It may not be Monday, but there’s no way we’d skip talking sports with Pablo Torre, Pablo Torre Finds Out, this week. Today, Pablo updates Jen on the new civil lawsuit filed against Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer by 11 Aspiration investors.
The pair also discuss Pablo’s interview with NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul (who’s up for reelection) about their most traumatic sports memory. Finally, Jen and Pablo cover the L.A. Dodgers’ stunning World Series victory against the Toronto Blue Jays.
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 transcript has been edited slightly for formatting.
Jen Rubin
Hi, it’s Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. I usually say, if it’s Monday, it must be Pablo Torre, but it’s actually Tuesday, and it’s Pablo Torre. So welcome, Pablo.
Pablo Torre
That’s the kind of week it is, Jen. It’s upside down, Tuesdays or Mondays, who knows when we are, where we are anymore.
Jen Rubin
Exactly, exactly. Let’s start with a lawsuit that was filed against Steve Ballmer that sounds an awful lot like what you’ve been reporting about the effort to avoid the spending gap. Tell us about that.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, so, I reported this last night. Steve Ballmer has been sued by 11 Aspiration investors who allege salary caps for convention for Kawhi Leonard, and they go on to detail in very granular phrasing that, they allege that Steve Ballmer was investing in the company to secretly funnel millions of dollars to star NBA player Kawhi Leonard.
And I’ll give you the, the legal thrust of why this is a lawsuit, and it’s a civil suit, of course, but they allege that Ballmer was, quote, complicit in and aided and abetted co-founder Joe Sandberg, that’s the co-founder of Aspiration, co-founder Joe Joe Sanberg’s fraud for his own self-serving purposes.
And the investors allege that they would, quote, not have invested and or kept their investment and aspiration if Ballmer and Sanberg had disclosed the true nature of Ballmer’s investment, end quote. Which is all to say that this deal with Kawhi Leonard, this no-show job I’ve gone on and on about, in the various episodes I’ve done and the conversations we’ve had it was, again, to be very clear, secret. It was never announced. And so, these investors are saying that if we knew that this was part of the story, then we would not have invested in this company, because Steve Ballmer, as they make clear in the complaint, was a key part of the legitimacy of this company. He was this, anchor tenant, this anchor investor who brought real money in, and these investors are people with money who lost money in ways that they are seeking redress for.
Jen Rubin
I’m curious, to what extent they relied entirely on your reporting. Did you learn anything new in the lawsuit? Are there any allegations in there that you hadn’t covered in some fashion or another?
Pablo Torre
I mean, it’s hard to surprise me at this point. And so, what I will say is that in my examination of the suit, there are details that I was not familiar with when it came to the perspective of investors, right? My focus in my investigation, the multi-part series, has been the employees, the former and current employees of this company. And so now we’re swinging the camera around to the people who had actually put money in. And so, in terms of the Kawhi Leonard capture convention scheme that they allege that I have reported ,that’s all quite familiar to me.
What is different and, I think, quite notable, is that here you have something that I had heard but not quite explicitly reported, which is that there are people who relied on Ballmer’s diligence as their reason for deeming the water to be safe and the secrecy of the deal is the thing that I think, caused them to re-evaluate, okay, hold on, I’m not merely suing Joe Sandberg, and this is a lawsuit also against Joe Sanberg, but it is now worthy of an amendment to include Ballmer himself. And so on that front, that is where we are getting into parts of the story that I have, frankly, left, until now, and I look forward to continuing to examine it.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Now, the wonderful thing about civil litigation is something called discovery. They will get to take his deposition under oath. They will get to get documents, they will get answers under oath, they will get to depose other people who are at the heart of this. It’s gonna be very hard now for the NBA to shove this under the rug, that there is a separate litigation process that’s going to probably uncover every scrap of paper and take a deposition under oath from all of the major players.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I mean, look, it’s an interesting thing to do this reporting while simultaneously doing the reporting we’ve been doing into a separate scandal with the NBA, with NBA betting and these poker games. And, of course, the law firm that the NBA trusted to investigate the NBA betting scandal, Terry Rozier, the player, the active player in particular. has been Wachtell Lipton. Wachtell Lipton is, of course, the same firm they are using to investigate this. The difference has been, the federal government has been a check on Wachtell and the NBA’s investigation in the poker and gambling scandals, because, of course, the government has subpoena power, of course the government is the government. And whatever the NBA and Wachtell chose to do in that investigation, there was another investigator, the government, that was going to be able to come over the top and say, actually, here are two indictments, here are the figures, here are the allegations.
