[PTFO] Pablo Torre provides the smoking gun as he shows the original whistleblower complaint that led to the Aspiration Investigations. It contains wording that specifically says that Aspiration was used for cap circumvention to pay Kawhi
Adam Silver is about to force the Jazz to relocate for this
Magic Johnson about to get the longest suspension in league history
Ah fuck we’re gonna get colangeloed
Somehow this is definitely the Sixers fault. Silver is gonna banish the whole team to Beijing.
It’s about damn time!
Nah the Sixers are safe, but the Wolves are about to get hit with the Joe Smith 2.0 punishment
Its Rudy Gobert’s fault, find a new slant.
sigh I’ll get the collars…
somehow Colangelo returned!!!
Tom Brady 6 games etc.
How has Kawhi not already been suspended? Adam Silver is a joke
They’re clearly trying to brush this under the rug and hope everyone moves on without actually having to do anything about it.
That’s the impression I’ve gotten
The salary cap is primarily a rule against teams, not players.
Kawhi isn’t really the main party in the wrong here. It’s already been reported that he’s been trying to circumvent the cap (he asked the Lakers and Raptors for it).
The crime is on the team for accepting it.
Tell that to Joe Smith. He got his contract voided and his Bird Rights stripped.
Maybe the Wolves and him should’ve tried being in LA, NY, or Miami smh
Bro are you serious? We still can’t get our pick back from the hornets trading scary terry to us despite both them and the NBA knowing he was under FBI investigation… Adam Silver can eat a family sized bag of dicks.
What type of thinking is this? Kawhi was, had been, and did break rules he knew he existed willfully and purposefully. Just because it’s on the teams though to enforce this rule and not agree to pay players under the table, only the clippers should get in trouble? No, kawhi needs to be held fully accountable along with clippers and honestly I think he deserves to be banned for life. You have to make an example of both him and the clippers if you want to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Why do people say this? It’s both! Both should be punished heavily. He knows the rules, and sought to circumvent them
Personally I’ve seen enough, deduct 5 points from Everton , these massive tinpot clubs can’t keep getting away with this
…..please do that and give the points to my Spurs please….please god we’re so bad this year
So.extra Spursy this year
Only one set of spurs can be competitive at a time. It’s San Antonio’s turn now. Tottenham can tank for draft picks.
at the very least you are still the best Ham among the hams, which isn’t saying much cos all the hams are in relegation zone
I love how long Torre has probably been sitting on this, just letting everyone build up the lies and denials
40 points from Slytherin, just for existing
Fucking rigged ass house cup. You can see Dumbledore up there at the very end doing the math in his head trying to figure out how many points he needs to give Ron for playing chess.
I stg ballmer would have to be directly looking into a 4k camera holding the aspiration contract saying we’re doing this to specifically cheat the cap for some idiots on here
Even so. Pablo might get that next episode.
That’s what was under the two audience chairs!!!
Lmao feels like Pablo is just daring them to contradict him because he literally has the next bomb locked and loaded. I think they figured it out after the second one. I remember his first story like 20 people came out saying he was a liar and then he had a follow up that disproved like everything they said. Now you don’t hear a word from anyone inside the nba or clippers. Mark cuban really quiet these days
They’re trying to keep quiet, because their hope was (as implied by this episode) that they could use the law firm to pretend they had done due diligence and just make it all go away
“He was clearly joking!” - them, next episode “Kawhi was playing 6G chess by making these demands and exposing the corruption of the league and owners!” Other people, next episode
6G Chess > 4D Chess
“we are still investigation the situation, now excuse me as i go reset the timer we set up to keep track of how long its been since this story was mention so we know when y’all have completely forgotten about it.”- Adam “totally not a lizard man or Nosferatu” Silver
Maybe he can announce a new All Star Game format instead??? Surely that will distract us for MONTHS!
At this point I fully expect that video to exist. Pablo will drop it and silver will be like we’re looking into it but it appears there’s nothing definitive
“It’s AI”
They could search Ballmer’s car and find a revolver billowing with smoke, and it wouldn’t meet their definition of smoking gun.
If a revolver billowing with particulate and fumes was a smoking gun, it’d be called that.
Cuban thinks it’s just a Beretta with a Malboro.
