance. I think it was Ross or nothing. I was like, we want you on 60 Minutes. We want your Antichrist podcast. out of the Times opinion section. I mean, by the way, Max Taney noted this the other day, the sports gossip pod,

is leaving the athletic. That's right. Mention Ross and the Antichrist, Astead Herndon, now podcasting at Vox. Kyle Buchanan's going to do his Hollywood podcast out here. He did a lot of the red carpety award stuff for them. It's interesting for them because I just think there is something,

no offense to anybody, very untimsy. Yeah. About podcasting that is not the day. it really is, or maybe Ezra and Ross, if we can gerrymander them and through the opinion section. There is something that is not timesy about this format. To take the contra notion of building a wing for Pablo, if I'm a doubter. The case against the wing. Yeah, if I'm a doubter in the halls of the paper of record, don't I say something like,

good story, where's the other one? If I get another one. Where is a totally different subject? If I see a second story, okay, well, let's start drawn up the blueprints for the wing, right? Yeah, I agree. Well, I mean, listen, he started getting there

in the Jordan Hudson, or I guess the Bill Belichick story because he was getting, you know, there was a lot of information about, I mean, he broke a lot of the news about how much North Carolina was a very fun one. Yeah, but it got overshadowed by the Jordan Hudson of it all, right? I mean, he was like doing public records requests in North Carolina.

I'm sure it won't be the last one. But yeah, no, I mean, I think that's very valid. I think that's very valid. And listen, in the world of podcasts, that's something that I think we'll see over and over again, that in some ways, like I said before, you find your audience. And when you find a story that's that, like, your audience is used to, it's hard to let it go. Like, if three years from now something new about Dactronics and Kauai Leonard's surfaces,

you better believe he's going to talk about it. That's what we've come to expect from the show. You know, so sometimes it might be hard. to break out and to start that new investigation that you really should. I agree with all that. It's just not a very timesy way of thinking. And again, if you're a Times reporter, and I'm not somebody who's like, you know, Bobo's not a real reporter.

He is a real reporter. And Times reporters are real reporters too. But if you're a Times reporter, you're like, man, I'm playing by totally different rules here. I'm, you know, the investigation that I hand in is going to be treated totally differently than what you're doing. And by the way, I get like one, one millionth of the shine that you do because I don't host a podcast and I don't present my work in this theatrical way. So there's just an inherent tension there. Does that matter? Do they just go, okay, you're over at the athletic. We obviously

have different standards for the athletic, as we've seen in many high profile examples. And that's okay. And we love having you. And you're an important journalist. And now you've shown us under our roof that you could break a big story and really and bring it home. I don't know. I don't know where that goes. And I don't know if he needs them. And I don't know, long term if that's a marriage made in heaven? This isn't an answer or rebuttal to what you just said, Brian, but I mean, but obviously, like the platform is significant, right? I mean, Pablo spent however many, a decade before this, like becoming Pablo Tori, that we all

know, right? I mean, that people in the business know. And a lot of those reporters, there's theoretical complaining reporters, their platform is I write for the New York Times. You know, they get people to return their phone calls because they write for the New York Times. It's not a knock on them. That's the platform that they have. And if you reach a level of significance where you no longer need the New York Times, where

your Rolodex is hardy enough? Well, then that's the real question. Like, did those people need the New York Times going forward? Well, those nameless people moving forward just need to be involved at all because you could break a story like this. That's, I think that's really interesting. That is interesting. I think the other thing that makes me think about is, you know, Jamel Bowie's an opinion

writer, but he's quite active on social, growing footprint on socials. Yeah, YouTube channel that I subscribe to, right? I don't know necessarily how the New York Times feels about that. or if there would be a different edict from the company if a journalist decided to do that. But, you know, we live in digital media. We see how personalities at companies invest in their own brands, right? And I would, I wonder if we'll see more of that from reporters at the times, launching their own TikToks, launching their own YouTube's and putting fragments of the stories that then become the whole. stories there. Jamel Bowies are really funny, I mean, is a really good example because what was,

he had a video last week, the week before about how reporters had lost the thread. I think it was an essay ed piece. But just, I forgot the title. And I'm sorry, I'm not doing the service by saying it now, but the title would not have worked on the opinion section of the New York Times, or it would have felt very like twee. You know what I mean to be using a phrase like lost the thread there? And it's just so much more effective. Different things are effective on different platforms. I think that's part of this whole conversation we keep having. We actually asked Jamel about this on the podcast last year, and it's interesting. I think The Times mostly kind of not done anything about those TikToks.

