{"id":2127665,"date":"2026-09-04T09:30:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2127665"},"modified":"2026-09-04T09:30:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:30:51","slug":"pablo-torre-on-the-nbas-clippers-report-and-delight-across-a-year-of-reporting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2127665","title":{"rendered":"Pablo Torre on the NBA\u2019s Clippers report and \u2018delight\u2019 across a year of reporting"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"Article_ContentContainer__jBNW3 article-content-container bodytext1\">\n<p>On Sept. 3, 2025, Pablo Torre and his \u201cPablo Torre Finds Out\u201d podcast team <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1OwzYk6OCFM\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">released an episode<\/a> titled \u201cKawhi Leonard Signed a Secret $28M Deal. Steve Ballmer Funded a Fraud. We Followed the Money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was the first of many episodes over the past year that reported on the complicated layers to the story around the relationship between the LA Clippers and Leonard, its star player.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad-container\">\n<div class=\"ad-wrapper article-treatment\">\n<div class=\"ad-slug-container\">\n<p class=\"ad-slug\">Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"mid1\" data-position=\"mid1\" class=\"ad place-ad\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Along the way, Torre and his team drew the ire of the Clippers and owner Steve Ballmer, the skepticism of Mark Cuban and Bill Simmons, the attention of millions of fans \u2014 and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7253399\/2026\/05\/04\/pablo-torre-finds-out-pulitzer-prize-the-athletic\/\">earned<\/a> a Pulitzer Prize for his team\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n<p>Almost exactly one year later, the NBA on Wednesday <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7513882\/2026\/09\/02\/clippers-kawhi-leonard-punishment-fine-suspensions-nba-investigation\/\">released<\/a> its own investigative report by its white-shoe law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen &amp; Katz essentially confirming Torre and his team\u2019s initial reporting while levying a slate of punishments <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7560303\/2026\/09\/03\/adam-silver-clippers-steve-ballmer-kawhi-leonard-punishment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">unprecedented in league history<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Thousands of people tuned in Wednesday evening for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ENBv21u8Y54\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">live analysis<\/a> from Torre and his co-hosts on YouTube. In a series of statements, the Clippers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7560693\/2026\/09\/02\/clippers-nba-investigation-witch-hunt-steve-ballmer\/\">fumed<\/a>. Cuban <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7561238\/2026\/09\/03\/mark-cuban-pablo-torre-clippers-cap-circumvention\/\">tweeted out<\/a> \u201cCongrats Pablo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>The Athletic<\/em> talked with Torre on Thursday evening about the league\u2019s resolution, the reactions to his reporting and what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n<div data-ath-video-stream=\"pCCYtrUypGUVYpj\">\n<div class=\"VideoHost_Root__QeM_i\">\n<div class=\"VideoHost_VideoWidth__XjNKI VideoHost_Portrait__XBaJC\">\n<div class=\"VideoTitleFrame_Root__AGckL\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"VideoTitleFrame_Title__npf3B\">Why did the NBA&#8217;s investigation into the Clippers last so long?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"VideoTitleFrame_VideoWrapper__Xgp47\">\n<div class=\"AspectRatioBox_root__AKv5b\" style=\"aspect-ratio:9 \/ 16;max-height:min(100%)\">\n<div class=\"AspectRatioBox_inner__86C_2\" style=\"aspect-ratio:9 \/ 16\">\n<div class=\"VideoStreamPlayer_GridStack__2H0p2\"><video preload=\"metadata\"><\/video><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Right after the announcement, Mark Cuban \u2014 who had been a bit of an adversary over the past year \u2014 tweeted \u201cCongrats Pablo.\u201d About him and everyone else who weighed in over the past year, do you feel any sense of vindication?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I loved seeing that from Mark, because I loved talking to him. I have this sort of podcast brain disease, I guess, where my main thought was, \u201cI wonder if you\u2019d come back on the show.\u201d So that was my first reaction.<\/p>\n<p>My second thought was, I really hope that people don\u2019t think that the only way that you can trust reporting like this is if the entity or the institution that you\u2019re investigating takes their hand and raises it and says, \u2018Yes, the journalist was right.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>But I also hope that people can evaluate the work on its merits and learn to trust that our process is rigorous in ways that are bordering on unhealthily obsessive, which is a separate problem, but hopefully one that they can trust.