In this case, the check, so to speak, on, like, who’s trying to find the truth in these stories, with Aspiration, the Clippers, Steve Ballmer, and Kawhi Leonard—It has been me. And so now, here you have, through the process of discovery, should it get to that point, you have another legal mechanism to prevent it just being a journalist versus this high-powered law firm and the NBA investigating itself. Now you have 11 investors who are seeking to use the legal system to pry open, through discovery, a bunch of things that I have not been able to see before, because as you may suspect, I also do not have subpoena power, as much as I fantasize about it sometimes.
Jen Rubin
You have the power of the microphone, though, which is almost as great. It will be interesting to see whether the NBA continues their investigation against Ballmer, or they say, you know, we can’t really go any further, because there’s this civil lawsuit, and they’re not going to talk to me so long as the lawsuit is pending. It’s going to be very interesting to see how much they are willing to continue independently, and how much they now stand back and say ‘we wish we could investigate, but we really can’t.’ Do you have any sense of what that’s going to look like going forward?'
Pablo Torre
You know, I do want to give, you know, a hypothetical sort of, view of this, which is that, sure, if you’re the NBA and you’re Wachtell, you’re thinking to yourselves, okay, we can ask, everybody for their phones, documentation, emails, all that stuff. Will they give it to us? Mileage varies depending on the person and their incentives. Mileage varies, by the way, if they’re an NBA employee versus merely a random person who happened to work for a company that you have no, again, legal authority over, right? So that’s the trick. It’s always been the trick of doing these quote-unquote outside investigations, which are themselves, I would say, conflicted premises because, of course, you’re hiring a firm to investigate you, effectively, and you want to also, as that firm now, want to be hired back to do more of these things. Wachtell is a repeat law firm being hired by the NBA for lots of things, as just recently mentioned.
So, in terms of what they could say, to say, we gotta kick this can even further down the road. Frankly, I have always anticipated that the can is getting kicked as far down the road as humanly possible. And Adam Silver, the commissioner, has already said, we are looking ahead to really the end of the season for a potential verdict, so to speak, in the Wachtell investigation. This case, though, what it does do is I think it must widen the scope of what you are now looking into. Here you have, in a lawsuit, 11 investors, who I presume you might want to reach out to, or at the very least, you have thoughts that occur to you, when it comes to, hmm what’s going on here? How messy is this? How legitimate are the reports that I’ve been making? Well, now you have 11 investors who are saying, “this is quite meaningful to us.” And of course, mileage varies on whether you believe someone’s suing someone else in civil court. All fair game, all something that Wachtell, of course, as one of the best law firms in America, is quite used to, but it does, I think extend the scope and the timeline of what they probably started off looking into.
Jen Rubin
Got it.
Let’s shift gears into your recent experience with two very prominent New York politicians. We are recording this on Tuesday afternoon, so we don’t know if Mr. Mamdani is going to be elected mayor. Looks like that’s going to be the likely outcome. Governor Hochul, of course, is up for re-election as well. What were you doing? And what did you guys talk about? What did you find out about their sports interests?
Pablo Torre
Yeah, so one of my ongoing fascinations has been, why is the Democratic Party as a concept so bad when it comes to using sports in a way that feels credible politically? And so, part of that acid test is merely, like, are you talking to and running politicians who know anything about sports?
And so, this was, an afternoon in Astoria, Queens. The Chiefs were playing the Bills, the biggest game on the NFL schedule, this past weekend, I dare say. And, Governor Hochul and Zohran Mamdani were watching the Bills game together at Murphy’s Bar, which is an institution in Queens, a die-hard Bills Bar, the foremost Bills Bar, I think, in New York City. A great place. And what I wanted to do was grab 5 minutes of their time in the end. I would have taken more, but I got 5 minutes. Understandable, this was, you know, almost the eve of Election Day. And I want to ask them about their sports fandom. And just see what they would say. And the test, I gotta say, like, on some level, if you’re an actual sports fan, you’re ready for the question I led with, which is, what is your most traumatic memory as a sports fan? And we all, immediately, we all can flash back to whatever that is. And, you know, watching Kathy Hochul, who I had never met before, but watching her close her eyes and describe, of course, Scott Norwood going wide right, the Bills kicker, in the Super Bowl, losing in a way that became quite familiar and traumatically familiar to Buffalo, the city, and the fan base. That was quite real, you know? And so, look, it’s just… it’s just funny for me to get to hear a politician, I think, in her case, be the most likable and persuasive version of herself by being asked a question that has to do with sports.