That's like a very natural thing that would happen on ESPN. Right. Ryan Clark is doing NFL analysis, and then he's got this pivot podcast that exists outside that world. Stephen A. to name a more dramatic example. Again, at the Times, that's just a weird thing to think about, right? Yeah. I'm a Times reporter by day, and then I'm letting it all hang out on social media. Speaking of Victory Labs, I saw Pablo today on Dan Patrick's show talking about this ESPN report

that came out on August 17th, so about two weeks ago, written by Don Vanana, Baxter Holmes, and Ramona Shelbur. How do we look at this story now, Jason? Ay, aye, aye, aye. Well, it's a devastating, it's a devastating miss for all involved. Yeah. And I am, as I'm sure we all are, fascinated to understand how this happened. Because the story is quite clear in that sources have told these writers that what's going to happen is the NBA is going to complete its investigation finding no cap circumvention on behalf of the Clippers and punishment TBD. but based on the fact that, again, no cap circumvention was found.

We know that not to be the case. And it just raises a whole lot of questions about how this story was put together. What was the initial reporting like? How is it backed up? How is it stood up and walked through the editorial process? Many questions about this one. Jason, can you put on your wait a second hat and explain to me what the conspiracy behind this would have been? Like what was the outcome that they were trying to mold here?

Well, my conspiracy theory on it is this is some sort of mole hunt in the league office. They want to find out. Adam wanted to find out who is linking to media. And so they put a story out, maybe not in the Game of Thrones sense, where there's multiple stories through multiple channels and then the one that comes out is the, now you have your moles. But, you know, a juicy enough story to likely suspects. They did have that very loud response ready right away, you know? It was signed by Mike Bass. With no other statement, just that.

And it did cross my mind that it could have been that. It's a little complicated for me. Okay. That it was that kind of thing. The Bass statement is very fascinating because when that came out, I was like, huh, that seems like it's like the scene in, all the president's man to mention Warren Bernstein

were one final time on this podcast. We're like, oh, when they're denying it. Yeah, yeah, when they're denying it. When they're saying that it's wrong. On the other hand, sometimes people say that stuff is bullshit and then it's just a pro forma thing.

It's a little weird for the league to say it. Yeah. I admit. I'll read just the first couple paragraphs of this because I think what is in this story is perhaps slightly different than the perception it created in the rest of us for the rest of us.

The NBA has found, ESPN reported no evidence showing LA Clippers owner Steve Balmer 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 in recent days. Instead, the NBA is focused on whether the team's introduction of Leonard to team sponsors constitutes a violation of the league's rules prohibiting salary cap circumvention two of the sources said. The league is examining whether the clippers are guilty of failure to supervise employees. that's in quotes, though it's unclear what specific rule the team would have violated or what penalties would be to the sources set. So in that second paragraph, they are driving at something that was at least partially correct. I thought Patrick Raffer did a good job in defector laying this out today. The heart of the league's case against the Clippers is these are these introductions

to the teams. Correct. Right? And that these introductions went way beyond what the rules of introductions are. The first paragraph is where you get hung up, right? No evidence that Balmer funneled money through team sponsors. Well, I guess you could say if you really wanted to parse it, right? You could say, well, that's correct because they have not found that Bomber actually moved money from the clippers through these teams to Kauai Leonard, that it was these teams that did that. Now, my thing is, let's assume, let's say that, let's give it the best possible framing

and say that, okay, we're going to give this the most leeway in terms of reading it with regards to the report. I still think if you know the outcome, you write this completely differently. Yeah. And it's very clear that nobody knew the outcome here, including Pablo, by the way. Yeah. Because he was on shows going, hey, you know, Balmer might get off easy in this thing, which is not what happened. Yeah. So I think that was a black box. right, the whole idea of what the NBA was going to do. But to the point about funneling, this is what the Walktell report says. Balmer knowingly sought to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities.