Marc Cuban would still jump on and argue that Ballmer is innocent. Though it is hard to understand what he is saying with Steve’s cock so far down his throat.
Whitewash and Lipton LLP aren’t even asking interview subjects about Ballmer apparently. Fix is in.
Deep fake!
Ok can we void kawhi’s contract before we tip off with clippers at 8:30 tonight lol
Brother we need the clippers to win more, we cant let that pick be lottery for OKC
Sorry, I don’t think the 2026 Spurs know how to show restraint
The same clippers with Kawhi on it? Hell naw
See I disagree
Brother nothing matters anymore without Yanic. 34 years of seeing some shit and nothing can hurt me like this one.
There’s no way they’re this stupid, right?
Billionaires aren’t used to facing consequences or having situations like this that money can’t make disappear. So yes, they’re that stupid.
Also, this wont alter Balmer’s daily experience in any way, shape, or form. So it can be spray painted at center court and he wouldn’t give a shit.
Is it stupid if they end up being right? The owners of this country don’t ever face consequences for anything, from silly things like this to raping underage girls with impunity. The bought freedom preemptively
They can just pay off the president a few millions and get a pardon 🤷♀️
A pardon doesn’t keep you in the nba.
And they won’t. Nothing will come of this
I don’t think they were stupid. They were pretty sophisticated. It took a pretty unique set of circumstances to get caught.
At the end of the day this all gets dug up because of the monumentally stupid move of having Kawhi do fuck all to justify the money. No amount of smart moves will make up for not having the man do a single photoshoot.
No amount of photoshoots could justify paying Kawhi \(48 million while celebs like RDJ and Dicaprio got \)2 million.
But we almost certainly wouldn’t know the amounts all of them were being paid by Aspiration without the bankruptcy either. As far as any of us would’ve known, they were all just celebrity endorsers of some weird climate company. I mean, I dunno how much money LeBron got from Sprite all those years. Michael Jordan is a literal billionaire and it’s not primarily from his on the court earnings. Even if somebody found out Aspiration paid Kawhi $48 million to be a spokesperson, nobody would’ve batted an eye, just as long as they seemed like a real company
Kawhi Leonard > Naomi Campbell
No. The only reason it got found out was because of fraud and bankruptcy. The documents were made public because of it. If they are just a functional front and don’t go under no one ever finds out about this.
This. If they had somehow just kept Aspiration afloat, none of this would have ever come to light.
It begs a bigger question, which is how many other teams have done this. Which is why other owners have been hilariously silent on it.
The only reason it got found out is that after Aspiration went bankrupt, KL2/ Kahwi/ Uncle Dennis, thought they could squeeze blood from the stone of a dead, indicted, fradulent company and made demands for payments as part of the bankruptcy proceedings. If KL2 had just walked away, or asked Ballmer to make good on the promised money via other avenues, nobody would know anything.
No. If the bankruptcy hadn’t happened we wouldn’t know about it. And even with the bankruptcy, if Kawhi hadn’t made a claim for what he didn’t get we still might not know.
100% It’s gonna take a dozen hour-long podcasts to fully explain the scam. Elaborate financial malfeasance. They tried to cover their tracks and got caught through great investigative journalism
If Aspiration didn’t go under we never know about any of this
An Island Boy went onto his podcast days after being implicated in the Epstein files, the billionaire class is extremely stupid and arrogant.
There is video evidence of a pedophile island which most of the world’s most rich and powerful visited for years, and they’ve all conspired to end democracy in America to cover it up, and have done so successfully. So ya under the table money to an NBA player is nothing to these people.
Exactly. for fuck’s sake half of the Trump’s cabinet seems to have visited the island, which explains a lot. And they’re still covering up.
The fact that we know that our president is a literal pedophile and Republicans aren’t doing anything about it is beyond disgusting.
Elon Musk is presented products and the product teams tell him that he came up with the brilliant genius ideas for them. He goes “yeah yeah nice cool that’s amazing, thank you for your hard work to make my idea a reality” and truly believes he did.
He didn’t even understand what he’d be presented with. Never came up with the ideas.
Billionaires can be impossibly stupid in many things.
