Source: https://sports.yahoo.com/video/steve-ballmer-sit-down-only-132025852.html
And the problem here is we're not gonna get any transparency.
The one thing that you have to have when you have been caught with your hand in the cookie jar is transparency about what happened, why it happened, and what you're going to do moving forward.
We're not getting any of that.
And if your answer to transparency is putting Steve Ballmer on ESPN.
Yeah, then I would say shame on you.
Why would you send Steve Ballmer to Ramona Shelburne, who, by the way, is a legend and a friend.
Why would you send Steve Ballmer to Ramona Shelburne for this interview when Pablo Torre is the one that has spent months preparing this entire report.
If you really want to be transparent, Steve Ballmer in the NBA, then you need to sit down with Pablo, who has months of research involved in this and has so much knowledge on the case that he can actually give you the thorough interview that you need and want to get down to the core of what actually happened.
Instead, you go to the softest landing spot you can.
Any of us that are trying to chase our tails to get this amount of information digested, consumed, and then be able to do an interview on it would be behind the eight ball from the outset because it's a ton of information to try and process.
The only person in the world that could actually do a fair, reasonable, and thorough, uh, interview.
With Steve Ballmer is Pablo, but that's not what the Clippers did.
And what have we heard from the NBA so far?
Basically nothing.
If you want anybody to trust the way you run your league, especially when you are a league that has literally had referees thrown in jail for throwing games.
If you want people to trust your product, you have got to be transparent.
That is all I can scream right now to Steve Ballmer, to the Clippers, and to the NBA.
We deserve.
As a public that consumes your product, transparency on what you knew, how you knew it.
If you didn't know anything, how is that humanly possible?
Every ounce of this needs to be uncovered and it needs to be done in the biggest possible way where they laid their cards face up on the table if you want any of us to believe that your salary cap system is actually for real.
We're waiting, NBA.
We're waiting on you to say something to somebody that isn't just a soft landing spot.
42 comments
ESPN is never putting Pablo on for this lol.
I promise you one of the very first things Ballmer did when he got even a sniff of this story is make an immediate call to Bob Iger.
It’s a big club and we ain’t in it.
Because ESPN has it’s pockets in the NBA and they want to try to cover it up for business purposes. It’s literally easy to figure out
This is the dead period for the NBA.
This story is gonna dominate the NBA news cycle for at least another month unless something like Giannis demanding a trade drops.
I imagine that we will learn more about the inner workings of this situation (probably from Pablo)
ESPN are cowards, they’d never put Pablo on their show
Espn and nba are crooked as fuck and this is just.another example.
*Looks at ESPN’s books*
oh that’s why
I got heavily downvoted a couple days ago for saying ESPN doesn’t have journalists or integrity lol. Like, I’m sorry if it’s hard to hear, but it’s a corrupt ass corporation that’s there to launder image for a company that’s printing money for them. There is no journalism at that company, full stop
Did they ask Steve why isn’t he putting a lawsuit out on the company that “conned” him..
If he was legitimately conned out of $50 million dollars
Would he not have his legal team sue the tits off Aspiration to get his money back?
Is that not an admission of guilt?
Billionaires sticking together is nothing new
If only the peasants could get their shit together !
ESPN is not a serious media firm. They just hire hot take artists and performers to fabricate stories to mislead the audience.
You can trust a word Romana Shelburne reports.
Disney doesn’t want a pissing match with Microsoft. Duh.
Aside from the annoying writing style, the author repeatedly conflates Balmer with the NBA.
Balmer is sitting down with a friendly reporter to tell his side of the story, which is Scandal PR 101. It has nothing to do with the NBA — the league doesn’t (and shouldn’t) dictate who sits for what interviews.
And the “silence” from the league is good, actually. They should be investigating and shutting the fuck up until they finish.
Also, the article reads like the author dictated it on his iPhone and never proofread it:
> The only person in the world that could actually do a fair, reasonable, and thorough, uh, interview.
>
> With Steve Ballmer is Pablo, but that’s not what the Clippers did.
Ballmer wants an interview and not an interrogation, lol. Anything Ballmer would say to Torre would be incriminating since he has legitimate documentation to specifically cite. Ballmer going on with Ramona still maintains an element of plausible deniability since neither of them claim to know the details of the fraudulent activity.
Ballmer sitting down with Ramona is the exact same strategy used by Netanyahu and the Nelk Boys.
Because ESPN isn’t a news network, it’s an entertainment network that is going to protect its interests.
We all know Ballmer will never get on Pablos show.