And in at least one instance, engaged in a significant act of team facilitation. Is that funneling? I mean, that, you know, you were walking up pretty close there, right? Yes. And, you know, did also, did the NBA read this ESPN report and they're like, actually, we have a lot of on this. And we think we can be stronger in our report than maybe we were a couple of weeks ago. That's another possibility. Well, again, the WaukTel report does say that it doesn't stipulate which material in the report was developed recently. But it does say some of this is stuff that was

developed in recent days. So it is quite possible that evidence was developed after that story came out. That more directly tied everything to Ball. Yes. At the same time, you know, This is a crazy bad look. And when this story came out, the first thing that people who really, you know, pay attention to sports media, sports journalism is, why is Don Van NADO on this? An NBA story. Yeah. As opposed to the NFL. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think when they saw Don's byline on it, it was like, oh. This is real. The NBA doesn't have this evidence. Or this is the most important thing to know right now. Right. Yeah. Right.

Because as you say, we can have a debate about funneling. Sure. And a debate about how much this report really gets all the way to Balmer as opposed to just kind of pointing at Steve Balmer. But this is not the most important fact to know. That's right. The NBA, our boss said, gave the Clippers the most severe punishment in history. Steve Balmer suspended for a year. Fine $30 million.

His lieutenants are suspended. like the obvious thing is like well that didn't really make any difference yeah i mean at the very least that fact was not the driving fact of what determined what were what adam silver was thinking when he determined the punishment i mean listen you a lot of people have said that like that this story is a black guy for all of sports journalism that we're setting paulo aside from that that he got the story and nobody else did whatever i do definitely whether or not that's true I do think that... That's a little much.

No, no, I know. I know. But setting that aside, I think it's fair to say that the NBA reporting is the most sort of personality and relationship driven of all of the sports. And bringing Don Vanada in. And not that Ramona Shelbur is not a good reporter. I mean, she's broken some really significant stories and has done some really incisive journalism. But I do think that she's part of this machine where, like, you know, I think that people assume that there are relationships. or motives built into a lot of big reporting,

and Don Van Nata's presence, I think, dispelled some of that feeling, you know? And it didn't work out great for Don. Can we go through some what-happin scenarios here? Sure. Yeah. Again, it's all fantasy football. We don't know exactly what the reporting was or the process was. Scenario number one, the clippers thought they were getting off relatively easy.

It seems like that is potentially the case from their statement in which they said, fascinatingly. What we were told in private is not what we have discovered the NBA's actual findings. A couple of weeks ago, we were told this is all you have. This is what a likely penalty would be for this. And then at some point, at some point A and point B, the dial got turned way up. Right. This. Because it doesn't make any sense that if you're like, if my, if I'm an attorney and my client is going to get charged with manslaughter instead of murder one, I don't call. a reporter and celebrate that fact. It makes absolutely no sense because it's just going to create a backlash and probably

do the opposite of what I want. This would play into my admittedly convoluted mole hunt theory. I would also say that maybe there's a world in which they're trying to, for lack of a better word, wishcast the outcome. That was my second scenario. Frame the outcome. It's part of a PR war or maybe wishcasting. And that's where I go back to the political.

analogy, okay, we saw the NBA's evidence a couple weeks ago. Gillian Zucker is toast. Right. Lawrence Frank is toast. But we don't think this, we think we can cut it off there. Right. We don't think this gets to Balmer, at least in a direct way. Right.

