Steve Ballmer's "Inconceivable" Donation, the $20 Million Guarantee and a Head on a Spike: Kawhi-Gate, Part V

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Steve Ballmer's kink is being robbed.

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I don't know

whatever it is that you're planning to do.

I mean, I'm just here to contribute and to answer everything that's allowed within the limits of the law, of course.

You're wearing a suit and tie.

What should I address you as?

Mr.

Elohassen.

Mr.

Elhassen.

Yes.

Mr.

Elhassen, thank you for being in podcast court today.

Thank you.

I do want to start by acknowledging that your client, David Sampson,

your running mate typically in these endeavors, is not here.

He's attending, unfortunately, to a family emergency.

We send him our thoughts.

Yes.

The upside, though, is that he can't fiddle with the shit I put in front of you.

Please, please don't fiddle.

A little drumming, a light drumming to let it know I'm here.

So, where we are today

is

a special day.

Yes.

Mr.

Alhassen, it is NBA Media Day.

It sure is.

We are

dropping this episode as a surprise for everybody who might be engaging in the festivities.

For those who have no idea what the festivities are, could you please explain, Mr.

Alhassen, in case they did not work in a basketball front office in an executive capacity, as you have,

what is NBA Media Day?

NBA Media Day, Mr.

Tori, is essentially a kind of

show and tell for the world.

Look at our new team.

Look how excited we are.

This guy lost all this weight.

That guy was playing there.

Now he's playing here.

Everyone's happy.

We're going to win a title.

We've started a brand new era in our organization.

It is basically the day where you put your team on showcase and all the media entities, both local and national, come in, take pictures, ask questions, and essentially feel very positive about the year ahead of us.

Yes.

Well,

for most teams.

The team that we are focusing in on today, of course, is a team whose owner, I am told, Steve Ballmer, the richest owner in all of sports, one of the 10 richest people in the world, will not be participating in Media Day at all.

But it is, despite that, the one day when Kawhi Leonard and in fact the Clippers president of basketball operations, Lawrence Frank, a gentleman you must have encountered at one point in your journey through

they

are going to have to field questions about this now five-part investigative series that I have been pursuing in a way that they may never have to again.

I'd like to pause right here and make clear to everybody that Mr.

Ballmer's lack of availability is not out of the ordinary.

Typically, you don't hear from owners on Media Day.

However, as you mentioned, Lawrence Frank, Taron Liu, and Kwai Leonard will all have to speak to the media.

And I have to assume that the gathered media, of which will be local and, as I said, national and perhaps even international,

will be somewhat curious about the findings that you've been publishing over the last few weeks.

And so I just got to jump in here to interrupt Mr.

Elhasson for a second to acknowledge that, yes, there have been a lot of findings over these last few weeks.

And in this episode, part five of our investigation, we're going to get into new details about the $48 million that Kawhi Leonard was supposed to get from Aspiration and the role of his personal camp in that deal, as well as new details about the deepening connection between Steve Ballmer and the co-founder of Aspiration, all of which will be germane to the NBA's investigation.

But the other big reason we're doing this here is because we actually want to acknowledge our detractors.

And in doing so, we want to simplify the story.

The story of what our reporting suggests is the largest salary capture convention scheme in sports history.

A deeply elaborate and complicated effort to bend a cardinal rule that was designed to regulate the unfair extra spending of billionaires.

And that's a rule, by the way, that too rarely exists otherwise in American life.

And yet I want to make the case here that this was also a very stupidly straightforward operation in some key elemental ways, as a current NBA head coach reached out to tell me this week.

Quote,

this should be embarrassing for the league.

I know teams do little side deals, but what happened here is so obvious.

End quote.

What does that summary sound like to you, Mr.

Elhassen, that perspective from that head coach?

It sounds like that head coach would like a pound of flesh because

how Adam Silver adjudicates this matter has reverberations that go far beyond what happens to the Clippers.

It is essentially the head on the spike you put outside the city gates of King's Landing to let everybody know, don't try that around here.

