Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Kawhi Leonard salary caps circumvention story continues to get crazier, y'all.
Another big piece of evidence dropped this morning, and it
pretty much eliminates all all skepticism you could have potentially
had on the original post. Now, if you've been living
under rock, I'll give you the spark Notes version of
what the hell is going on Pablo Torre and Pablo
Torrey finds out put together an episode of his podcast
(00:22):
basically accusing the Clippers of paying Kawhi Leonard under the
table right through a company named Aspiration. It was original
reported that he was given a little over twenty million dollars.
That number got all the way up to our forty
eight million dollars under the table. If you did not know,
that is completely illegal. Kawhi Leonard accused of having this
no call, no show job that gave him almost an
additional fifty million dollars. Now, this entire story is so
(00:46):
much longer than I could give you in a spark
Notes version. I'll put the linked in the description to
it's basically three full hour podcast episodes. But that's what
you need to know at this point. Now, what happened
after that is Steve Bama went onto ESPN and honestly
didn't really say too much. I was really excited to
potent see how he would defend himself. He basically just said, hey,
I was conned. I am more of a victim than
the person that is doing the illegal things. Cool, and
(01:07):
when that reason came out, everybody gave their own opinions.
But one thing that I remember hearing a thousand times
through podcasts, through reading people with a lot of opinions
that are way smarter than me, especially in the legal world.
The one thing that I kept hearing with there's no
smoking gun. There's no smoking gun, And I'm like, obviously
I've heard that before, but am I having to know
the smoking gun? Is basically, there's no irrefutable evidence that
(01:30):
this has happened for the Clippers.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
So Steve Bomber can just claim ignorance.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
He could just say, hey, I didn't know this was
going on, and Adam Silver.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Can basically do what he want.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
He can say that this is not enough evidence to
do anything, and maybe it's a bit of money. Boom,
the Clippers get fined a million dollars. Boom, here's two
second round pigs.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Boom. Here's that.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
But the smoking gun thing is kind of dead because
Pablo just dropped a new episode giving you that smoking gun. Now.
I never really understood the smoking gun thing, mostly because
this is not I don't know the American judicial system.
This is not one of the things that you need
irrefutable evidence for somebody to be guilty. Adam Silver has
the ability to just with the smallest amount of evidence,
(02:09):
to enforce something, to give somebody slap on the wrists, hell,
to ban somebody, honestly, and I thought that what Pablo
did in his initial report would have been enough for
Adam Silver to, you know, do something again. I'm not
asking for people to get banned. But there's one thing
that bothered me the most about the story, if it
is again, assuming that it's true, is that it completely
gets rid of the integrity around this league. If a
(02:31):
team who has one of the most richest people in
all of the world, I think he's the seventh richest
person in the entire world, if he can pay people
under the table, what about the other teams that don't
have that type of money to.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Do such things.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I said it on the podcast, like we're obviously talking
about billionaires or we're talking about the owners of NBA
teams or all of these guys that filthy amount of money.
But there's level to being a billionaire. Of course, again,
see bomb being a seventh most rich person in the
entire world versus whoever the hell is running the Memphis Grizzlies.
They can't afford to go fifty million dollars under the
table to acquire some type of talent. The competitive nature
(03:05):
in the integrity of the league is completely over if
we as a as a league allowed us to happen. Right, So,
Adam Silver, you have to do something. That was my
initial thing, but everybody kept saying no smoking gun, no
smoking gun. So if he does do something, it will
be something relatively light. This morning, oh boy, and Pablo's
piece this morning, he brings proof that the minority owner
(03:31):
of the Clippers and minority owners like he owns one
percent of the Clipper. See Boma got ninety a percent.
This guy's got one percent.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Dennis J.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Wong, he is a chairman of the Clippers, and he
invested two million dollars in Aspiration. That is the I
won't call it fake company, but the company that the
money been going through to get Kawhi Leonard his money, right,
he gave two million dollars, just invested two million for us,
has a lot of money for him, maybe not so much.
At that point in time, Aspiration was said to be
a struggling company financially, so invested in the company that
(03:59):
everybody knew he was failing is a bit weird. But also,
nine days after he gave his two million dollar investment,
Kawhi Leonard was paid one point seventy five million dollars
from Aspiration, almost identical numbers between the investment from the
minority owner of the Clippers Slash chairman to what Kawhi
(04:19):
Leonard got paid.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Also came out that.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Dennisjay Wan's daughter worked for Aspiration under the title of
project Manager, Operation and Strategy. I don't know what the
hell that means, but she was a part of the
company as well. So in my mind, that is the
smoking gun. Somebody that was in the note of minority owner.
