An investigation, a roundtable, and a stunning tournament upset — oh my! Even though the Milano Cortina Olympics have wrapped, the sports world is still turning, and sometimes for the worse.
Contrarian friend Pablo Torre, Host of Pablo Torre Finds Out, stops by to update Jen on the fraud scandal plaguing the Los Angeles Clippers. The ongoing investigation recently revealed that two whistleblowers came forward with information on the Clippers’ circumvention scheme three years ago. Torre and Jen also dive in to Adam Silver’s public appearance at last week’s White House college sports roundtable — spoiler alert, it was a circus. Of course, the two also review the upsets during the Arnold Palmer Golf tournament and the Tennis Pro championships.
Pablo Torre is an American sportswriter, podcaster, and television host. He contributes to various programs at ESPN, including Pardon The Interruption and Around The Horn. Keep up with Pablo on his Substack and podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out .
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, editor-in-Chief at The Contrarian. If it’s Monday, it must be Pablo Torre. Pablo, welcome!
Pablo Torre
Jen, I come to you from a park in Manhattan where it is something resembling spring.
Jen Rubin
Delights. It is really lovely. It’s nice to see you out, no longer with the white background.
Pablo Torre
That’s right.
Jen Rubin
I suggest you’re in the middle of a blizzard, so…
Pablo Torre
Or in an asylum, which also.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Pablo Torre
how I feel lately. That’s true.
Jen Rubin
That too. I feel that way most of the day. So, let’s talk about your ongoing investigation into the Clippers. It seems that there was an SEC whistleblower complaint about the same issue that you’ve been investigating. Talk to us about that.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, so this is an enormous development in the story. Something that people who remain doubters of my reporting have demanded is proof that this was not simply something that I grafted in retrospect onto a convenient series of dots that I connected using the NBA context. And what this document shows, and this is a confidential, a heretofore confidential whistleblower report submitted with a TCR number to the SEC in March of 2023, Jen. So this is years before I ever heard of the company Aspiration, actually. This, in fact, was the confidential whistleblower report that ignited the federal government’s investigation. of aspiration, which resulted successfully in the prosecution and conviction, the guilty pleas, of the co-founder of the company, Joe Sandberg, and one of his board members, Ibrahim Al-Husseini. And in this whistleblower report, two Aspiration employees attested in clear, explicit language, in writing, in a submission to the head of the whistleblower office at the SEC, that This was a cap circumvention scheme for Kawhi Leonard, in part. It is said there with no ambiguity. This was something, this carbon credit scheme was used to pay Kawhi Leonard to circumvent the salary cap of the Los Angeles Clippers, and it was disguised as an organic marketing agreement. And for those who don’t know, a whistleblower report like this is not merely confidential under these circumstances, it’s also submitted under penalty of perjury.
Jen Rubin
Right.
Pablo Torre
And so, for them to do this, in March of 23, my episode, the first one, that was now part 9 that I did, with this report in it, Part 1 was in September of 25. In March of 23, this is when these people submitted this to the federal government, and they, by the way. are still considered credible, I am told. by those who investigated this story for the federal government, and also the SEC’s investigation into aspiration is not over yet. It is an ongoing investigation. So all of this is news that I think everybody who’s been monitoring this story could use.
Jen Rubin
Are you surprised that this happened 2 years before you were looking into the story? It’s really remarkable.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I mean, there have been rumors for a long time that there were whistleblowers inside of Aspiration because the way the government investigated was with the speed and specificity that was clearly, derived from internal knowledge, from a pure logical basis, right? How did the government go from spring of 23 into arrests and prosecutions and guilty pleas? So I wasn’t surprised on that level. What I was surprised by, though, was the clarity and prominence of the Clippers and Capsar Convention being mentioned in it. Which is, again, and I say this as the guy who broke the story. Like, I was familiar, of course, with the word inside of aspiration. I have 9 sources telling me this. I had that entering Part 9 of the story, but to have it in writing spelled out so clearly, beyond a shadow of a doubt in the eyes of the people who are responsible for the government investigation. That’s where even I, who… You might imagine are quite numb. I am quite numb was like, oh, holy, holy, holy bleep. Like, this is…
Jen Rubin
Yes. It’s right here. No kidding. No kidding. Has the NBA, have the Clippers, have Mark Cuban commented on this?