Calling Ramona a legend is a funny way to try to save face with her while basically completely discrediting the entire interview.
lol transparency. I like Ramona but we all know she’s a massive LA homer, so her ability to be unbiased is questionable IMO
Wild how Ramona referred to Pablo as a podcaster, bro was a mainstay on the network for years! Insulting
Lol, Ballmer sitting down with Shelbourne would have about the same believability rating as when Ja sat down with Jalen Rose and promised everything was good.
The NBA is ESPN’s second biggest cash cow. You’ll have to wait for a baseball scandal for ESPN to give a shit
Murder cases are harder than this lol. No one just give $28M and not expect anything back 💯
Not just Pablo, they haven’t even mentioned it on PTI yet which kind of blows my mind. PTI had the NFLPA story right away, yet this one is like shadows at night.
Ballmer is using the tried and true “I didn’t know” defense, followed by “I was conned”.
It’s very hard to prove what someone “knew”, if they went about it through a company investment as this payola appears to have been done.
If you watch Pablo’s interview with Mark Cuban and don’t see how personally invested he is in spinning the narrative as this being “obviously on Ballmer” you are clueless lol. He was getting legitimately emotional and not even letting Mark speak. Why would they have him directly interview Steve when that would clearly be nothing but him being belligerent? He’s a journalist not a prosecutor lmao.
The entire league looks awful right now.
ESPN and Cuban defending someone who is clearly guilty while the rest of the NBA world stays silent because they know Ballmer/Kawhi getting thrown under the bus is going to affect them too.
If this doesn’t get a punishment to end all punishments, then the NBA should be under government investigation for the coverup and stripped of gambling rights because it’s entertainment, not a sport at that point.
Zero integrity league.
The gall of Ramona to call Pablo a ‘podcaster’
> And what have we heard from the NBA so far?
> Basically nothing.
This is such a dumb comment, it’s always made towards law agencies as well after a high profile crime happens, as if they need to keep the public abreast of everything they’re working on. They are likely investigating right now and doing the right thing by not talking about the investigation while they do it.
Sure in the end it could end up that they botch it intentionally or unintentionally, but right now there shouldn’t be any expectation of transparency by a group running an investigation.
I repeat: this story is not about Steve Blamer. He was conned. This story is about Kawhi Leonard, who has been one of the most shadiest and mysterious NBA players. He has been under constant legal scrutiny both within the NBA and the legal system since 2018. Honestly, I am not shocked that Kawhi Leonard has a shady contract with a shady company that potentially gives him shady benefits, which was likely brokered by his shady Uncle Dennis.
Pablo went from being the fill-in guy on PTI to being the Luke Skywalker of sports journalism.
But Ramona Shelburne did hold Ballmer’s feet to the fire.
However, Ballmer should talk to Pablo, though, since he says he has nothing to hide..
Prediction: Because the 2 co-owners of Aspiration are dipshit, uncharismatic wannabe DNC power brokers, look for Drumpf to use Aspiration as a cudgel against “woke” nba players who steal from the owners.
In fact he will probably use this ponzi scheme of a company as an excuse for killing the clean energy credit program and continuing to call all green and climate change-focused businesses “fake scams”.
Espn is absolute dogshit and I have zero expectations of them ever doing anything right again.
ESPN has been a joke for years. I have simply stopped watching or consuming their content
Anyone else tired of this news already?
You’d have to be an idiot to think Ballmer would ever do an interview with Pablo Torre. Ballmer doesn’t answer to Torre and there is zero upside to doing that interview
Tbh I feel this whole thing is more examples of how corrupt this country has gotten. I am hoping justice prevails but I have so many doubts
Sadly, the NBA will do nothing about this. Gotta protect your big markets.
ESPN is too corporate for any investigative “sports news” anymore. Just watched the Hoop Collective podcast this morning. It’s corporate shilling for Ballmer and that interview (they had Ramona on as well)
ESPN is too big of an entity to be doing any of those “Outside the Lines” type shows/reporting. ABC and Disney basically killed all that. They’re about keeping the different LEAGUES happy…for them to pump out “entertainment”
Pablo: “here is mountains of concrete evidence of fraud”
Steve: whoaaa this is news to me, i didn’t do that
ESPN: thank god, he’s totally clear
ESPN is the Fox News of sports
This has to be the main reason why they were able to get any stars at all.
People turning down the layers to become clippers while we had LeBron and Cap space and trade pieces were wild. I’m happy we won and they haven’t.
Still havent heard any murmurs of OWNERS being mad about this which is pretty much the only thing that matters whether or not the clippers get punished. Where they proabably lost revenue I think it’s a possibility.