I'm sorry. The chairman of the La Clippers invested nearly
(04:43):
two million dollars was one point nine to nine million,
So we just gonna round up to two million dollars
to the company that later who was struggling financially, remind
you gave one point seventy five of that money straight
to Kawhi Leonard's bank account. That is a smoking gun
taste the perspective, right, all the people that was saying,
maybe we get a slap on the risk two second
round picks one million dollar five, No, it has to
(05:05):
be bigger because now on the opposing people across the
league is like, if you give them a slap on
the risk, now that we have almost irrefutable evidence as
this is illegal shit going on, If you give them
a slap on the risk, why shouldn't we just do
the same thing. And we're really about to figure out
what kind of commissioner Adam Silver really is. Right, we
have had Adam Silver around for a long time, but
(05:27):
before that we had David Stern, And David Stern was
one of the boys that you didn't want to play with, right,
if you did something that was illegal, you were going
to see and feel the full wrath of its powers. Now,
if you go to the CBA, I'm reading it right here,
it says that the end of belief that punishment can
be aleviated against a team or player if a violation
of unauthorized agreements can be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence. Again,
(05:53):
like I mentioned earlier, this is not the American judicial
system where you need irrefutable evidence beyond a reasonable doubt
that it's not the case anymore. Adam Silver truly does
have the power that if he wanted to use Jesse
evidence that we see right now to make a.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Decision, he can't.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
But when he went to the podium and they just
did this full meeting just a couple days ago, and
that's what we got the clip of Adam Silver saying
that the NBA is a highlight league, which I was
damned about to make a video about that, because what
are we talking about Adam Silver? When he was brought
to the podium and he only talked a little bit
about it, he basically was saying that he won't be
taking any actions based on just circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Now, this is what it really is about.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
This is from the steinline, or put the link in
the description in the best substack you could be subscribed
to if you care about NBA news. I've spoken to
multiple team strategists, for example, who told me with chess
puffed that if the Clippers aren't docked multiple first round picks.
If Leonard's contract is avoided while his salary obligations remain
on the Clippers book, they will feel emboldened to seek
(06:50):
out their own version of shell companies to provide additional
compensation to their players. So, Adam Silver, you have a
big decision to make, because if you just give a
slap on the risk, guess what some of the teams
that can afford to do this little circumvention thing will
Because if we know that it's only gonna cost two
second round picks, hell, how many second round picks turns
to anything?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Anyway, we'll give that away.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Luka, doncis your next extension side for this minimum because
we got two hundred million dollars under the table with
our new ownership group. Over the last couple of years,
it has been very important for him to talk about
the fairness across basketball, the parody across the league, and
more recently when we talk about to CBA, we talked
about the second Apron, which was put in place to
prevent teams.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
From building super teams.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
You get too expensive, you get doc this, you can't
make this trade, you can't have this draft capital, you
can't do this.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
In order to keep fairness and parody alive.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Now, the Clippers are not a team that has won
anything with Kawhi Lender being there, but it's not necessarily
about that. It's about the principle of it all. Are
we going to be somebody that cares about the new
CBA and keeping fairness and parody in the league, or
will we not care enough and just allow things to
go ramp it across basketball? Because if that is the case,
let's get rid of the new CBA, Let's get rid
(08:04):
of the salary cap, and just turn this shit into baseball.
Just the richest teams get the best players. And in
baseball that's fine because it's not always about the talent
that's on the field. Right, You can have a team
with a little payroll going to de Broun. The NBA
is just a different sport. The team traditionally with the
most amount of talent is gonna win the series. There
is no pitcher coming in and throwing seven shot out
(08:25):
when he had a seven ERA in a regular season.
That doesn't happen in the NBA often. I guess Max
Strews and gave Vincent is the best example we got
over the last ten years. But other than that, the
teams with the best players traditionally going to deeper run. Again,
I say traditionally, there's always gonna be caveats in there.
It's no surprise that the team that had Lebron James
on it for basically a decade made it to the
finals every single season. It's no surprise when the greatest
(08:45):
regular season team of all time added an all time player.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
The talent usually wins in our league.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And now when you add all of this that we
talk about with the Clippers, with the reports about you know,
Kawhi Leonards company asking the Raptors for some money and
some opportunities and all this before he left, that it just.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Looks more than circumstance.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Now, the NBA has their own investigation group that they
hired or the these this firm of lawyers, So I
guess we'll get down to it. I question how long
it will take for them to do their investigation. It
took Pablo Torre a few different months to acquire all
of this evidence, so maybe it'll take them the same
amount of time to do the same thing. Or Poblo
can can throw his notes and say, hey, here's half
the job, now go get the other opinions and go
get the other irrefutable evidence from the Clippers that say
(09:27):
that we got conned. And a lot of people are
bringing up Joe Smith because when Joe Smith went on
to the Minnesota Timberwolves, they they also did it illegally.