As we know, the NBA, Adam Silver was like, actually, never mind, we don't, that, that is not an interesting distinction to me. I mean, one of the things that I keep, that I keep coming back to, though, is that, I guess, according to Zach Lowe, that, like, you know, Balmer. and Silver have been, like, very close over, you know, since Balmer got into the league and, and they've been, uh, meaningfully, like, important partners to each other. And so I think any, any leak from the clipper side, dream casting or otherwise, if that's indeed where it came from, I think that it shows that the relationship had already broken down by that point,

you know, like there's some, there, there, there was some inciting incident besides what is what we know about. Uh, so I, anyway, I don't, I mean, I don't know the answer, but that, but it's, it's, it's, It is very confusing the sequence of events here. What I'd be fascinated to know is if you took a nugget like this back to the league office and say, hey, we're going to write this, that the league doesn't have the direct goods on Balmer. I just would think somebody at the league office on background or otherwise would be like, uh-uh, man, don't write this. Like, this punishment is going to come down and this isn't going to look like the right story.

I think it likely something like this happened. You tell me what you think. Baxter and Ramona hear from their sources with the clippers that, hey, we heard, we had a conversation with the league and it seems like they're not, they're going to find us not guilty of cap circumvention, punishments TBD, but we had that conversation. Okay. In juicy story, we take that to ESPN, we start working it. How do we, this is single sourced essentially or multiple sources, but from the same side, right? bring in Don Van Nata. Don goes to the league and says,

hey, did you have, did this happen? This conversation happened. And then the league says something like, yes, we talk to them, and that is pretty much what we, we had a conversation that sounded like that. But then that would mean that Don then was like,

okay, great, hung up, and that's the end of it. But is that the things change scenario? That's the things change scenario. That this was not the punishment. that were, or even the facts, perhaps, that were laid out to the clippers. But some of the most damning stuff in that report

could not have been late-breaking news to walk to Lipton. Those emails and text messages? I mean, that had to be, you would have think that would be like the first stuff they would have come across. I mean, the only, I mean, not the only thing. If you want to, one conspiracy theory that makes sense to me, I guess is that the NBA office was trying to like,

lull the clippers into complacency. We'll get them to go along with this. investigation by continually downplaying it, you know? This is all too complicated for me. You're right, but it doesn't make any sense. A story like that gets screwed up. I mean, maybe there's a world in which this was, you know, siloed off to Adam Silver and a tight circle around him.

Others who thought they really knew something didn't leaked it to the Clippers, and that's how this happens. Yeah, so this is another thing. I think a lot of, I'll just speak generally here. A lot of times when we see a story, we're like, we love, to imagine people on Twitter love to imagine like, hey, that person leaked this to engineer this outcome. A lot of times news doesn't happen exactly like that. That's just like the most basic way news happens. Sometimes somebody can speak out of turn, somebody can say something, a

reporter hears something secondhand and comes back and find something that wasn't intended to be put into the world. So I just want to at least reserve the possibility here that these things are often very complicated and we don't totally know the answer to that. But I just come back to it And I'm like, eh. And by the way, if you listen to Pablo and Patrick today, he's like, I was winning, I was, I was up on the scoreboard. And ESPN was, you know, might have been trying to get, like, I think he reserves that as he's reading of the situation. Sure, sure, sure. He's like, this story was what they call a knockdown story.

They used to call knock down stories and newspapers that kind of knock down a little bit of my reporting. That's how he read it. Even then. And listen, I love these kind of. He also says, by the way, he was asked for a statement, and then he gave a statement and it never appeared. Wow. Interesting. Which is kind of interesting. That is interesting.

Well, you know, like, I don't doubt that there is, there are institutional and structural pressures on stories for them to come out. But I think particularly with something like this and the inclusion of Van Nata and on a byline, a story that really was not his purview, I just think that, while there could have been pressure from above or a certain pressure to do a kind of framing, I also think when you put your name on a thing as a reporter, you do so with understanding that there's a risk to getting it wrong. And I don't know, at least with regards to Van Nata, I did not perceive him to be one to take that risk lightly or certainly in a way that would allow for something like this to happen. I would just also say that sometimes when you have multiple bylines,

different people bring different things to the table. Yeah, right. Right. People are bringing, I reported this, you reported this, and sometimes that's, again, we just don't know. We just don't know. And I would love, by the way, this is all of this fantasy football here about things we don't know, I would love to see an accounting.