Glen Taylor put it in writing we will give him a bigger contract after bird rights are allowed for Joe Smith. I still can’t believe KG career was derailed by Marbury deciding he didn’t want to play with him, the Joe Smith issue, Sprewell deciding he couldn’t feed his family
They need to be punished, I am sick of people getting away with this kinda shit
Silver would have absolutely swept this under the rug if there was even a sliver of plausible deniability, but I think Pablo’s reporting has kind of left him with no other choice at this point.
100% everything he’s done makes it look like he was hoping it would just go away.
I’m really looking forward to how this is going to get pegged on anyone but Ballmer. If they’re targeting Kawhi, the mental gymnastics to blame the person taking the money and not the person paying is going to be amazing
Why not both?? Both at wrong, it’s not like he didn’t know how he was receiving the money
No way in hell the league is letting the golden goose that is Ballmer get into trouble. Him buying the Clippers pushed all NBA franchise values.
Before his purchase the T-Wolves sold for \(550 Million as the last franchise before the Clippers. Ballmer paid \)2 BILLION! Almost 3x the amount…
Ballmer alone net worth value combined is like the next 15 owners, hell Ballmer could buy out the whole league (all 30 teams) and still have roughly \(40-\)50 BILLION Dollars left over…m
It’s unreal.
If they go for him only, Ballmer will need to pay him again for him to not snitch on exactly what was arranged
I watched a Drew Gooden video recently and he showed a bunch of clips about how the ESPN shows have been focusing mostly on Kawhi. Ballmer gets a personal 1 on 1 interview where he defends himself against softball questions, Steven A says how loved Ballmer is in the NBA and how much he respects him, but Kawhi gets the SAS “Brother doesn’t play!” yelling clip for social media clicks.
Long story short, they’ve already started scapegoating him incase Silver ends up having to give a punishment.
Uncle Dennis is more likely to get jailtime than the Clippers are likely to have a pick stripped.
Really I think it comes down to the other 29 owners. Behind the scenes they aren’t going to be happy if this including Ballmer isn’t fully investigated by the NBA lawyers. Silver is going to have to weigh the punishment against what he think will be acceptable to 2⁄3 of the owners or whatever the ratio is that could get Silver fired from his job.
Agreed. We don’t pay money into the nba for them to be doing bullshit like this while we’re all struggling with money because we follow the rules.
Have you thought about not giving them your money? Why should they truly care if this scandal doesn’t hurt their bottom line?
Oh I stopped buying tickets a while ago due to financial constraints. All I do now is watch highlights on youtube for free. They’re not getting any more money from me directly until they do something about this AND fix their awful refereeing
You could stream games for free if you don’t wanna give that up
Good point
Hell yeah!
If the punishment is not severe, this will turn the NBA into pre-NIL college hoops. I’m sick of them getting away with it but it’s gonna bring the house down too
I’m with you, and at this point so is the rest of fucking Earth.
Just make their pick this year jump to top 3 and let them miss out on it so they know how it feels
Hey look, just because it looks like circumvention and everyone involved on the Aspiration side believed it to be circumvention and it perfectly lines up with how we know Kawhi’s camp asked other teams to commit circumvention and there’s no other rational explanation for it other than circumvention doesn’t MAKE it circumvention
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and pays me a billion dollars to say it’s not a duck, then frankly speaking, I don’t see any way that it could possible be a duck.
that’s completely circumstantial!
/s
I didn’t see no gun? Was there a gun of any sorts during these deals?
A pistol? AR-15? Patriot launcher?
If there’s no gun, you have to acquit - Adam Silver.
I know David Samson is having to deal with some truly heartbreaking personal issues outside of being a media personality, but I often find myself wishing Pablo and Amin were sitting 1:1 in these Aspiration investigations. He was such a dick to everyone about everything the entire runtime of this episode, it got grating to listen to.
