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When the NBA handed down its heavy penalty on the Clippers last month, Pablo Torre emerged as a clear winner. The journalist and podcaster was vindicated nearly a year after he first reported that the Clippers were circumventing the NBA’s salary cap with sponsorship deals for star Kawhi Leonard.
Meanwhile, ESPN’s reporting was called into question. A few weeks before law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz published its report after a near 12-month investigation, ESPN reported that the NBA had found “no evidence showing Clippers owner Steve Ballmer funneled money through team sponsors to pay Kawhi Leonard in order to circumvent the salary cap.”
Speaking at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit Tuesday, Torre, a former ESPN reporter, said ESPN did not reach out to him for comment before the story was published. But he said he was also bothered because he had built a relationship with all of ESPN’s reporters who contributed to the story.
“The thing that was disappointing about that chapter was just that I’d worked with all those people,” Torre said. “I had respect for all of those people, and there’s an opportunity to reach out to me. Not that I’m owed it, but perhaps that would have saved a lot of people some headaches, especially given that at various points in the past year, I had spoken to them each about lots of things, and this had not come up.”
The story was written by veteran ESPN reporters Don Van Natta, Baxter Holmes, and Ramona Shelburne. It also listed Shams Charania and Bobby Marks as contributors.
“They didn’t ask for a comment, but once the story came out, I was informed that if you give us a comment, we will include it. I was informed immediately by, I’ll just say, one of the reporters on that story that this had just published,” Torre said.
Soon after the story was published, NBA spokesperson Mike Bass said ESPN’s story had “numerous and significant inaccuracies.” ESPN issued a statement to FOS after its story was published, saying it stood by its reporting and that it sent multiple requests for comment to the NBA.
Torre said he eventually provided a comment to ESPN, saying he and the Pablo Torre Finds Out team stood by their reporting. But it was not added to the story. In a post on X/Twitter hours after ESPN’s story dropped, Torre wrote: “We stand by our (ongoing) reporting on Kawhi Leonard and Steve Ballmer’s Clippers.”
Torre also told FOS on Wednesday that there will be more podcast episodes to come about the Clippers and Leonard, including about Lockton Insurance, one of the four Clippers sponsors named in the NBA’s report.