Jen Rubin
Exactly.
Pablo Torre
That was my scouting report, and Zohran Mamdani, by the way, in this setting, had the opportunity to gin up some answer, because I had no idea what he was gonna say. He had the opportunity to gin up some answer about, like, a football, an NFL game, or a basketball game, or a baseball game, but he said a story that also, I think, would have passed the lie detector test, because he told a story about going to the World Cup and watching a game that I think most Americans would not be familiar with, but is a real sporting event experience.
It was a real answer that I also found persuasive and true to who he is. And so, the whole thing about being a sports fan, we talk about this all the time, like, why do we talk about sports not merely because it’s, whatever, this vector of political potential, it’s also because we care about it. And for them, they chose the things they care about, and I just think that’s a useful case study in how to answer questions about sports.
Jen Rubin
I’m curious that neither one of them picked up on the fifth inning of the World Series last year.
Pablo Torre
They maybe saw the thought bubble above the interviewer’s head, because all I was doing was watching Garrett Cole not cover first base.
Jen Rubin
So, is your conclusion that at least for these two politicians, they should do more sports talk, they should be more, kind of, out there in their sharing of the games and the love of sports?
Pablo Torre
I just think if you are actually comfortable thinking and… I mean, not even thinking, if you’re comfortable feeling sports. Like, you actually enjoy it, you know, you can share your memories of it. Look, this is not… as always, there’s this test of, like… as we’ve talked about before, like, Trump fails this all the time, J.D. Vance fails this all the time, they like to perform, like, we’re real American sports fans, and I find it deeply inauthentic. In this case, I think that if you like sports, and I watch them just like, you know, again.
Sports, to be very clear, I want to be cynical about this too, of course politicians should want to be involved in sports, Trump and his administration is all over sports. The thing for me that’s baffling is why it’s just been this competitive advantage that’s been surrendered by the left. And in that way, if you can find a candidate, a politician who actually can relate to normal people, and I guarantee you, at the Bills Bar in Astoria, Queens, it’s not the woke left ivory tower, it’s a bunch of people in Queens who like the NFL, You’re gonna be able to just access people and do a very basic thing, which is seem three-dimensional and relatable by doing what might amount to, if you’re an actual sports fan, the least. And so, I don’t think it’s that hard, as long as you’re not needing to pretend, and they did not seem like they were being media coached to talk about Scott Norwood in the World Cup.
Jen Rubin
Right, and that is the key. If you’re gonna do it, you better not fake it, because that’ll come across.
Pablo Torre
Yes, we can smell that.
Jen Rubin
Yes, exactly. So, we now reach the part of our conversation where I get to say, oh my god, that World Series… the entire series. I mean, you could look at the end of Game 6. You could look at any one of several plays in Game 7. But just the entire thing had this sense of, like, epic you know, at any moment, the Dodgers were gonna lose. At any moment, they were gonna be knocked out, and yet they’ve somehow persevered. What was your sense of Game 7? That was, like, filled with multiple moments of “I can’t believe that just happened.”
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I was thinking of you, I was imagining how sweet this must feel. I used to feel it. As a Yankee fan, I used to feel the sense that, like, somehow, we would pull it out in the end. My main thought, though, was not only how incredible Game 7 was, but how incredible baseball is at its best.
We are always talking about, in sports, the regionalization of baseball, and how for 162 games, we all sort of, like, are off in our own silos, right? And we’re caring about our team, but we have no idea what’s happening in, like, the NL Central, or whatever. And now, in the postseason, with the national spotlight, you remember why you fell in love with this sport. This sport without a clock. This sport, with infinite possibility as a consequence of its clocklessness, in which is turn-based, meaning that every ratcheting up of the bottom of the 9th, into the 10th, into on and on and on, the 18th, as it was, you feel the tension and the pressure, and those who meet the moment, as we often talk about, they build legends for themselves, and so the legend that I was marveling at, I mean, there are a couple of them, but, like, Miguel Rojas, who is, you know, the list of guys hitting a homer to tie a game in the bottom of the ninth.
Jen Rubin
He would not be at the top.
Pablo Torre
But it’s like, but now it’s him and Bill Mazeroski, all time. Yeah. In terms of just, like, who’s done that? And then you get to Yamamoto, I mean, the guy who is just, like, there…
Jen Rubin
That was extraordinary. That was one of the most extraordinary performances. To come back after 96 pitches and pitch that well in the clutch at the end of Game 7 was, like, that’s fun for the history books. I mean, I cannot remember something of that All four special.