There is definitely a palpable level of animosity between him and Amin that has been obvious in almost every appearance they’ve made together, glad I’m not the only one who noticed
Have you seen the ones with Samson and John Skipper?
every time john shows emotion or care about another person david spouts some variation of stop acting like you have feelings or care about those beneath you lmfao. it’s like dennis from iasip talking to mac “you remember feelings dude right?” and mac goes “…..yeah i have feelings every day of my life”
It’s weird too because he’s also a deeply anxious person who seems pretty obviously affected by others even though he always says the opposite lol
Samson is a bit of a corporate cunt who also buddies up to Trump. I think a very large part of the animosity stems from that. He doesn’t know what privilege is and kicks down at others lower at the ladder just because he can’t believe they’re not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps
Honestly most of the people in Le Bastards world seem to have some level of animosity towards each other lately, it’s kind of weird. Especially with Samson, although it’s weird because lots of ppl who hate him end up loving him and he kinda jumps between being really nice and a huge dick. It’s pretty funny he got kicked off of Survivor for running his mouth tho lol
I started feeling that more and more and then his reaction to WSJ sports sections shutting down was the nail in the coffin for him imo.
Basically implied that Sports journalism isnt needed / necessary and that its no way connected to billionaires trying to censor / control the media (owned by Bezos)
It’s just like Elon buying out Twitter and changing it.
Just like Tiktok getting bought and changed.
Just like Meta / Instagram selling all your information and controlling the algorithms to brainwash kids
It’s all to control the narrative that is shared amongst Americans
Ya whatever Samson’s good qualities he has the worst political opinion. Basically money justifies anything and corporations/the man are always rights
Had to take a break in the opening minute, when Samson started dissing their presenter. Just a sour ass dude
It’s such a sharp contrast when he’s on. Literally everyone else Pablo has on his show seems like they’re enjoying themselves. I can’t believe Pablo doesn’t know one other former exec who isn’t as miserable to listen to as Samson.
Maybe Pablo could even find one who earned his job in some way other than their daddy buying a team (and destroying baseball in the 8th largest market in North America forever)
Bro is gonna crash out when all this ends up amounting to is a slap on the wrist
I don’t think he’s doing any of this for vindication or punishment
Still going to be annoying to watch a rich POS get given a pass by an incompetent organization
Great show honestly. He’s kind of taken journalism to a new space. I’m not sure if anyone else has done it this way. He’s got the content, stretches it out but keeps it very interesting and very clear, makes sure to abide by journalist standards. And then they add a lot of flair.
Fantastic content and I kinda can’t wait for this Kawhi thing to end so I can properly enjoy the rest of Pablo’s stuff. Right now it’s kinda “oh fuck it’s not about Kawhi UGHHH I NEED MORE KAWHI SHIT”
The last one about the gambling circle is bonkers though.
That’s kinda what Hunter S. Thompson used to do, but he didn’t always cover sports. Though, he did write for Sports Illustrated. He also had a lot more stimulant fueled rants than Pablo lol.
Very sad world when people think investigative journalism = personal vendetta.
The NBA isn’t even investigating Ballmer. It’s all a complete sham
I mean that wording is kind of vague and should always be true. It is not the job of the nba to directly investigate the owners for potential fraudulent activities in a legal sense. The nba can only investigate teams and their associates for breaking the rules of the league itself. There never will be an investigation by the nba directed at an owner for something like cap circumvention or tampering. The only way there will actually be personal consequences for any owner by the nba is a situation like Donald Sterling, where the owner is forced to sell the team.
There never will be an investigation by the nba directed at an owner for something like cap circumvention or tampering
They can’t be criminally prosecuted for it but there are often such investigations. Usually not done by the police but the NBA.
Yeah that’s not why he’s doing this.
Weird take. You think he’s doing this cause he has a personal vendetta? This is what peak investigative journalism is supposed to do. Either lay out all the evidence to force people to be held accountable for their actions or expose how hypocritical the NBA is in enforcing its own rules. Either way the truth has been told.
Exactly. He actually wins no matter what the NBA does.
We all should be crashing out if this ends with a slap on the wrist.
Can’t wait to see how Mark Cuban tries to defend this one
“Yeah, but that’s just a piece of paper”
Whistleblower (under penalty of perjury): Fraud at my company is being committed to circumvent the NBA salary cap!
Mark Cuban: https://blog.nukemberg.com/img/opinion.jpg
Sheesh
…yeah…but guys… we have to address…ummm….tanking. Yeah, yeah, that’s it. Tanking! Ooga booga.