Pablo Torre
So, nothing for Mark Cuban in many moons, and I… encourage and implore, in fact. Some, some… something from his side of the aisle, right, as the eminent defender of Team Balmer. The Clippers have said, and we go to them for comment on everything, every time we go to them for comment, they say that they’re fully cooperative with the NBA’s investigation, which we’ve talked about before, Jen, on your program, and… they will defer to the investigators, so nothing from them. The NBA did not respond in time for comment, but I will say that the way that I revealed this was that the Sloan Sports Conference in Boston over the weekend. And for those that don’t know, this is a conversation full of sports power brokers. Owners, GMs, executives, literally, President Obama in 2018 was a keynote speaker. It’s that kind of a place. And the stage we did it on, which was live, it’s on our YouTube channel, you can see it, live without a safety net. We did it hours after Adam Silver, the commissioner of the MBA, was himself a speaker at the conference. And so. we did it in front of an audience, I think it’s worth mentioning, that had at least one NBA owner in it, that I had noticed in the crowd, multiple league executives, and so… Why am I staying on this story even though I believe that I’d proven the substance of my reporting, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a long, long time ago, it’s because Accountability, I’ve learned, in the larger contexts that we live in, politics and sports colliding as always. It does not merely require evidence, it requires public attention.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Pablo Torre
Because it’s so easy, as anybody who covers this administration knows, to just let things fall through the cracks. We move on to the next thing. And I think it was… poetic, in a dark way, that Adam Silver, after getting off the stage at the Sloan Sports Conference, went right onto what I presume must have been a private jet. Because he was then, by 4pm Eastern, at the White House, meeting with Donald Trump for the college sports… council gathering. Yes. That’s where Adam Silver went, right after getting off stage at this conference that I was at. He went to go meet with Donald Trump. And so. Again, it’s all a bit on the nose in that way, how all of this was happening on that same day, but accountability and federal government investigation and sports as this vector for people to contemplate integrity. It was all present over the weekend.
Jen Rubin
I am thinking it’s gonna be awfully hard for the NBA, after all this, to say, oh no, never mind. It may be that other teams are doing shenanigans, and they don’t really like probing this deeply. To simply ignore this, to shove it under the rug at this point, to say there’s no there there, that seems increasingly untenable for Adam Silver and the NBA.
Pablo Torre
And that’s… and that’s why I continue to report, is that… and look, a lot of my perspective on this, you know, it’s informed by those that I interview, of course. Not just around the league, but continually still. employees of Aspiration. Something that they told me, I had 5 former employees of Aspiration, who told me something that kind of set me back a bit, opened my eyes, which was that when they were interviewed by Wachtell Lipton, who, as you know, a premier white shoe law firm, one of the best in the world, the NBA’s chosen outside investigators. These 5 former Aspiration employees told me that Wachtell Lipton did not ask them about Steve Ballmer directly. They didn’t mention his name in questions. And… When you hear that, it turns out, according to these five sources, it confirms for them, several concerns and fears about what is the league trying to accomplish here. Because, of course, an outside investigator, an outside counsel. and this is now due to… what I’m about to say is due to the reporting I’ve done around this. you know, One of their big incentives is, we want to be a repeat business for the MBA. We want to signal that in the course of how we do our jobs, which is, of course, rigorously and with professionalism, sure, but with a certain scope that is desired by our client. And you know this, Jen. The scope that is directed to you by your client is not some suggestion, it’s kind of the whole point. And that’s why it was so eye-opening.
Jen Rubin
Exactly. You know what it reminds me of? Completely different context, but it reminds me when, now, Justice Kavanaugh was investigated, and the White House gave very strict limitations on who the FBI was supposed to question, because you never ask a question you don’t know the answer to, and the answer you don’t want. And so if they never ask about Ballmer, then they can go back and say, no one ever said anything about Ballmer. Which is really pretty disingenuous if that’s the way they’re gonna go.