It was also, I thought, a tour de force of managing. I guess in every World Series, there are tens, if not hundreds, of micro-decisions that you have to make. But it seemed like there were more of those kinds of calls this time, in part because he was dealing… Dave Roberts was dealing with a bullpen that was so shaky, in part because you have this very unusual stuff, with, Ohtani, and they had a group of hitters, frankly, who really weren’t producing, so there’s a lot of pressure to shake up the innings. Give us your evaluation of how you think he managed the World Series.
Pablo Torre
It’s a great question. Look, we’re in a results-based business, he won the World Series again, and I think he should be recognized as such. I think it’s really tricky, the Ohtani of it all, the starting rotation, how you deploy that, how do you use your bullpen in a Game 7? You know, these are all… look, here’s the… the two things are a true story of Dave Roberts, you know, because again, I’m a Yankee fan, and I remember…
Jen Rubin
This is so painful for you, and I so appreciate it.
Pablo Torre
Oh, no, no, no, but I… look…let my trauma in this case be instructive as to you. At some point, it will end, although I don’t necessarily see the horizon on your, on the sun setting on this empire in the way that I felt when I was growing up, a Yankee fan. And I say that to say this. Joe Torre is never gonna get as much credit as he deserved, because he had the payroll of everyone’s dreams. He had all of the talent. The thing about Dave Roberts, beyond the fact that he makes the right tweaks, and it all worked out, even though, of course, it looked like it wouldn’t, in which case, to be clear, the story I would tell right now would be quite different. The thing that I marvel at is, he and his team—And I’ll give you this compliment as, again, a Yankee fan—they are not only the richest team, they’re also still somehow one of the most likeable.
And that’s really hard to do, like, Ohtani is likable. Yamamoto, because he has a little notebook and he’s gonna pitch till his arm falls off, despite being the highest paid pitcher, when he got that 300-plus million dollar deal or whatever, still likable. Freddie Freeman, despite all of it, still likable. Miguel Rojas from Obscurity to History, likable. Clayton Kershaw who we saw shirtless. We talked about Kershaw before, just, like, celebrating his last hurrah as a Dodger, at Dodgers… I mean, not even at Dodger Stadium, in Toronto, but just, like, winning the World Series in Game 7, likable. Really hard to do that. Dave Roberts, I would say, also likable. So I give him credit on a bunch of different levels for pulling it off.
Jen Rubin
Fair enough. Part of the likability and part of the story of this World Series was the story of Los Angeles, that they have had such a traumatic year. And here was, in some sense, a World Series about just hanging in there. Just keep going. Just hang on by your fingernails.
And that the thing that LA has been traumatized over most recently, their diversity, was perfectly embodied by this team that is so international, so multicultural, every race, every age, every background. That those two things kind of came together, and I think you’d have to have, like, a heart of stone not to watch that celebration in the streets of Los Angeles. They called it, you know, the Ohtani flu, or the Dodger flu. Everyone taking off from work, missing school, to see what this meant to so many people in so many ways. And I think that’s maybe the bigger picture takeaway for Los Angeles, for the country, and for this notion that we are still fighting over in this country about what it means to be an American, who gets included, who’s we the people. And you couldn’t get more international, more diverse than the Los Angeles Dodgers or Los Angeles.
Pablo Torre
Totally. And by the way, I should say this too. Like, a thing that I talked about with Mamdani that I thought about while watching the World Series as well, as the prices on everything go up, right? We talk about extreme, payroll and spending and all of that, and the Dodgers are owned by a gazillionaire, and all that is true. Dodgers Stadium is still one of the great places to watch a game, because it encapsulates… Of course, it encapsulates the melting pot reality, let alone dream of what America still actually is, and I think that as we talk about this stuff on Election Day, and we’re looking ahead to, like, how is sports changing and evolving, we also need to just remember accessibility to games.
Jen Rubin
Oh, yeah.
Pablo Torre
Such that people who helped build the empire that is now winning all of these rings, they get to still enjoy that. LA is such a great case study in that, and I am hopeful and I am fascinated as to how this tension between billionaires and the common people who still are why this team is special, right? It’s essential to the fabric of the Dodgers, I dare say. That’s where I’m hopeful that this can be, like, an example that proves that you need to care about the fans.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Now, the question I have is, who goes to the White House? Do they go to the White House? That’s Kiki Hernandez, who is one of the more outspoken people who came forward and made a rather impassioned statement. Do they go and shake the paw of Donald Trump?
