Pablo Torre wonders why Adam Silver won’t ‘do what a real judge would’ in Clippers investigation
· Yahoo Sports
Pablo Torre is back this week with yet another episode documenting alleged salary cap circumvention by the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers and star forward Kawhi Leonard, the 13th installment of a series that has now stretched nearly a year.
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Yet the NBA’s investigation appears no closer to being finished than it was last September when it was announced, after a separate report from ESPN this week suggested it could stretch into 2027.
As questions once again intensify around the probe by the NBA’s hand-selected law firm and a trade that would have sent Leonard to Toronto remains on pause, Torre challenged the league and commissioner Adam Silver directly in a Thursday appearance on The Dan Le Batard Show.
Torre echoed Le Batard’s recent comments claiming the NBA is afraid that Ballmer could undermine the legitimacy of the league office and the collective bargaining agreement with legal challenges.
“What the league is worried about is Steve Ballmer, the richest owner in American sports, fighting in a way that other owners would not have the resources or the inclination to fight,” he said.
Still, Torre added, people around the NBA are increasingly questioning how the Clippers could even mount a legal defense given that they have yet to publicize any evidence to back up their claim that Torre’s initial reporting last year linking an endorsement deal for Leonard from Clippers sponsor Aspiration to the team.
“Everyone’s been wondering, ‘So when you said this was provably false, in the days after Part One of this now-13 part investigation, when you said it was provably false, can you help us understand how you’re going to prove it?'” he explained. “And at every point in this saga, there has been nothing resembling that evidence. And you would imagine that they would want that communicated to the public, right? And it’s not emerged.”
The NBA, Torre said, is hoping for a settlement, while still fearing there could be another shoe to drop. The Athletic reported recently that the investigation has extended to another Leonard endorsement deal, while Torre’s most recent episode focused on a peculiar investment by Leonard, his uncle, and his agent into a United Soccer League team in Rhode Island.
Underpinning Torre and Le Batard’s theory of a potential Ballmer legal challenge is the supposed lack of authority that the NBA CBA and the commissioner have over the teams in the league.
“Sports, the CBA, this investigation, Adam Silver as the Supreme Court justice. This is not a real justice system,” Torre argued.
“This is a business hiring a law firm to try and control a problem in which the public may never know the depths of whatever they discovered, because of course it’s bad for business if this thing keeps on expanding.”
The Clippers and Leonard have repeatedly denied any foul play with Aspiration.
Torre added that “sports rests on” fairness, but the law firm’s investigation “is not justice.”
Instead, Torre claimed, the fate of the investigation and his own legwork on fueling it rests in Silver’s capacity to make a bold move and rule against the Clippers himself, regardless of the ramifications. In Torre’s words, Silver must “do what a real judge would.”
“Do you need a signed confession in order to prosecute what seems to be the largest and most flagrant cap-circumvention scheme in the history of sports, or are you willing to actually do what a real judge would?” he asked.
“And I’ve talked to so many literal former federal prosecutors who were investigating Aspiration, the literal case, who launched it, who have been on my show since, who have said if this was in court, in real-life court, not in sports court, not in podcast court, but in real-life court, you have so much more circumstantial evidence to prosecute and convict. And that’s what you need.”
Repeatedly, Torre has stepped further than most journalists in advocating for punishment for the malpractice he allegedly uncovers in his work. Many of the questions he brought up Thursday have merit, but it certainly makes it harder to neutrally evaluate his continued reporting on the Leonard story when he continues to publicly challenge the adjudicator of the resulting investigation.
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