This is back in two thousand. Yeah, the year two thousand.
I want to make sure I got my year right,
two thousand and with that, we're talking about Joe Smith,
not Klik Leonard who's an all timer, Just Joe Smith,
(09:49):
just Joe Smith.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Boy.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
David Starn said, no, no, no, no, no, what you did
was illegal. We're gonna find you three point five million dollars. Remember,
go ahead, do your inflation calculations, because we're talking about
the year two thousand. You're going to forfeit five future
first round picks. Now, later they got two of them
back after YadA, YadA YadA, but initially they were docked
five first round picks. Can you imagine that type of
(10:12):
thing happening to the Clippers right now?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
The Clippers have done a really good job as of recently.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I'm gonna assuming again, let's say it's all legal of
basically going from era to errow while still seeing competent
and you know, of course they only got one Conference
finals appearance in this era, but they have always been competent. Hell,
last year, I thought that they were gonna be out
out of the postseason. They won fifty games. They've always
found a way to put together god rosters. But if
you're telling me that the potential galvel going down is
five first round picks on a team that traded a
(10:40):
ton of first round picks to get this current regime,
they don't really have a lot of picks until we
get to like twenty nineteen, twenty twenty nine, thirty, twenty
thirty one, and now with their aging core of Kawhi
lond Or James Harden and so on and so forth,
we don't have any draft capital. If you take five away,
Oh my god, I don't know, man, training camp is
what three weeks away? I guess we all just clamoring
(11:04):
for something to talk about. But I think this is
just a huge, huge story that can change the history
of the league depending on what Adam Silver decides to do.
You let me know in the common section what you
think that I mentioned that the guy the NBA chairman
or the Clippers chairman that donated the two million dollars
or invested the two million dollars also as college roommates
with Steve Bomber. I don't know if that's super important
(11:24):
to the story, but I also find it really really funny,
really funny,
This Kawhi Leonard salary caps circumvention story continues to get crazier, y'all.
Another big piece of evidence dropped this morning, and it
pretty much eliminates all all skepticism you could have potentially
had on the original post. Now, if you've been living
under rock, I'll give you the spark Notes version of
what the hell is going on Pablo Torre and Pablo
Torrey finds out put together an episode of his podcast
(00:22):
basically accusing the Clippers of paying Kawhi Leonard under the
table right through a company named Aspiration. It was original
reported that he was given a little over twenty million dollars.
That number got all the way up to our forty
eight million dollars under the table. If you did not know,
that is completely illegal. Kawhi Leonard accused of having this
no call, no show job that gave him almost an
additional fifty million dollars. Now, this entire story is so
(00:46):
much longer than I could give you in a spark
Notes version. I'll put the linked in the description to
it's basically three full hour podcast episodes. But that's what
you need to know at this point. Now, what happened
after that is Steve Bama went onto ESPN and honestly
didn't really say too much. I was really excited to
potent see how he would defend himself. He basically just said, hey,
I was conned. I am more of a victim than
the person that is doing the illegal things. Cool, and
(01:07):
when that reason came out, everybody gave their own opinions.
But one thing that I remember hearing a thousand times
through podcasts, through reading people with a lot of opinions
that are way smarter than me, especially in the legal world.
The one thing that I kept hearing with there's no
smoking gun. There's no smoking gun, And I'm like, obviously
I've heard that before, but am I having to know
the smoking gun? Is basically, there's no irrefutable evidence that
(01:30):
this has happened for the Clippers.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
So Steve Bomber can just claim ignorance.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
He could just say, hey, I didn't know this was
going on, and Adam Silver.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Can basically do what he want.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
He can say that this is not enough evidence to
do anything, and maybe it's a bit of money. Boom,
the Clippers get fined a million dollars. Boom, here's two
second round pigs.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Boom. Here's that.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
But the smoking gun thing is kind of dead because
Pablo just dropped a new episode giving you that smoking gun. Now.
I never really understood the smoking gun thing, mostly because
this is not I don't know the American judicial system.