I suppose many of them will go. I don’t know that all of them will go, but every team in the Trump era, or eras has had to make this kind of choice. What’s your sense? Are they mostly gonna go?
Pablo Torre
My sense is that some will, and a lot won’t, and my sense is that we are living in this moment now. The episode that we published today, I gave a talk at the University of Connecticut’s Dodd Center for Human Rights, and it was an amazing opportunity, and we talked a lot about, like, what happened to athlete activism, right? Kneeling and raising your fist like Tommy Smith and John Carlos, who I was honored to, like, speak after at this event.
That stuff seems to be in the rearview mirror, right? Like, there… we used to really talk about this in the first Trump administration. Now it’s a function of, I think, certainly the money flooding into sports, and certainly the attitudes and the popular momentum towards athlete protest draining, draining away from the conversation in a way that is a bummer. But I will say that you know, there are other… you don’t need to bring a sign into the White House to make a statement. And I think Kike Hernandez, who was somebody who did his own version of a politically meaningful act of resistance, because While the bar has lowered on what counts as athlete protests, the impact as a consequence, can still be quite achievable.
Jen Rubin
Exactly, exactly.
Pablo Torre
So, if you don’t want to go, and you talk about why, more power to you. It is an opportunity to explain what you care about and what you won’t compromise on, and my hope is that every athlete, however they feel, sees this as an opportunity to either choose to co-sign an administration that is behaving horrifically. Or, this is my now editorial framework, obviously, or explains why they don’t want to be used as a photo op by said administration. And I think that choice should be explained to them if they don’t know it, and I have a feeling that if you live in LA and you’re around what’s been happening with ICE in that city, my hope and expectation is that enough will notice what the choice really is.
Jen Rubin
Right. Last topic for us. I happen to be one of those people who gets television via YouTube TV.
Pablo Torre
Yeah.
Jen Rubin
ESPN has been off, because they are in a contract battle with YouTube. Talk about, like, two giant, you know, companies butting heads over how many billions. What’s interesting to me is, because there’s so much sports, I miss it less than I thought I was going to, because on college game day, okay, you can… there’s too many games to watch anyway. Now, granted, I had the World Series during this period of time, but has ESPN maybe overthought its advantage, given the fact that sports is everywhere and anywhere?
Pablo Torre
It’s a more dangerous game now than it used to be, and I can feel it myself. I mean, we have so many options, there are so many ways to just keep up with games. Back in the heyday of ESPN, of course, their control over the cable television bundle was unquestioned.
And now, we’re living at a point where not only is the promise, by the way, of the a la carte sports experience fundamentally, a dishonest dream that got sold to us, as if it was going to be better to be a sports fan now than it was before, because we could now access everything. It turns out that it’s just harder to find the thing you care about, and it’s more expensive to watch. Which is why the whole, like, series of carriage disputes coinciding with just, like, how do I know what NBA game is happening and where? I need to consult, like, a flow chart.
Jen Rubin
Exactly.
Pablo Torre
It’s just, it’s actually crazy, and part of that confusion and complexity is this indication that I think people, whether they are actively choosing to or not, are actually okay with their options being narrowed. Where I think we’re gonna conduct a really interesting experiment in which the economics of the cable bundle are not the economics of streaming. And, of course, sports is the most valuable thing, but I would be a lot more afraid to test it if I was, by the way, YouTube TV or ESPN. Both ways, I think there’s risk in ways that are novel to the era.
Jen Rubin
I think that is exactly right. So, in the meantime, I have ordered my Dodgers gear, and the great thing and the terrible thing about baseball is, it’s true of the Super Bowl, it’s true of basketball championship, that feeling of victory is effervescent, because 90-some-odd days before pitchers in catchers report, and you start it all over again. And that’s the beauty, that’s the frustration of sports. It only lasts a moment, so enjoy it while you have it.
Pablo Torre
Yes, the seasons will turn soon enough, but I think you guys are in this one. I beat an amazing Blue Jays team, which is feeling the opposite, so also know that there’s a zero-sum game when it comes to.
Jen Rubin
This is the motion.
Pablo Torre
And never, and as a Yankee fan can remind you, it doesn’t make it any less delightful. So, yeah, enjoy it.
Jen Rubin
And, by the way, that game that you watched was a very good game, between, the Chiefs and the Bills, and we’ll talk about that next week. So thank you, as always, Pablo. Monday, Tuesday, whatever day of the week it is, we look forward to seeing you. Take care.
Pablo Torre
See you next week.
