Sports Media: Pablo Torre & Bomani new ESPN show HIGH NOON Update: They BOTH GONE! Pablo new show on Meadowlark

Side note: I've been thinking about this for awhile, I have not seen Bomani and Pablo together since the ending of their show. Are they not friends anymore? I have seen Domonique Foxworth with both of them since the ending of High Noon; Domonique had been on Bomani's show and he had been Pablo's show. Hmmmmm......a low-key beef no one talks about.
 

Pablo Torre has receipts for Mark Cuban and Adam Silver in Kawhi Leonard scandal​

Story by
FTW Outdoors

a8d567ffe089f305b7325387eea65f1a


Bryan Kalbrosky, For The Win
Thu 18 September 2025 at 10:37 am GMT-4·
4 min read


During the newest episode of his hit podcast "Pablo Torre Finds Out" from Thursday morning, the reporter had fascinating updates about Kawhi Leonard.

Torre has thoroughly investigated alleged salary cap circumvention involving Leonard with Los Angeles Clippers governor Steve Baller through a now bankrupt company called Aspiration.

The league has retained a law firm to conduct an investigation, which could help determine a possible punishment.

Even though Ballmer has maintained he was duped by the company, a timeline of events suggests a damning pattern that is becoming increasingly tough to defend, especially as Torre keeps finding out more.

What did Mark Cuban say about Kawhi Leonard?​

The short answer to this question: A lot.

After the longtime Mavericks governor sold a majority stake in the franchise and lost control of basketball operations, his role with the team changed significantly. He is still a minority owner of the team, though, and has loudly voiced his support for Ballmer through this controversy.

Cuban has appeared on a podcast with Torre. He also went on the "Road Trippin'" podcast with Kendrick Perkins, Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye, and Allie Clifton. He has posted about this allegation incessantly on social media, including this post:

"While Pablo is focusing on the $2m and $50m from Wong/Ballmer, he didn’t really get into the millions of dollars in carbon credits that were purchased by the clips and the arena.

I bring this up because it would have been a lot easier and a lot safer, if he was trying to circumvent the CBA to just buy more carbon credits. They were almost all margin, as Pablo correctly pointed out, so they would have created the cash immediately to pay KL2. Which is what it appears he did with other companies to create the appearance of real revenue."
Because the company charged five to ten times more than cost, the margins were incredibly favorable for Aspiration whenever their business was actually used.


This content is not available due to your privacy preferences.
Update your settings here to see it.
However, as noted by Torre, that is exactly what the Clippers did.

The Clippers pre-paid for nearly $21 million in carbon offsets on June 14, 2022.

This helped Aspiration reach fundraising efforts two weeks before Leonard's first payment was due and brought the total the Clippers paid in carbon emission credits to at least $56 million.

Effectively, based on this reporting, the Clippers sent Aspiration $118 million in 18 months.

Yikes!

What has Adam Silver said about Kawhi Leonard?​

Silver has also spoken about this incident on multiple occasions.

During a press conference following the NBA's Board of Governors meeting, NBA commissioner Adam Silver emphasized that the Clippers are innocent until proven guilty. He also added that he had "never heard" of the company Aspiration before the podcast released.


This content is not available due to your privacy preferences.
Update your settings here to see it.
But in September 2021, the Clippers announced a partnership agreement worth more than $300 million with Aspiration.

In the NBA, per Torre, any partnership more than $300 million is considered a "founding sponsorship deal" and requires approval by the league.


This content is not available due to your privacy preferences.
Update your settings here to see it.
When he was asked about this, here is what Silver said:

"If I said I never heard of it, I meant in the context of the accusations here. I certainly was aware of the brand but didn't know anything about this."
This is getting tougher to ignore considering Torre seems to have receipts for everything.
 

Mark Cuban’s comments dig a deeper hole for Steve Ballmer in cap circumvention saga​

Jason Fitz·Caroline Fenton·Tom Haberstroh
Thu, September 18, 2025 at 9:40 AM EDT

Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz and Caroline Fenton are joined by The Big Number’s Tom Haberstroh to discuss Pablo Torre’s latest reporting in the Kawhi Leonard and Los Angeles Clippers saga.

Video Transcript​

What does the newest reporting actually mean?

Well, it's an over an hour long episode, so I'll try to truncate that into this interview.

Here, but I will tell you, you have to watch the whole thing because it really is an unbelievable report from Pablo Torre finds out.

He is talking to Dan Le Batard from Meadowlark Media, and they are acting out a deposition transcript that Pablo Torre had found out, that he had discovered and he was able to find document after document after document.

That shows more money, over $100 million, was coming from Steve Ballmer and the Clippers, and it's becoming increasingly hard to see any other explanation based on Pablo's reporting today that Steve Ballmer didn't just put in $50 million into this company, but over $110 million as this company was circling down the drain; Aspiration was circling down the drain.

Pablo reported that in this deposition sit-down, the transcript that he'd uncovered on a related lawsuit of a Clover institutional, uh, uh, financial institution that was suing the, co-founder of Aspiration.

He had discovered that at least 19 financial institutions were staying away from Aspiration.

So, we don't want to have anything to do with this company.

We are not sending in more money into this Aspiration company.

And yet, as Pablo finds out and reported, Steve Ballmer and Dennis Wong, the co-owner of the LA Clippers, came in, parachuted in and said, here's more money.

Here's more money.

So why were all of these institutions, financial institutions, looking at this Aspiration company and saying, why would we touch them?

Why would we invest more money in this company?

Why, why did KPMG stop auditing this company?

They resigned as the auditor of this company, and yet here's Steve Ballmer and a co-owner of the Clippers saying, hey, we'll get you the money you need.

We'll get you more money.

And so the question hanging all over this is, if this wasn't cap circumvention.

Why is everything so secretive?

As the Aspiration co-founder is under deposition, under oath in this lawsuit, he was looking at his attorney and looking to see as soon as they started asking about the nature of Steve Ballmer's investment into Aspiration, he looked at his attorney and his attorney said, don't look at me.

Hmm.

As if to say, you, you answer the question: what is the nature of Steve Ballmer's relationship and investment into the company around 2022, 2023?

And Joe Sandberg, in this deposition that was brought to light by Pablo Torre's reporting, incredible reporting, pled the Fifth.

The co-founder of Aspiration, when asked under oath about the nature of these investments from Steve Ballmer and the Clippers, suddenly said, I plead the Fifth.

Over the weekend, as Pablo pointed out, there were almost 100 tweets, thousands and thousands of words that Mark Cuban had written in defense of Steve Ballmer, and within those tweets, he laid it out pretty explicitly.

Hey, if this was really cap invention, and I'm paraphrasing here, if this was really cap in circumvention.

Then why do you think Steve Ballmer would have invested more money and used these carbon credits to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard if this was truly a circumvention?

And Pablo was like, as you said, Caroline was like, let's go see.

And he uncovered more money.

Just that, more money that lines up with the time schedule of Kawhi Leonard, and so it does appear that without Mark Cuban prodding and laying out the blueprints for cap circumvention and saying, hey, if this really was something fishy, and this was breaking the rules, wouldn't you think they would have done it this way?

And that's exactly what Pablo found out.
 
Back
Top