{"id":801722,"date":"2026-08-02T05:54:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T05:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/801722\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T05:54:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T05:54:29","slug":"pablo-torre-probes-hidden-kawhi-leonard-investment-in-rhode-island-fc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/801722\/","title":{"rendered":"Pablo Torre probes hidden Kawhi Leonard investment in Rhode Island FC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, Torre and his team won the Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting for their ongoing investigation into whether the Los Angeles Clippers improperly steered off-the-books benefits to star forward Kawhi Leonard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Naturally, there\u2019s a Rhode Island angle.<\/p>\n

\"LosLos Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard runs up court during an NBA basketball game against the San Antonio Spurs on March 6 in San Antonio.Darren Abate\/Associated Press<\/p>\n

Torre partnered with reporter Eli Sherman and the team at Channel 12 to reveal that Leonard is a previously undisclosed investor<\/a> in Rhode Island FC<\/a>. The investment isn\u2019t inherently suspicious, but its timing has become part of a broader examination of whether the Clippers provided Leonard with benefits outside his NBA contract to persuade him to sign for less than the maximum salary he was eligible to receive.<\/p>\n

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A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State.<\/p>\n

So I asked Torre to tell us more about his work. Here\u2019s our emailed Q&A.<\/p>\n

Q: First, you\u2019ve built this wildly popular podcast through deep investigative reporting, but your delivery differs significantly from the traditional style of investigative reporting you learned as a journalist at Sports Illustrated and ESPN. Why do you think it works so well?<\/p>\n

Torre: On paper, asking an audience to watch your friends open folders full of arcane documents for 85 minutes sounds insane. But I\u2019ve learned that if you cast some of your smartest and funniest friends \u2026 and if those friends genuinely have no clue what\u2019s in those folders \u2026 but they trust you to take them for a structured, narrative ride you\u2019ve designed for them \u2026 then the audience can feel like they\u2019re on that ride, in the room, right there with you.<\/p>\n

Q: You worked with my friend and occasional colleague Eli Sherman on the Rhode Island angle to your ongoing Los Angeles Clippers\/Kawhi Leonard investigation. Explain what makes the Leonard investment in Rhode Island FC so unusual.<\/p>\n

Torre: Kawhi\u2019s RIFC deal was never announced. It was actually kept secret, despite months of questions and requests, although RIFC had elsewhere announced a far less famous NBA player\u2019s investment. There is no public evidence that Kawhi has ever stepped foot in Rhode Island or even talked about it. He also started two LLCs with \u201cRIFC\u201d in the name the week before he signed a sub-max extension with the Clippers in 2024. And it wasn\u2019t just Kawhi who has a stake in RIFC: the two people who joined him in allegedly circumventing the Clippers\u2019 salary cap via Aspiration \u2014 Kawhi\u2019s uncle and his agent \u2014 got equity, as well.<\/p>\n

Q: Even before I knew that you were working on this project, I thought the soccer stadium could make for an interesting investigation by you just because of the amount of money involved for a pretty low-level professional sports franchise<\/a>. When you started looking at the stadium, what jumped out to you?<\/p>\n

\"BrettBrett M. Johnson in June 2022.Pat Greenhouse\/Globe Staff\/The Boston Globe<\/p>\n

Torre: A lot. There was the fact that Brett Johnson was marketing this whole project as something that could result in \u201cbillions of dollars\u201d of investment. There was also the context of Rhode Island\u2019s housing crisis<\/a> \u2014 and how this stadium promised to help solve it<\/a>. So when the stadium pivoted from being privately funded to needing the public money that had been apportioned for affordable housing, and Governor Dan McKee proudly cast the deciding vote to approve that switcheroo<\/a>, we had to start following the money. And we found yet more inexplicable secrecy.<\/p>\n

Q: We\u2019re still waiting for the NBA to rule on whether the Clippers circumvented the salary cap with Kawhi Leonard. Do you get the sense that the league was aware of the Rhode Island FC connection at all?<\/p>\n

Torre: I first mentioned \u201cKL2 RIFC LLC\u201d and \u201cKL2 RIFC REAL ESTATE LLC\u201d months ago, on PTFO, in the context of Kawhi\u2019s mysteriously sub-max extension in 2024. And I do know that the league \u2014 and their investigators \u2014 have been listening, closely, to every episode we do on this series. The clues were out there. But I have no idea if they took them seriously.<\/p>\n

This story first appeared in Rhode Map, our free newsletter about Rhode Island that also contains information about local events, links to interesting stories, and more. If you\u2019d like to receive it via email Monday through Friday, you can sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com<\/a>. Follow him @danmcgowan<\/a>.<\/p>\n