The reporting of Pablo Torre into the Los Angeles Clippers has been one of the biggest sports stories of the year. Although there were no direct interactions between the podcast host and Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, we now know how much the investigation bothered the Microsoft billionaire behind the scenes.
Torre sat down for an interview with longtime television host Maury Povich at the University of Maryland. It was released on Torre’s YouTube channel and offered a new, fascinating insight into his reporting on Ballmer’s Clippers and the salary-cap circumvention involving Kawhi Leonard and Aspiration.
Torre told Povich that he had heard for a year that Ballmer was going to sue him over his reporting. Alas, it never materialized, and instead the Clippers owner was suspended for a year as the NBA vindicated Torre’s reporting and the franchise was hit with some of the heaviest penalties in the history of professional sports.
Pablo Torre on Steve Ballmer
“He was telling via his various representatives that he was gonna sue me. For a year, this was being communicated all around the NBA.”
“Intense wealth does not equate to intense competence… Sometimes they can be idiots.”
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“One of the things I would hear is that Steve Ballmer, who is at last check the seventh-richest man in the world, depending on Microsoft stock, he’s the largest individual shareholder in Microsoft, which means he has 170 or so billion dollars. One of the things I was told is that he was telling via his various representatives that he was gonna sue me. For a year, this was being communicated all around the NBA,” Torre said.
Interestingly, Steve Ballmer is the second famous person who would have considered suing Pablo Torre. Bill Belichick’s ex-girlfriend Jordon Hudson was very public about her own threats to sue the podcast host in the wake of his reporting into the very weird dynamic at the University of North Carolina. But those threats did not come to fruition either.
Pablo Torre also talked about his debate with former NBA owner Mark Cuban and what he’s learned from the saga over the last year. And it has left him less than impressed with the billionaire class’s ability beyond making money.
“One of the core tenets of what my show has found out is that intense wealth does not equate to intense competence,” Torre said to ooohs and aahs from the crowd.
“I simply mean that there is a confusion between how rich someone is and how good they are at telling the truth or even pulling off a scheme in which the truth is meant to be obscured. I find that encountering and asking and getting to know billionaires, which has happened to a degree that I find shocking to me personally since the penalty was levied upon Steve Ballmer, I have found that there is an underrated comedy in the lives of the richest people in the world.”
When Povich asked Torre what that comedy is, he had a true mic-drop moment.
“Sometimes they can be idiots.”