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad-container\">\n<div class=\"ad-wrapper article-treatment\">\n<div class=\"ad-slug-container\">\n<p class=\"ad-slug\">Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"mid2\" data-position=\"mid2\" class=\"ad place-ad\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Did anything genuinely surprise you in or about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wlrk.com\/la-clippers-report\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">NBA\u2019s report<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I did not know that Lawrence Frank, the (Clippers) president of basketball, was contemporaneously taking notes that he shared with the NBA, and those notes were so helpful \u2014 and, at times quoting Steve Ballmer, his boss, directly in conversations with \u201cUncle Dennis\u201d Robertson \u2014 that the NBA reduced the punishment on account of how helpful that information was. I had no idea how much the Clippers were providing the NBA. That\u2019s the things that they would never provide me. I was really impressed by the detail that we got, even as I had questions about what was not in it.<\/p>\n<div data-ath-video-stream=\"\u201cb0a6D2NlXOUPVZj\u201d\"><\/div>\n<p><strong>Anything surprise you about the punishments themselves?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am fundamentally not the type of person who assumes that a mountain of evidence leads to a mountain of a punishment, but by any historical standard, this was a mountain of a punishment. So the mere fact that there was accountability on this level was really eye-opening.<\/p>\n<p>But when you proceed to read the actual report, you learn why. (The NBA) did not have a choice, based on even the limited scope that was published in this report. They didn\u2019t have a choice but to levy a punishment of this size.<\/p>\n<p>So, yes, Ballmer\u2019s being banned from the building for a year, five first-round picks, a year suspension for Gillian Zucker, the head of business \u2014 I mean, these are all things that I did not take for granted. But when you read the report, you understand why that felt eminently justifiable.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You said near the start of your live stream Wednesday night, \u201cThis is not everything.\u201d Directionally, what is the most intriguing question still left unanswered or thread unpulled?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What are the interests of the federal government? The Securities and Exchange Commission is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7559804\/2026\/09\/02\/kawhi-leonard-daktronics-sec-investigation-clippers\/\">now probing<\/a> Daktronics, which is a public company. That is one of the four entities that partnered with the Clippers in this deeply elaborate cap-circumvention scheme. And the SEC has made requests for information that the CFO of Daktronics said on the earnings call this week, earlier on the same day that the NBA\u2019s punishment was dropped. They said that they were taking it seriously and cooperating.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad-container\">\n<div class=\"ad-wrapper article-treatment\">\n<div class=\"ad-slug-container\">\n<p class=\"ad-slug\">Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"mid3\" data-position=\"mid3\" class=\"ad place-ad\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The federal government has powers that not even the NBA has. Certainly, I do not have the leverage that either of those entities has, in a couple of key ways. So if you are the SEC or the Department of Justice, and you see what this story was, as laid out on my show and as laid out in this punishment, this ruling and this 35-page report, what is interesting to you? And I think that is a question that we have only begun to answer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What do you think the public appetite is for more on this?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The sensation that I have felt personally and have felt in our audience \u2014 such that I can get a sense of what has been a head-spinning day \u2014 is that people have been almost delighted that maybe we can hold the richest people in the world to something resembling a standard of accountability.<\/p>\n<p>I think that is what I feel most acutely: That maybe that\u2019s possible. That maybe a collection of documentary evidence and human sources who are brave enough to talk to a journalist, and months of research that have been vetted legally and otherwise, can combine to create something like consequences at a time at which those extraordinarily wealthy people seem to be able to avoid them.<\/p>\n<p>I think that we have the ability to do something that the rest of our culture is yearning for, which is make people who are too rich to care about anything resembling the public interest worry that maybe they need to tell us the truth.