Pablo Torre
And that’s why, when it comes to a whistleblower report that exists in this way, These are not just… objections I have abstractly. These are very concrete questions about what do you guys want to find out? Because I’m over here. after 7 months of episodes, publishing this, this, this, and this, and I’m always curious, what are they going to publish on their end?
Jen Rubin
Exactly. Well, they are taking their time, and I’m going to be fascinating… it’s going to be fascinating to see what they’re up to. Since you mentioned it, let me talk about the roundtable at the White House. Did anything come out of this thing?
Pablo Torre
There was one… there was… it was… there was sort of, like, an Idiocracies King Arthur and the Round Table dynamic, right? 50 people in this giant, rectangular… sort of, arrangement of chairs and microphones. So many… Adam Silver, I don’t think, said a single thing. He was merely photographed shaking hands with Howard Lutnik, which is, you know, you gotta get one of those at this point in American history before it’s too late. I want to make sure you’re on the record shaking hands with that guy. But no, it was a farce. I mean, there was one current or former athlete, and it was a former athlete, Charlie Ward, who was… listed. As a… as a participant. The rest of it was a bunch of bold-faced names and random people, frankly, and Donald Trump simply complained about things that he has no idea about. He was mischaracterizing how it is that NIL came to be. He was totally butchering the premise of the Alston decision at the Supreme Court, which unleashed and changed college sports history because now it turned out, oh my god, we gotta pay these guys, we owe back pay to these guys. And so various conference commissioners, had to sort of correct him gently in that way that you have to with the president, of like. Not embarrassing him, but also, like, needing to say the thing. Because it’s so absurd if he just totally mischaracterizes the thing that everybody else in the room knows. So it was, it was a circus in ways that are deeply familiar to anybody who’s seen any press conference he’s held in the past.
Jen Rubin
it’s kind of like the Board of Peace. Yes. So, he has a bunch of people, he wants to be seen as the big man on campus. He says a bunch of outrageous things. No one really wants to, as you say, embarrass or confront him, but the… and you say what the point is? The point is his getting a picture with all of these people, and feeling like he’s the cool kid, and he gets to meet all of these celebrities. And that’s kind of pathetic for the President of the United States, my goodness.
Pablo Torre
Can I just venture one more thing, because you’re totally right about that. It’s also pathetic for everybody who showed up.
Jen Rubin
Yes, absolutely.
Pablo Torre
And that’s where I’m like… and I get it, right? The transactionality and corruption of this administration means that there might be favors to be won by showing up. I get that. I am merely wondering when they will realize that they are also adults in charge of businesses that have influence.
Jen Rubin
in this room.
Pablo Torre
country. Like… Why be complicit with this insanity?
Jen Rubin
Exactly, exactly. And you want them to have a little self-respect, you know?
Pablo Torre
a little.
Jen Rubin
Like, just a little bit. And you’re right. Because they live in fear that not showing up means that either they’ll miss out on some goodies, or that they’ll get punished. They show up, they then reinforce this cycle of sycophancy, and Donald Trump keeps going on and demanding meetings with all sorts of people. Now, the good thing is, nothing will come of this. So, the good thing is that he probably has no idea what, if anything, he wants to do, and doesn’t really care, and the point of the meeting was to have the meeting, so probably he won’t muck things up even more. But you never know. We’ll see what he comes out with.
Pablo Torre
I think that’s right.
Jen Rubin
I want to switch to actual sports, because we had a golf tournament this weekend that was so delightful. This was the Arnold Palmer Golf Tournament, and of course, Arnold Palmer has a place in golf history that’s really kind of second to none. He’s revered as a person, as a sports figure, as a… champion, and so every year they had this tournament. Tigers won it, like, 97 times, and of course, all the top golfers, arrived. Well, we had a leader who was leading throughout the tournament until he wasn’t, and this was a classic Final round of golf. We had Akshab, Bahati, Bahatiya, excuse me, who was trailing by, like, 5 strokes, and he just kept going and going, and birdie after birdie. What was fascinating is he had one screw-up. put them all in the water, got a bogey, but it didn’t unravel. And that’s what was the most impressive to me. What did you think watching this, and what was your impression of this guy who just seemed unflappable? A nice guy. Uncloppable.
