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

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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. All right, welcome to Hoop tonight. You're at
the volume heavy Thursday. Everybody hopeful If you guys are
having a great week. We finally got a bit of

(00:21):
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 gonna give you,
guys my very quick thoughts on the bombshell report dropped
by Pablo Tory on his show Pablo Tory finds Out
this morning. I'm just going to frame it by reading

(00:41):
the tweet that came from the Pablo Tory finds Out
Twitter feed. You can find at Pablo tor or excuse
me at Pablo finds Out. Exclusive. Kawhi Leonard signed a
twenty eight million dollar endorsement deal for a no show
job with a fraudulent tree planting company funded by fifty

(01:04):
million dollars from Clippers owner Steve Balmer. According to dot
To documents obtained by Pablo Tory, it was to circumvent
the salary cap and inside source says, so we're just
gonna 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.
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(01:24):
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(01:47):
mail bags 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 Tory finds
Out YouTube page and watch the full LEP. So. It's
about eighty minutes long, but it meticulously lays out all
of the moving parts at play in this scandal. And

(02:09):
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 Kauwhai's second

(02:30):
contracts important detail there which we'll get to in a minute.
Over the course of Kawai's second contract with the Clippers,
he collected about seven million dollars 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

(02:50):
some random people on Twitter who found there were some
Twitter posts from the Clippers official feed that had Kauwhi's
image or likeness on it with reference to Aspiration. But
that was it. There was no direct mention from Kawhi,
no endorsement, no like, no retweet, no anything of the sort,

(03:13):
and yet he was paid seven million dollars per year
as part of a twenty eight million dollar 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

(03:36):
to collect his twenty eight million dollars without ever actually
doing anything. And the second part of the smoking gun
was a clause in there that specifically nullified the contract
if Kawhi ever left the Clippers, even for bizarre situations
like a buyout or retirement. So the interesting kind of

(03:58):
difference there being like, Oh, if you don't do anything,
you're good, but if you leave, the Clippers were 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

(04:19):
commercials all the time wearing blank jerseys, right, So like,
why would they care if Kawhi 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 between Steve Balmer himself and this company Aspiration.
If you're trying to say that Steve Balmer paid Kawhi,

(04:40):
but always see his Aspiration paid Kawhi, 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 Ballmer gave fifty million dollars

(05:02):
of his own money directly to Aspiration, and the timing
of it conspicuously was almost immediately before Kawhi 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

(05:23):
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,

(05:43):
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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 Kawhi's second contract with the Clippers,

(07:30):
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.

(07:55):
A bunch of these like ridiculous requests right that were
directed towards the Raptor 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

(08:15):
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 Kawhi that poached him away from the Clippers, And

(08:36):
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 Kawhi Leonard more than
the collective bargaining agreement would typically allow a team to
pay somebody of Kaui's ability. Now, but in this second issue,

(09:01):
I think there are two different ways to look at this.
The first is the obvious one, fairness you. Obviously, in
competitive sports, what 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

(09:22):
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 property parties appropriately.
Right now, again, like you know how it gets with

(09:43):
these 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 dis counts as a service directly provided by Kawhi.
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

(10:05):
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 all remember the Bill Belichick saga that kind
of broke Pablo Tory finds out that show on to
the national stage. You would be foolish to think that

(10:27):
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 full episode,
when about bringing up the quote from Adam Silver after
the first investigation where he basically said, we take this
very seriously. He was Adam Silver specifically referred to it

(10:48):
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 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

(11:11):
associated parties should be punished. But life is full of
gray areas, and the second way of looking this 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

(11:34):
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 spygates saga and
the deflate Gates saga, whether it be the Michigan Wolverines,
and sign stealing, whatever it is, illegal videotaping, sign stealing,

(11:58):
the illegal signals 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 one hundred percent
on board with the leagues punishing the hell out of
these people when they do it. But the reality is

(12:19):
super competitive people are always looking for an edge, even
in gray areas that aren't necessarily cheating, like foulgrifting like
we talk about. Do I think Jalen Brunson and Shay Gilders,
Alexander and Luka, Doncic 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

(12:42):
basketball games, and getting to the foul line allows your
team to rest and get their defense set. Getting into
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 if you get caught, you
have to be prepared to face the consequences. I just

(13:04):
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 deflate Gate, manifesting that original idea that

(13:28):
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 Genie Buss, I have more money
than all these guys. I'm one of the richest m

(13:48):
efforts 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 of the Patriots,
they're 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.

(14:10):
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 Lahmer did a lot
of winning in life before he started winning with the Clippers.
Now the joke will be and it's app there's all

(14:31):
sorts of hilarious jokes that are going around, whether it's
Kawhi doing no show work with the Clippers as a
basketball player, let alone for aspiration, or the jokes about
the Clippers in general having never one 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

(14:53):
you get caught, you have to be prepared to face
the consequences. A nine hundred percent support those consequences because
I believe in the same to tea 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

(15:15):
getting his son to play for the Lakers or Giannis
and Tanacumpo 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

(15:37):
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 pabulatory.
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 Baumer is an incredibly

(16:00):
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 mail bag and I'll see you
guys then