Well, it is almost as if Capster Convention as a concept itself is on trial.

That is the test in front of

the commissioner.

If, if, you know, I've done a lot of reading over

detecting a southern accent as you it will emerge, Mr.

Torrey, from time to time as I turn into my lawyerly self.

You're opening a laptop.

I am opening a laptop so I can reference Article 13 of the collective bargaining agreement, aptly named circumvention.

Two key phrases, compensation from a sponsor, business partner, or third party, substantially in excess of the fair market value of any services to be rendered by the player for such sponsor, business partner, or third party.

And then the other part, violation of the sections named above may be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence, including but not limited to, evidence that a player contract or any term or provision thereof cannot rationally be explained.

As Adam Silver gets up and speaks to the media and makes it seem like, well,

it's shades of gray, and we don't want to infringe upon corporate sponsors.

And, you know, I've heard a lot of things have come to me.

And then when we investigate, it turns out it was nothing at all.

I think, as a matter of fundamental fairness, I would be reluctant to act if there was sort of a mere appearance of impropriety.

I think that the goal of a full investigation is to find out if there really was impropriety, because he's making excuses

where there are two pieces of

literature in there that are very clear.

I dare say that this is what that head coach was talking about, that this is what lots of GMs that I've talked to and owners, by the way, have been referencing is just this very basic premise of the rule of NBA law, which is again not real law, but it is in fact a rule.

And all of this alleged rule breaking, Mr.

Elhassen, begins with Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg and his fellow co-founder and CEO, Andre Czerny, and how they,

according to the documentation, signed Kawhi Leonard to a secret $48 million deal that nobody ever announced or mentioned in public, in which Kawhi contractually did not legally have to do a single thing.

And as far as I can tell, and as exactly zero people have publicly disputed, did not actually go on to do a single thing.

Except, Mr.

Elhasson,

there was the one thing that Kawhi Leonard was obligated to do, according to the covenant of his contract, to secure those 48 million bucks.

What was it?

Mr.

Leonard had to keep playing as a Los Angeles clipper.

If you will now open up your folder and just reread for us another bit of the legal literature here, section 2.10b, clause 2 of Kawhi's endorsement agreement, signed in in the middle of the 2021-22 NBA season with this now clearly fraudulent tree planting brokerage company thing.

Company shall have the right to terminate if Leonard is no longer an employee of the team for any reason.

Which is to say that this no-show deal, in which Kawhi would do nothing and in fact still get paid more than new balance his sneaker sponsor paid him.

And also, by the way, more than four times what Aspiration paid Drake and Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr.

and the rest of its celebrity A-list roster combined, this deal is a deal that I believe cannot, quote, rationally be explained, does not represent fair market value, according to the language of the CBA, which you read for us.

It feels like it's enough to punish the Clippers, frankly, right now.

But the rationale from the Clippers is what I want to turn my focus to today, because it continues to be that Kawhi's deal with Aspiration was made completely and totally independently

of Steve Ballmer's $50 million personal investment in Aspiration, as well as Aspiration's $300 plus million dollar, quote, founding sponsorship with the Clippers, which of course, Mr.

Ballmer himself recently explained away as, quote,

a whole bunch of complicated stuff.

Through that, we had many relationships with the company, sponsor,

activation was through carbon credits, a whole bunch of complicated stuff.

But the important thing.

I love how he says carbon credits with great exaggerated aircrafts.

Carbon credits, whatever that crazy shit is.

Just that you spent, in the end, according to our reporting, tens of millions of dollars on, prepaid in ways that we have established in previous episodes.

But the point here, Mr.

Alhassen, is that much of what I've been doing for the last month now has been an attempt to just anticipate and even reconcile the possible responses from both my critics, the people who poke holes in my reporting, as well as the richest owner in sports himself.

I do want people to steal man, as they say, steel man, opposite of straw man, steel man, the critiques here.

And so I've heard from Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban.