The first post was made by user YujiDomainExpansion
who is a known shill. The initial post was made by him to get ahead of the damning evidence after he has trashed Pablo for years through Reddit post headlines and running spin for the La Clippers. This title is correct and accurately states what happened and what was said unlike Yuji’s post which he says “possibility” in
Another Reddit moment
The Overton window for evidence has been steadily shifted. There is no requirement for a smoking gun. There rarely is one. Most things use the steady accumulation of “tend to show” to reach some kind of standard of confidence that something did or did not occur. The fact that we’ve been reduced to “incontrovertible undisputable inarguable unspinable,” or, “insufficient,” is a triumph for people trying to avoid consequences.
A smoking gun is such a misnomer too. It’s used to describe irrefutable evidence but a smoking gun is itself circumstantial to begin with.
I am also find it hilarious some people here want a video of Ballmer handing Kawai a bag of money that says “circumventing the salary cap” or it’s a circumstantial and should be ignored.
People also seem to want to believe that circumstantial evidence is somehow bad or weak, not knowing what circumstantial evidence actually is.
OJ’s blood being found where Nicole and Ron were stabbed to death is circumstantial. The Golden State Killer leaving his DNA at multiple crime scenes is circumstantial evidence. The Idaho 4 killer leaving the knife sheath with his DNA on it next to a victim is circumstantial evidence.
Most cases are solved with circumstantial evidence and in many ways, it is way better than direct evidence, such as witness identification, which can often be faulty, because our memories are pretty bad. Bad eyewitness testimony is a factor in about 75% of wrongful convictions. https://innocenceproject.org/eyewitness-misidentification/
How do we know that video isnt AI? We need both Ballmer, Kawhi, and Cuban to confirm exactly what happened or else they are innocent because not enough evidence
even if we try to clear that barrier, i actually do think that aspiration paying kawhi (not lebron or curry or someone more famous as a celebrity) more than 10x what RDJ and Leo were getting while he got to do nothing and they actually had to plant trees and make posts and they never mentioned the kawhi partnership once is so beyond unreasonable that it is actually incontrovertible.
the other execs were shocked that aspiration was so bent on giving money to this guy for absolutely no return on that investment, so unless that partnership with kawhi was critical to maintain their relationship with their centibillionaire, there was no reason to pay him at all. no explanation that says they wanted to keep the clippers happy or ballmer happy is complete without the need to pay kawhi for the purposes of cap circumvention.
The Smoking Gun is so hard for the NBA to produce, they can’t take emails, texts, bank records, etc like law enforcement can, they are dependent on leaked info or whatever Ballmer offers them. People act like an internal NBA investigation produces the same evidence as a criminal investigation, and it’s not remotely true.
Can’t wait for ESPN to further bury their journalistic integrity and lead off their show with how Luka is hurting the Lakers over this.
Why was this removed?
Yeah, 404, Silver sent the internet goons out.
For those looking for it: . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtBgPslHYQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtBgPslHYQ8
Why is yours gone too?
What? It still shows for me?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtBgPslHYQ8
Silver is a board member of the Paley Center for Media & the Rockefeller Foundation, he can get whatever he wants taken down from probably anywhere lol
Is the Clippers subreddit still in full-fledged denial mode?
Love that Pablo called out the apologists on reddit at the start with their asinine comments.
Keep simping for billionaires losers.
Smoking gun so hot Ja Morant wants to own 2 of them
I thought he switched to grenades?
It’s just a phase
people with power have learned you can just ignore accountability
SEC rules say that these have to be filed under penalty of perjury. Meaning whoever this whistleblower is, they sincerely believed that the cap circumvention was happening.
don’t worry, if Ballmer’s name comes up in the actual NBA investigation he can always launch a private bombing of some country or other for a distraction…
“Wag the dog” is a popular distraction technique these days.
Want to push something out of the news cycle? Start a war!
Ooooooohhhh baby baby she’s a wild world.
lmao
Pretty hard to try and spin or deny this. Silver seems to be taking a leaf from the Trump book of convenient billionaire impunity.
As in, just ignore the problem, do nothing and no one will be effected in the short term.
Until every owner starts to pervert the cap in more novel and outrageous ways, but who cares about an existential threat like sports betting, streaming fragmentation, unafordable ticketing or in this case, certain owners being able to ignore the highly restrictive second apron system, so long as the consequences are in the future.