<\/p>\n<div id=\"inline-graphic\">\n<p>        a.showcase-link-container {<br \/>\n  display: flex;<br \/>\n  gap: 20px;<br \/>\n  flex-direction: column;<br \/>\n  align-items: center;<br \/>\n  padding: 20px 0px;<br \/>\n  border-top: 1px solid rgba(150, 150, 147, 0.4);<br \/>\n  border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(150, 150, 147, 0.4);<br \/>\n  text-decoration: none;<br \/>\n  color: #121212;<br \/>\n  cursor: pointer;<\/p>\n<p>  .showcase-link {<br \/>\n    font-family: nyt-franklin;<br \/>\n    font-size: 14px;<br \/>\n    font-style: normal;<br \/>\n    font-weight: 700;<br \/>\n    line-height: 13.8px;<br \/>\n    letter-spacing: 1.1px;<br \/>\n    text-transform: uppercase;<br \/>\n  }<\/p>\n<p>  .showcase-link-image {<br \/>\n    border-radius: 8px;<br \/>\n    object-fit: cover;<br \/>\n    width: 200px;<br \/>\n    height: 150px;<br \/>\n    margin: 0px;<br \/>\n    @media (max-width: 600px) {<br \/>\n      width: 120px;<br \/>\n      height: 120px;<br \/>\n    }<br \/>\n  }<\/p>\n<p>  .showcase-link-inner-content {<br \/>\n    display: flex;<br \/>\n    flex-direction: row;<br \/>\n    gap: 16px;<br \/>\n    width: 100%;<br \/>\n  }<\/p>\n<p>  .showcase-link-text-content {<br \/>\n    display: flex;<br \/>\n    flex-direction: column;<br \/>\n    gap: 20px;<br \/>\n    justify-content: center;<br \/>\n    @media (max-width: 600px) {<br \/>\n      gap: 8px;<br \/>\n    }<br \/>\n  }<\/p>\n<p>  .showcase-link-title {<br \/>\n    font-family: nyt-cheltenham;<br \/>\n    font-size: 24px;<br \/>\n    font-style: normal;<br \/>\n    font-weight: 500;<br \/>\n    line-height: 120%; \/* 24px *\/<br \/>\n    letter-spacing: 0.01px;<br \/>\n    text-overflow: ellipsis;<br \/>\n    overflow: hidden;<br \/>\n    display: -webkit-box;<br \/>\n    -webkit-box-orient: vertical;<br \/>\n    -webkit-line-clamp: 3;<br \/>\n    @media (max-width: 600px) {<br \/>\n      font-size: 16px;<br \/>\n    }<br \/>\n  }<\/p>\n<p>  .showcase-link-excerpt {<br \/>\n    font-family: nyt-imperial;<br \/>\n    font-size: 16px;<br \/>\n    font-style: normal;<br \/>\n    font-weight: 400;<br \/>\n    line-height: 139%; \/* 19.46px *\/<br \/>\n    color: #323232;<br \/>\n    text-overflow: ellipsis;<br \/>\n    overflow: hidden;<br \/>\n    display: -webkit-box;<br \/>\n    -webkit-box-orient: vertical;<br \/>\n    -webkit-line-clamp: 4;<br \/>\n    @media (max-width: 600px) {<br \/>\n      font-size: 12px;<br \/>\n      line-height: 121%;<br \/>\n    }<br \/>\n  }<br \/>\n}<\/p>\n<p>.showcase-link-inputs {<br \/>\n  .showcase-link-input {<br \/>\n    width: 100%;<br \/>\n    font-size: 1rem;<br \/>\n    background-color: white;<br \/>\n    margin-bottom: 12px;<br \/>\n  }<\/p>\n<p>  .showcase-link-indent {<br \/>\n    margin-left: 25px;<br \/>\n  }<\/p>\n<p>  option {<br \/>\n    width: 100%;<br \/>\n  }<br \/>\n}<\/p>\n<p>@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {<br \/>\n  .native-mobile a.showcase-link-container {<br \/>\n    background-color: #121212;<br \/>\n    color: #f0f0ee;<br \/>\n    .showcase-link-excerpt {<br \/>\n      color: #c4c4c0;<br \/>\n    }<br \/>\n  }<br \/>\n}<\/p>\n<p>            \/\/ Remove all onclicks on imgs for apps to prevent image zoom on click<br \/>\n            document.querySelectorAll(&#8216;.showcase-link-image&#8217;).forEach((img) =&gt; img.removeAttribute(&#8216;onclick&#8217;));<\/p>\n<p>        <a id=\"showcase-link-7561209\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7561209\/2026\/09\/03\/steve-ballmer-clippers-investigation-punishment-kawhi-leonard-deals\/\" class=\"showcase-link-container in-content-module-link testbed-shortcode\" data-shortcode-id=\"101\" data-shortcode-string=\"showcase-link\" data-content-id=\"7561209\" data-content-post-type=\"article\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"showcase-link\">What You Should Read Next<\/div>\n<div class=\"showcase-link-inner-content\">\n            <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/09\/03002008\/GettyImages-2259481648-1.jpg?width=400&amp;quality=70\" alt=\"Steve Ballmer spent billions to make Clippers matter, but he brought them more shame\" class=\"showcase-link-image\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"showcase-link-text-content\">\n<div class=\"showcase-link-title\">\n                  Steve Ballmer spent billions to make Clippers matter, but he brought them more shame\n              <\/div>\n<div class=\"showcase-link-excerpt\">\n                  Donald Sterling made the Clippers embarrassing. Ballmer made them relevant. Now, he&#8217;s just another disgrace in a franchise history.\n              <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>        <\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>In some pretty incredible timing, the original episode that launched all of this was one year ago today. And it has been followed by so many additional episodes of reporting, not to mention a Pulitzer Prize. When you think back to that debut date and your expectations that day, in the arc of the year since, what components of the way this played out stand out to you as, \u201cYes, I saw that coming,\u201d or, \u201cNever would have imagined\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There was a part of me that thought that this was going to be significantly less popular, less watched, less listened to than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=As5P5TA-ERk\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">our Jordon Hudson series<\/a>, because we\u2019re talking about, on some level, like, NBA nerd s\u2014.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re talking about cap circumvention and carbon credits and sort of arcane aspects of a collective bargaining agreement. And the fact that it spoke to people and grabbed them is a testament to, of course, the guests I\u2019ve had on the show, who have been proxies for the audience: David Samson and Amin Elhassan, who have been fantastic ever since the start of this.<\/p>\n<p>I think that I probably underestimated the appetite for stories that can be substantive, but also, in the execution of them, actually (are) fun for people that aren\u2019t me and my friends.