Think back to the first time you saw Pablo Torre on television. Would you have guessed that, years later, he would be the controversial face of sports journalism?<\/p>\n
Last week, thanks in part to his reporting, the NBA dropped the hammer on Steve Ballmer and the Los Angeles Clippers. I watched Torre take his victory laps<\/a> and started thinking about why so many people dismissed his reporting on the team\u2019s efforts to circumvent the salary cap on Kawhi Leonard\u2019s behalf.\u00a0<\/p>\n The scandal itself wasn\u2019t exactly unbelievable. Balmer isn\u2019t the first owner in professional sports to think he\u2019s too smart, too rich, or both to get caught. Kawhi Leonard isn\u2019t a beloved figure. Basketball fans weren\u2019t refusing to come to terms with a hero\u2019s betrayal.\u00a0<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t the story that offended people. It was Pablo Torre.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n Because Torre is a hard character to square, he values being a goofball as much as, if not more than, he values the serious work of journalism. That doesn\u2019t mean he is a bad journalist or that his work is invalid. It just means that we aren\u2019t always sure what to do with him.<\/p>\n We all know a Pablo Torre. A guy who keeps one foot planted firmly in adolescence while the other is doing adult things. It can be fun, but it can also make people roll their eyes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Investigative journalism is very much a newspaper thing, and Torre is very much a Twitter guy. I don\u2019t recall Woodward and Bernstein showing up on TV every time Richard Nixon denied a Watergate story they reported to demand a public debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hi Jordon:<\/p>\n Any idea why your screenshot looks like this after you adjust the exposure and highlights?<\/p>\n (@JohnnyBlan57495<\/a>, who provided the below video, was asking about Adobe Photoshop.)<\/p>\n Thanks, \u2014 Pablo Torre \ud83d\udc40 (@PabloTorre) November 25, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n He is a proverbial dog with a bone when it comes to Jordon Hudson, Bill Belichick, and the University of North Carolina\u2019s football team, reporting every twist and turn regardless of how interesting the latest revelation actually is. He even admitted to the popular North Carolina sports podcast Ovies & Giglio last year that, while he stands by his reporting, he may have been a little too loose with some of the language he has used.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the show itself. Pablo Torre Finds Out is\u2026well, it\u2019s all kinds of things. It can be a serious investigation one day, a discussion about the mechanisms of sports business the next, and then three people sitting around a table saying \u201cexaaaaactly\u201d over and over again. It will expose Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s ties to Harvard University<\/a> and then devote an episode to the fact that Oz the Mentalist cannot really read people\u2019s minds<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n When you are trying to create a show that has no boundaries about what it can be and where it can go, each subject you cover will be viewed by some through the lens of what you have done in the past.<\/p>\n At its most serious,\u00a0Pablo Torre Finds Out\u00a0is trying to do a very old thing (magazine-style journalism) in a very modern environment (podcasting).\u00a0The findings of big investigations get an episodic rollout and end with a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist<\/a> clapping back at the haters. That\u2019s hard for some people to square, especially when it\u2019s all wrapped in video game sound effects. <\/p>\n That\u2019s fine if we\u2019re talking about UNC football\u2019s continued ineptitude. It\u2019s a little jarring when it\u2019s something more serious.<\/p>\n To be fair to Torre, he has never claimed that 60 Minutes is what he\u2019s going for. At the same time though, he is winning the same types of awards and insisting his show swims in the same pool as the venerated CBS News magazine. That can break the brains of people programmed to like things simple.<\/p>\n Some writers have made arguments that there are flaws in his reporting on the Clippers. That\u2019s their claim to make. Frankly, I am more fascinated by how people react to Torre and what he\u2019s created than by learning that the Clippers brass is continuing the franchise\u2019s tradition of being terrible at everything it does.<\/p>\n \t
Pablo https:\/\/t.co\/3BohNptoLj<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/pop8khwZqI<\/a><\/p>\n