This is not one of the things that you need
irrefutable evidence for somebody to be guilty. Adam Silver has
the ability to just with the smallest amount of evidence,
(02:09):
to enforce something, to give somebody slap on the wrists, hell,
to ban somebody, honestly, and I thought that what Pablo
did in his initial report would have been enough for
Adam Silver to, you know, do something again. I'm not
asking for people to get banned. But there's one thing
that bothered me the most about the story, if it
is again, assuming that it's true, is that it completely
gets rid of the integrity around this league. If a
(02:31):
team who has one of the most richest people in
all of the world, I think he's the seventh richest
person in the entire world, if he can pay people
under the table, what about the other teams that don't
have that type of money to.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Do such things.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I said it on the podcast, like we're obviously talking
about billionaires or we're talking about the owners of NBA
teams or all of these guys that filthy amount of money.
But there's level to being a billionaire. Of course, again,
see bomb being a seventh most rich person in the
entire world versus whoever the hell is running the Memphis Grizzlies.
They can't afford to go fifty million dollars under the
table to acquire some type of talent. The competitive nature
(03:05):
in the integrity of the league is completely over if
we as a as a league allowed us to happen. Right, So,
Adam Silver, you have to do something. That was my
initial thing, but everybody kept saying no smoking gun, no
smoking gun. So if he does do something, it will
be something relatively light. This morning, oh boy, and Pablo's
piece this morning, he brings proof that the minority owner
(03:31):
of the Clippers and minority owners like he owns one
percent of the Clipper. See Boma got ninety a percent.
This guy's got one percent.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Dennis J.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Wong, he is a chairman of the Clippers, and he
invested two million dollars in Aspiration. That is the I
won't call it fake company, but the company that the
money been going through to get Kawhi Leonard his money, right,
he gave two million dollars, just invested two million for us,
has a lot of money for him, maybe not so much.
At that point in time, Aspiration was said to be
a struggling company financially, so invested in the company that
(03:59):
everybody knew he was failing is a bit weird. But also,
nine days after he gave his two million dollar investment,
Kawhi Leonard was paid one point seventy five million dollars
from Aspiration, almost identical numbers between the investment from the
minority owner of the Clippers Slash chairman to what Kawhi
(04:19):
Leonard got paid.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Also came out that.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Dennisjay Wan's daughter worked for Aspiration under the title of
project Manager, Operation and Strategy. I don't know what the
hell that means, but she was a part of the
company as well. So in my mind, that is the
smoking gun. Somebody that was in the note of minority owner.
I'm sorry. The chairman of the La Clippers invested nearly
(04:43):
two million dollars was one point nine to nine million,
So we just gonna round up to two million dollars
to the company that later who was struggling financially, remind
you gave one point seventy five of that money straight
to Kawhi Leonard's bank account. That is a smoking gun
taste the perspective, right, all the people that was saying,
maybe we get a slap on the risk two second
round picks one million dollar five, No, it has to
(05:05):
be bigger because now on the opposing people across the
league is like, if you give them a slap on
the risk, now that we have almost irrefutable evidence as
this is illegal shit going on, If you give them
a slap on the risk, why shouldn't we just do
the same thing. And we're really about to figure out
what kind of commissioner Adam Silver really is. Right, we
have had Adam Silver around for a long time, but
(05:27):
before that we had David Stern, And David Stern was
one of the boys that you didn't want to play with, right,
if you did something that was illegal, you were going
to see and feel the full wrath of its powers. Now,
if you go to the CBA, I'm reading it right here,
it says that the end of belief that punishment can
be aleviated against a team or player if a violation
of unauthorized agreements can be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence. Again,
(05:53):
like I mentioned earlier, this is not the American judicial
system where you need irrefutable evidence beyond a reasonable doubt
that it's not the case anymore. Adam Silver truly does
have the power that if he wanted to use Jesse
evidence that we see right now to make a.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Decision, he can't.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
But when he went to the podium and they just
did this full meeting just a couple days ago, and
that's what we got the clip of Adam Silver saying
that the NBA is a highlight league, which I was
damned about to make a video about that, because what
are we talking about Adam Silver? When he was brought
to the podium and he only talked a little bit
about it, he basically was saying that he won't be
taking any actions based on just circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Now, this is what it really is about.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
This is from the steinline, or put the link in
the description in the best substack you could be subscribed
to if you care about NBA news. I've spoken to
multiple team strategists, for example, who told me with chess
puffed that if the Clippers aren't docked multiple first round picks.