I've heard from former Aspiration CEO Andre Cherny, and I've heard from a growing Rolodex of NBA sources who do request anonymity because, in many cases, they personally worked with Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard and Lawrence Frank.

So, just in your view, Mr.

Elhassen,

what is the best argument that you've heard, you can imagine, for why Aspiration would want to do this deal in the way that Steve Ballmer has described it, which is to say, without Steve Ballmer or anyone from the Clippers knowing or influencing the deal in question?

The best explanation I've received, Mr.

Torrey, was that this was a form of inception of planting the seed in the brain of Steve Ballmer that these are good guys to keep around because they take care of me and my people, even if I'm not aware directly of how they are being taken care of.

So, if we're paying Kwy Leonard and Kwai Leonard remains a Clipper and we're excited about our partnership with the Clippers, Steve Ballmer will continue to funnel money into our endeavor.

That is the explanation that I've heard that I believe comes closest to sanity

comes closest.

Does not quite arrive, though.

So, Andre Cherny, the aspiration CEO who signed the deal, had also issued, in fairness to this argument, a statement on Twitter in which he claimed, quote, in the months of discussion among our executives before signing the sponsorship, I don't remember conversations about the NBA salary cap, end quote.

And if we're going to be as,

what's the word?

Not, what's it?

It's another word for naive.

It's like a girl's name, man.

What?

Oh, man.

Me, this then.

Pollyannic?

Pollyanna-ish.

Okay.

If if we're to be as as pollyannish as the clippers want us to be nailed it the dennis wong steve balmer's partner as well invests money so we just keep the money invested in our company because they like us because we keep their star player happy right except you don't know that they're keeping your star player happy well they know he's happy

but they don't know who to give credit to for that okay it's falling apart

you see you see you see why it's hard to be polyanish and this is

but this is the thing that i'm like really just like circling as we, again, open this folder, which is just that Aspiration

never announced or even referenced the existence of this deal to anyone.

Certainly not in public and certainly not directly to Mr.

Ballmer, because that, of course, would be violative of the rules.

There you go.

We should also keep in mind that Steve Ballmer admitted to ESPN that he and the Clippers did formally introduce Kawhi to Aspiration.

He said, quote, the introduction got made, and then they were off to the races on their own.

We weren't.

And so, I guess, Mr.

Elhassin, the logical question would then be: did the Clippers ever inquire about the results of this very important meeting between their founding sponsor and their most important employee?

They had a go.

And also, was that curiosity maybe coming from a place of concern given how, of course, Mr.

Leonard's designated representative, Uncle Dennis Robertson, had been presenting himself across the NBA in years years previous, such that they sparked an investigation in 2019.

Well, first of all, I'd love it if you refer to him as Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson.

And so, this is the point of the episode where I actually do want to very quickly read from an athletic feature last week about Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson and how he handled his nephew's 2019 free agency.

Quote, had Leonard chosen to re-sign with Toronto, the Raptors could only offer $190 million over five years.

His other suitors were restricted to $141 million over four years.

End quote.

And I'm just going to do the math here real quick for a second because $190 minus $141,

that gets us to $49 million,

a $49 million deficit that the Clippers could not make up up on the books, according to the CBA, which then brings back to mind, I dare say, the $48 million deal, negotiations for which Aspiration CEO totally does not remember having to do anything with the NBA salary cap and its collective bargaining agreement and the regulations mandated therein.

I had the great privilege on my own show called Basketball Illuminati to interview the one and only Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star.

Yes.

And he told us in great detail the Toronto version of the Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson pitch, which started with

things that were doable and quickly escalated to a place of great cap circumvention peril.

Well,

I want to get to the two prongs of what Bruce Arthur for the Toronto Star has reported that Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson was requesting.

Because the question that I have for basketball reporters to just fundamentally ask on Media Day, and for also the high-powered lawyers to investigate on behalf of the NBA League office, would be simple.

It is: Did Steve Ballmer and Lawrence Frank really have zero idea about this $48 million deal that the founding sponsor struck with the most important employee in their organization?