Pablo Torre
I’ll be very honest, I had no sense of this guy.
Jen Rubin
yeah.
Pablo Torre
before, I was like, okay, there’s a playoff, okay, this guy’s about to win $4 million out of his $20 million purse, and he’s fending off, in Daniel Berger, you know, on that first extra hole.
Jen Rubin
you know, Daniel Berger’s 3-putting from 106 feet to make bogey, and meanwhile.
Pablo Torre
The thing, I mean… I will never become numb as I wonder, like, what am I never gonna be surprised by as I do reporting and cover sports? A golf playoff… I… I start flop sweating when I’m watching.
Jen Rubin
These guys. Yes!
Pablo Torre
Under pressure.
Jen Rubin
I’m nervous for them.
Pablo Torre
Yes! And so, the idea that this… and again, the purse… sometimes, you know, I say this in other contexts, but follow the money. There’s $20 million on the line here, $4 million for the first place finisher. So, the fact that my lasting memory of Bhatia is this performance, it’s like, guess what? You just got stamped as a clutch performer in the eyes of a mainstream audience that had never possibly heard of you before.
Jen Rubin
And poor Shane Larry, this happened the week after he completely collapsed because he had one double bogey, and then another double bogey. It’s so easy in golf to become just completely unwound. One minute you’re on top of the world, and the second minute, you’re second-guessing everything that you did. And I guess the great athletes are able to compartmentalize. Had it off before… things go downhill fast. But it really was a remarkable performance, and such a beautiful course, too. This is why you love it. People say you love watching golf? Yes, I love watching golf, because it’s exciting, it’s something that we can only dream of that level of expertise, and it’s beautiful. It really is.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, and golf’s kind of a… golf… I mean, I know you want to talk about some tennis, too. Golf and tennis are kind of also, like, travel shows.
Jen Rubin
You know? Frankly, they go.
Pablo Torre
You admire, you admire the surroundings as well.
Jen Rubin
That is exactly right. And speaking of tennis, the pros, both men and women, and I love these combined tournaments, are in Indian Wells, in the desert, California, in the winter. Frankly, Easterners always underdress because it’s very cold at night in the desert, but that’s another story. It’s also very windy, which freaks out a lot of players. Actually, it got under Djokovic’s skin a little bit, although he managed to come back. This has been such a wonderful tournament, where you really realize how… Diverse the tennis community is, how international, and it is that kind of cliche that on any given day, someone can beat someone else. Now, I’ll give you an example. Ben Shelton. Top 10 player. Granted, he was not feeling well. There’s a flu going around, and someone needs to really Lysol these you know, rooms, because apparently this happens all the time in the tennis tournament, that everyone’s in the same place and everyone gets sick. But, be that as it may. Not feeling well, but he got out there against a guy, Lerner Tien. whose parents were refugees. He is named Learned because one of his parents is a teacher, and his sister is named Justice. This is how patriotic his parents are. So, great family story. He has been a journeyman, working his way up, and he is coached by Michael Chen. And so it’s this great generational story of a young American who was revered as a tennis player. at the top, top of the game, but clearly one of America’s best tennis players. He is now coaching this young kid, and he just hung in there, and sure enough, in 3 sets, he beat Ben Shelton. could say, you know, he wasn’t at his best, all the rest of it, but it’s… these are the great, kind of, stories of sports that you love, and, unfortunately, you also had, kind of, a little bit of, you know, gosh, it happened again. Coco had to retire.
Pablo Torre
Yep.
Jen Rubin
you know, aren’t. And you kind of wonder, is she gonna get to be her best? Is this a physical issue? Is this a mental issue? What’s your read on her and her team? She’s switched coaches, she doesn’t seem to have been able to put it all together since that great win at the U.S. Open a couple years ago.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I have two thoughts. One is that every… I mean, she’s… Among even the young stars, quite young, when she first.
Jen Rubin
debut.