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad-container\">\n<div class=\"ad-wrapper article-treatment\">\n<div class=\"ad-slug-container\">\n<p class=\"ad-slug\">Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"mid4\" data-position=\"mid4\" class=\"ad place-ad\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Is there anything you wish you did differently over the course of the year?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When I get to sit down and review everything, months after the final episode has truly dropped, I\u2019m sure that I will have a sense of what I missed, or underweighted, or really wish that I had done differently.<\/p>\n<p>But in the moment, as we\u2019re covering this thing live, I\u2019m just really proud that one of the things that no one has been able to really do is show that we have gotten the story wrong.<\/p>\n<p>I am open to various corrections and details and critiques. The show, as I need to keep saying, is not called \u201cPablo Torre Is Right.\u201d The show is \u201cPablo Torre Finds Out,\u201d and the whole point is that we show you our process, and you come along for the ride of what it is that we discovered. But it is not a show that is meant to be 100 percent perfect. And, therefore, you must trust us. It\u2019s that we care enough about trying to get it right that we think we\u2019re worth listening to.<\/p>\n<p>And so I\u2019m sure there are things that I\u2019ll want to do over when we have full clarity of what really happened here, and all of its depth. But that\u2019s not what comes to mind right now. I think the team that we have has made it so that what I\u2019m most looking forward to is the next plot twist, as opposed to whether we could have predicted it.<\/p>\n<p id=\"article-pickem\">\n<p><strong>If you could sit down with Steve Ballmer, and he had to answer one question from you with brutal candor, what would you ask?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What a great question that I\u2019ve not contemplated, because he has said, so clearly, no.<\/p>\n<p>I would ask him what he regrets the most. I would let him tell me what, of all the things that have been revealed that he has done that have led to what can only be, I imagine, a painful series of developments in his public life, I want to know what he regrets the most. I genuinely don\u2019t know what he would say. And I would love to find out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Last question: Do you really have no urge to have a little bit of triumphalism that you\u2019ve clearly earned? This is one of the most validating things that could have happened. So if it\u2019s not triumphalism, if it\u2019s not vindication, what is the word to cover the moment you saw the report, read it and understood what was being said?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The word that comes to mind is delight.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad-container\">\n<div class=\"ad-wrapper article-treatment\">\n<div class=\"ad-slug-container\">\n<p class=\"ad-slug\">Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"mid5\" data-position=\"mid5\" class=\"ad place-ad\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>It is not, to me, the triumphalism or spiking of the football that I am certainly tempted to do. But it is the enjoyment that people now realize why I\u2019ve been behaving this way for a year, why I\u2019ve stayed on this.<\/p>\n<p>People have been saying for a very long time, \u2018Why don\u2019t you give it up already? What are you doing?\u2019 And then it was, \u2018Aren\u2019t you embarrassed that you got this wrong?\u2019 And then it was, \u2018Why are you continuing to chase clout with your podcast?\u2019 And I get why, on some level, all of those questions make sense.<\/p>\n<p>But the delight I have is in the reveal that I hope people now see with more clarity than I could ever give them clearly. And it might be a clarity that only an institution can provide, an institution that has to raise its hand and say, actually this podcaster had a point.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a delight of getting to watch people find out why I\u2019ve been finding out. And that, to me, is a twist that I did not ever take for granted. And it\u2019s one that I found incredibly delightful as I was listening and watching and scrolling, as people realized what I\u2019ve been up to the whole time.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cPablo Torre Finds Out\u201d is produced by Meadowlark Media and became part of <\/em>The Athletic<em> Podcast Network last September through a licensing deal.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Sept. 3, 2025, Pablo Torre and his \u201cPablo Torre Finds Out\u201d podcast team released an episode titled \u201cKawhi Leonard Signed a Secret $28M Deal. Steve Ballmer Funded a Fraud. We Followed the Money.\u201d It was the first of many episodes over the past year that reported on the complicated layers to the story around [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-2127665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2127665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2127665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2127665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2127665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}