Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz and Caroline Fenton are joined by The Big Number’s Tom Haberstroh to discuss Pablo Torre’s latest reporting in the Kawhi Leonard and Los Angeles Clippers saga.
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Video Transcript
This is the smoking gun.
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This is an explosive report from Pablo Torre and Patre finds out.
I encourage everyone to watch the entire episode because while that tweet does describe some of the details revealed in this report, it doesn’t even hold a candle to all the other stuff in this report from Pablo Torre, namely that in the board of governors meeting where all 30 owners of the NBA met yesterday, this week in New York City, Adam Silver, according to Pablo Torre, in that meeting, uh, did not bring up the Steve Ballmer Kawhi Leonard Aspiration investigation, which left the other owners to just do these side discussions like, wait, how are we not even addressing that in the board of governors meeting with potentially the biggest scandal in the 21st century in the NBA?
This is huge.
That, uh, right now what we’re seeing in this report is that not just Steve Ballmer was involved with Aspiration, but a miraculous payment while the company was spinning down the drain financially and they were dry of funds, a miraculous payment came from the co-owner of the Clippers, Dennis Wong, whose daughter, as Pablo Torre, uh, revealed in this episode and reported, is that his daughter was employed by Aspiration.
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So the intermingling of these two entities, the Clippers, Aspiration, and Kawhi Leonard is getting even stronger and it’s a web that is tightening around Steve Ballmer and the Clippers, and the fact that this payment came in of just under $2 million when Kawhi Leonard was due just under $2 million I, if I’m the other owners, and if I’m a fan of the NBA, I look at the totality of this evidence presented at this point and just say, what else do I need to see?
Like it is very clear that something is amiss here, that if you’re trying to uphold the integrity of the NBA you have to put, drop the hammer on Steve Ballmer if these allegations are true, because what this presents is a blueprint, you guys.
This presents a blueprint if Adam Silver does not come down with a very strong punishment and statement against Steve Ballmer and the Clippers.
What this does is it gives a blueprint for all the other teams.
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If they want to circumvent, if they want to circumvent the cap, here’s how you do it.
You just get a second company, funnel a bunch of money through there.
You don’t even have to have him do an endorsement deal that makes him endorse the company or provide any services, and you can just pay him through that company, everything’s good.