If Leonard's contract is avoided while his salary obligations remain
on the Clippers book, they will feel emboldened to seek
(06:50):
out their own version of shell companies to provide additional
compensation to their players. So, Adam Silver, you have a
big decision to make, because if you just give a
slap on the risk, guess what some of the teams
that can afford to do this little circumvention thing will
Because if we know that it's only gonna cost two
second round picks, hell, how many second round picks turns
to anything?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Anyway, we'll give that away.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Luka, doncis your next extension side for this minimum because
we got two hundred million dollars under the table with
our new ownership group. Over the last couple of years,
it has been very important for him to talk about
the fairness across basketball, the parody across the league, and
more recently when we talk about to CBA, we talked
about the second Apron, which was put in place to
prevent teams.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
From building super teams.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
You get too expensive, you get doc this, you can't
make this trade, you can't have this draft capital, you
can't do this.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
In order to keep fairness and parody alive.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Now, the Clippers are not a team that has won
anything with Kawhi Lender being there, but it's not necessarily
about that. It's about the principle of it all. Are
we going to be somebody that cares about the new
CBA and keeping fairness and parody in the league, or
will we not care enough and just allow things to
go ramp it across basketball? Because if that is the case,
let's get rid of the new CBA, Let's get rid
(08:04):
of the salary cap, and just turn this shit into baseball.
Just the richest teams get the best players. And in
baseball that's fine because it's not always about the talent
that's on the field. Right, You can have a team
with a little payroll going to de Broun. The NBA
is just a different sport. The team traditionally with the
most amount of talent is gonna win the series. There
is no pitcher coming in and throwing seven shot out
(08:25):
when he had a seven ERA in a regular season.
That doesn't happen in the NBA often. I guess Max
Strews and gave Vincent is the best example we got
over the last ten years. But other than that, the
teams with the best players traditionally going to deeper run. Again,
I say traditionally, there's always gonna be caveats in there.
It's no surprise that the team that had Lebron James
on it for basically a decade made it to the
finals every single season. It's no surprise when the greatest
(08:45):
regular season team of all time added an all time player.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
The talent usually wins in our league.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And now when you add all of this that we
talk about with the Clippers, with the reports about you know,
Kawhi Leonards company asking the Raptors for some money and
some opportunities and all this before he left, that it just.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Looks more than circumstance.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Now, the NBA has their own investigation group that they
hired or the these this firm of lawyers, So I
guess we'll get down to it. I question how long
it will take for them to do their investigation. It
took Pablo Torre a few different months to acquire all
of this evidence, so maybe it'll take them the same
amount of time to do the same thing. Or Poblo
can can throw his notes and say, hey, here's half
the job, now go get the other opinions and go
get the other irrefutable evidence from the Clippers that say
(09:27):
that we got conned. And a lot of people are
bringing up Joe Smith because when Joe Smith went on
to the Minnesota Timberwolves, they they also did it illegally.
This is back in two thousand. Yeah, the year two thousand.
I want to make sure I got my year right,
two thousand and with that, we're talking about Joe Smith,
not Klik Leonard who's an all timer, Just Joe Smith,
(09:49):
just Joe Smith.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Boy.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
David Starn said, no, no, no, no, no, what you did
was illegal. We're gonna find you three point five million dollars. Remember,
go ahead, do your inflation calculations, because we're talking about
the year two thousand. You're going to forfeit five future
first round picks. Now, later they got two of them
back after YadA, YadA YadA, but initially they were docked
five first round picks. Can you imagine that type of
(10:12):
thing happening to the Clippers right now?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
The Clippers have done a really good job as of recently.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I'm gonna assuming again, let's say it's all legal of
basically going from era to errow while still seeing competent
and you know, of course they only got one Conference
finals appearance in this era, but they have always been competent. Hell,
last year, I thought that they were gonna be out
out of the postseason. They won fifty games. They've always
found a way to put together god rosters. But if
you're telling me that the potential galvel going down is
five first round picks on a team that traded a
(10:40):
ton of first round picks to get this current regime,
they don't really have a lot of picks until we
get to like twenty nineteen, twenty twenty nine, thirty, twenty
thirty one, and now with their aging core of Kawhi
lond Or James Harden and so on and so forth,
we don't have any draft capital. If you take five away,
Oh my god, I don't know, man, training camp is
what three weeks away? I guess we all just clamoring
(11:04):
for something to talk about. But I think this is
just a huge, huge story that can change the history
of the league depending on what Adam Silver decides to do.
You let me know in the common section what you
think that I mentioned that the guy the NBA chairman
or the Clippers chairman that donated the two million dollars
or invested the two million dollars also as college roommates
with Steve Bomber. I don't know if that's super important
(11:24):
to the story, but I also find it really really funny,
really funny,
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Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.