I would love. To do an accounting of what happened here. Yeah. And if, by the way, if they just want to argue, hey, they didn't have evidence that he filed money to Kauai, then make that argument because I think we'd all love to hear that and why that was the most significant fact. If they'd had it, would have been like he would

have lost a team or something? Well, then tell us that. Like, I just want to hear more from ESPN about how this whole thing came together. Yeah, without being too consp- This is actually pretty conspiratorial. I mean, if you ask them... Without being too conspiratorial, I mean, with being extremely conspiratorial. And the same way that the Clippers would have loved there to be less of a paper

trial so they could craft their own version of what happened. their own excuse. And I don't, again, not to really point fingers. Like the answer that ESPN will give is that was the story that reported was true at the time. It's what Jason said early on. There is a non-zero chance that at least that was what the Clippers thought at the time. It makes more sense than anything else. Again, as Jason says, once you know the outcome, that kind of goes by the wayside.

A person on social media posted at me, this feels like one of those really rare cases where the proper journalism ethics thing to do is to retroactively and publicly reveal those sources. And I think that there's, that is maybe a way to go. If they feel that they got rolled on this and... I think if somebody lies to you, you're under no obligation. You're under no obligation to keep this deal going, right? Whether that person passed on a lie knowingly or unknowingly. But again, we just don't know. Were they just wrong? Were they misleading you? Were they misled? You know, It just gets hard, right? But more daylight into this process, I think, is necessary.

We are calling for daylight. Yes. We are calling for a nonpartisan investigation. A couple final notes for you guys. Someone reminded me that Lee Jenkins works for the Clippers. What franchise is in worse shape? The Clippers are Sports Illustrated. It's just a little kind of a joke for you guys.

This comes from our listener Biso, possible overworked Twitter joke of the week. Jason, since you're sitting in the press box studio. The Army is going to have a draft before the Clippers do. I mean, that's a good one. I saw that going around. Finally and slightly more seriously. Why is Clippers Gates so compelling? Because rich guys don't pay penalties in the real world.

And apparently, this is one small corner of the world sports in which they do. That's a great answer. Because I've been thinking about this. And I'm like, at the end of the day, and again, I don't mean to disparage anybody. This is about salary cap circumvention. Right. And I know we're also GM-pilled now that we see the world through second aprons and salary caps and all this other stuff. And you're like, this is not Abu Ghreb.

This is not like, you know, something we're like, oh, my God. Yeah. But that gets me to a more important place. We're like, there was a rich guy and either he or his subordinates did something. and he is being made to pay a price, which as we see very rarely happens in this world. That's right. I think that there's some conventional kind of narrative reasons for this.

And I think the fact that it's a podcast with the way that we've discussed it, I think helps overall. I think the drip, drip, drip serializes it. Right? I mean, it becomes, it grows sort of in the public imagination with each story, even if you're not really following it. And I think that you're, you know, at some point, we're all consciously or subconsciously waiting for the resolution.

And I think that time-wise, the fact, that this came at the very end of the summer, kind of at the last minute before the NBA new season is going to, you know, until training camp starts, it was like the big reveal at the end of the story, you know, I mean, it was, it was, it was timed accidentally to get the most attention possible. But it's, and, and, you know, whether or not you are a fan of Pablo Tori finds out or not, this is a very modern, this is, it's a very modern, it's a very modern story, you know, the way that it was told to us. And I think that that's compelling on its own. I think we all feel like we're kind of part of it, even if you were just paying

third-hand attention to it on Twitter. Jason, thanks for joining us. It's wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me. Man, what a... Woo! I'm kind of worn out. It's a good one. To be honest, this is a big one. We'll see you back on your podcast. Yes. Will you be discussing many more stories of this nature? Possibly not always as exciting. Natalie Harp is quite as exciting as Clippersgate. That's wait a second.

He's David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Maxie Magic. By Isaiah Blakely and John Not Bones, Jones. Coming up next week, more press box on Tuesday after Labor Day. See you then, David, with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you later, Brian.