Pablo Torre
Right? And so, it’s worth reminding ourselves that all of these, so many of these athletes, I should say, are child stars, as well as professional athletes, and in that, there’s a particular psychological stew, so that’s the one thing. But the second thing, speaking to the global village that sports can be, I mean, I’ll tell you, like, my dad, texts me about every single Filipino athlete.
Jen Rubin
Yes, oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!
Pablo Torre
Yeah, so Alex Ayal, just her becoming the first Filipino to make it to the round of 16 at Indian Wells, like, I’m getting texts from my dad! Like, it’s incredible. It’s incredible. So, you know, as much as Coco Goff, something to monitor. I am… I am on the Alex Yala, train, as much as anybody.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And she has just gotten such a cult following, in part because, I guess, there haven’t been a lot of Filipino dentist stars, and in part because she’s just such a winning young lady, and she, you know, listen, it matters a woman’s dance. She’s beautiful, she’s graceful, she’s, absolutely gracious, but she has really developed this following, and the Filipino crowds are following her. Your father is not alone in this.
Pablo Torre
No, no, it is, it is. If my… if the family members on my group chat are a representative statistical sample, she has a long and profitable marketing career all around the world in front of her, yes.
Jen Rubin
Exactly, and, you know, it’s, it is interesting that… people think, oh, you know, tennis, well, it’s kind of been American-dominated sports, but you have these stars who catch on, whether it’s Brazil, whether it’s Italy, and these fans travel around the world for them. The Brazilian fans are going night, you know, nuts, because they have this young kid who has caught fire, who won, he beat, Tommy Paul, and, you know, again. Again, it’s this great kind of… international rooting sport, and I guess the thing about tennis that I love is, okay, one guy loses, that’s okay, there’s another match over there that’s just as good. You know, it’s not a linear path. There are so many other things to be watching, which is why tennis tournaments are great to go to.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, you know, and then it’s just warm enough for me to now look ahead to, man, the U.S. Open’s gonna be around the corner soon, at some point, it’s gonna be summer in New York, all that stuff. But I was just reminded, as you were saying that, yeah, look, tennis is not merely a travel show, it’s also kind of a music festival. You show up, and it’s like, oh, look, all these bands are here! You get just, like, bop between all these different acts.
Jen Rubin
Yes! And it’s great! Exactly. And you get to go backstage and watch them practice, too!
Pablo Torre
That’s ridiculous.
Jen Rubin
That’s a whole lot of coffee.
Pablo Torre
Yes, yes, warm-ups are fun as well, yeah.
Jen Rubin
So, I hope you’re gonna spend the rest of the afternoon outside, get some rays, and have a hot dog, ice cream, relax. It’s one of those days in New York where, you know, you don’t get a lot of them, but perfect spring days. You just want to bottle them, you know?
Pablo Torre
Yeah, you know what? What it feels like is… is… it’s like we earned it, you know?
Jen Rubin
And so, as an East Coaster… Yes!
Pablo Torre
On the East Coast, and as you know, as I assume snow is still dotting the ground somewhere around the DC DMV area. It’s just a reminder that What we don’t get in the perpetual sunshine of Los Angeles, we do make up for in the almost Protestant work ethic of knowing, you know what, we deserve this.
Jen Rubin
This is so true! I made it through winter, exactly. And those Southern Californians are a bunch of sissies, because they don’t.
Pablo Torre
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. It’s character building.
Jen Rubin
Exactly, exactly. We know how to shovel, they don’t. Pablo, it is always great to speak with you, and I continue to be not amazed at this point, because you are a remarkable person, but so, delighted that your reporting expertise again and again gets reinforced by more real-world evidence, and it’s important that you keep doing what you’re doing. We in independent media have to keep the other guys honest, so there you go. Yeah, no… the independent media thing, Jen, I think about you often in this context, you know.
Pablo Torre
We can do things that more traditional outlets won’t or can’t, and so…
Jen Rubin
It’s just… one of the great delights in my life as a journalist is really understanding the power that independent journalism can have. It does. It absolutely is. Well, thank you, enjoy the raise, and we’ll see you next week. Take care. Bye-bye.
Pablo Torre
See you then.