In the other post I said the recent Pablo showings were not substantial, I take my words back happily.
But if you ask the clippers subreddit Pablo is doing way too much lmao
So will NBA media still chant ‘no smoking gun’ or will they ignore this entirely?
is that bad
Adam silver still hasn’t done nothing
Video not available?!
Op got the call
why is this deleted lmao😭😭
Is this a smoking gun or an accusation of a smoking gun? As I’m understanding it this isn’t evidence that they did it, this is evidence they were accused of doing it.
The whistleblower said in a legally valid document that the goal was cap circumvention. Aside from uncle dennis saying it, this is a smoking gun
In addition, the other allegations of fraud that the Fed care about (because they don’t care about cap circumvention) were credible/accurate enough for the Feds to investigate and obtain felony convictions.
So the whistleblower is very credible.
“Legally valid document” lmao dude it’s a declaration. You make it under your belief.
Yeah but would they really just throw that into this document under threat of perjury if they weren’t sure? Especially considering that the other stuff must have been credible enough to lead to an investigation that led to jail time?
It is an employee of aspiration who told the federal government that they did this to deal for Kawhi. I don’t believe they are supposed to lie but idk if there is actually any consequence if they do as a whistle blower to the Feds
The consequence is potential prosecution. It is perjury if the whistleblower lies in this complaint
Having the whistleblower emails taped under the chair Adam Silver was just sitting on is just fucking diabolical lol
Sooo happy Pablo is getting vindicated after all of the disrespect he got from Clippers fans in denial
Did the clippers subreddit ban any news related to Pablo and Aspiration? I searched by recent post and comment history and there is NOTHING.
I think there are a couple accounts there that have made it their life mission to defend Ballmer so anytime some Clippers fan posts negatively about this saga they bomb the post.
Don’t fine them give them actual punishment
Banning kawhi for life would only be great for him since he hates playing basketball. Force him to play all 82 games in a season would be a better punishment.
Insane the world we live in where this gets removed because Adam silver throws a hissy fit. This seems bigger than basketball.
Punish them but give them the 5th pick. New twist on the Flagg special.
Adam silver is about to bomb Iran again
Kawhi has to be suspended for a year and Ballmer needs to be suspended for two at least and fined into the sun. Also, Adam silver is starting to look like he may need to leave this league and give it over to somebody who has some integrity opening the floodgates with a gambling and now this shit
The funniest thing about this and something that’s so clippers about everything is they tried to cheat and they still can’t even make an NBA finals
😂😂😂😂
[deleted]
The title on this one is correct
They will find a way to brush thi off and it bothers me to no end. If weby didn’t exist I’d just drop the nba and their rigged league
I don’t know why we’re talking about all this when Luka is clearly running the league with all his complaining.
I imagine that in a couple months , Pablo is going to show the check being handed to kawhi with “salary cap circumvention” in the note
I’m just a lawyer, posting on Reddit, reminding you all that just because something’s in a complaint doesn’t mean it’s true.
Good luck, Sisyphus.
Adam Friedland was right about Pablo
Video unplayable for me
Playoffs about to start and still no action about this. Adam Silver is a spineless bitch.
These guys are the worst criminals ever
Don’t worry, I’ve been reliably told that this is provably false.
Well the league seems like they aren’t gonna do shit, it’s way past the all star break
How has Balmer not pushed Pablo out of a window already?
Poor Raptors could pay him the most to sign a 2019 contract but Kawhi just said NOPE, I’ll just make that same money up by going under the table with the Clippers! Clippers owe numerous draft picks to Raptors for dirty move!
Somehow the Jazz will get fined for this
There it is
Lock him up!! (Not sure who)
Cuban in shambles. Moron
u/TheRealPdGaming any idea why your post was taken down?
How much will they fine the Pacers and Jazz for this one?
We need this guy figuring out why we attacked Iran
830 p.m. PST and the link is gone. Hmmm
Kawhi having his contract voided so he can go play elsewhere is not a punishment, he should receive a lengthy ban
It’s after all-star break, dish out the punishments
Adam silver is always iffy as hell. I’m 10000% sure the lottery is for Dallas for Luka trade. Never seen a more obvious storyline