I've been kicking around that very question.

Well,

Mr.

Alhassan,

that's why we're doing a part five.

Oh my God.

And drop the intro music there.

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I want to keep drilling down here into the financial logic, the presumed self-interest of aspiration as we try to understand who else was in the room, what else is happening.

Because the company Aspiration, right?

They at some point surpass a $2 billion valuation.

And part of the whole logic here is that Aspiration wants to do this because it's good for the business of Aspiration.

Kawhi Leonard is happy, Kawhi Leonard stays a clipper according to the best steel man theory that you've offered.

Therefore, Aspiration's business benefits.

And so the thing that I want to interrogate here in this allegedly independently conceived relationship is what did the other executives at Aspiration think

about what this would do to the business of aspiration?

And so, Mr.

Alhassen, please

flip over the next piece of paper in your folder, because this is a screenshot of a text exchange between two senior aspiration executives from December 21, 2021, that I have now confirmed to be authentic.

And so, I want you to be the sender.

On the right side of the screenshot, I will be the respondent.

And the one note here, before we do the table read, is that the chief financial officer of Aspiration, who chose to leave the company by September 2022, by the way, is a man named Roger Avenesian.

And also, ASIS, which will come up in this exchange, stands for Aspiration Sustainable Impact Services.

In other words, the complicated bunch of stuff having to do with carbon credits that Mr.

Ballmer was alluding to earlier.

That was the focus of our last episode in the series.

So,

Rojay and I are trying to talk Joe and Andre out of a $48 million deal with Clippers player Kawhi Leonard.

It's regional, male, niche, redundant to the Clippers, had no ASIS impact, and is a huge expense with no clear ROI.

F.

That's a horrible idea.

Yeah, f.

They are love drunk with these celebs.

Plus, qui's dull.

Yeah,

we will go underspending money like that.

Fast.

And Steph Curry is at least charismatic if you want an NBA star.

It's insane.

Which is a good point, by the way, as raised by that varyingly golden age of radio voice that was reading those texts.

Thank you, Mr.

Torrey.

Very good.

I am told, again, by the way, that Aspiration's chief marketing officer literally did not know who Kawhi Leonard was.

$48 million

in a marketing deal, and everyone's like, can we get staff?

Why are we getting the dull guy?

The sentence that I really think hits home as we explore how could this be positive for aspiration is

it's referring to a $48 million deal with Kawhi Leonard, regional, male, niche, redundant to the Clippers, had no ACIS impact.

Meaning, we are investing in someone who does not reverberate much outside of Southern California, does not cross over to different demographics other than I'm presuming males age 18 to 55, even within Southern California, does not resonate beyond Clippers fandom.

Well, I'll just remind you, this text is sent December 2021.

What was the status of Kawhi Leonard at that time in the 21-22 NBA season?

Under contract and injured.

He wasn't playing.

Yes.

So the whole question of we need to boost the value of this company by getting this guy on the team, the dude wasn't playing.

Ruptured ACL missed the entirety of the season.

Mind you, this was months after signing a lucrative extension.

So the two bronze bring us now to a text message I introduced to the public record in our last episode.

It's a text message that was sent by a number associated with Kawhi's uncle, Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson, his designated representative on the $28 million endorsement deal.

And it was sent to Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg in February 2022.

Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson and lawyers for Joe Sandberg, for the record, have not replied to our detailed questions, including about this text.

But Mr.

Alhassen, could you please just read what that text message said?

Good morning, Joe.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend.

Just a heads up, things are still dragging.

Mike has the contact for about 14 days now.

Haven't heard back.

Thanks.

Just keeping you informed.

And so you did say contact.

It is contact.

I believe it is meant to be contract, as I have also validated in my reporting.

This was about, in fact, the $20 million equity offer, the second prong of the deal that Kawhi Leonard wanted from the Raptors, that we are now reporting, he was seeking from the Clippers as well.

And the mic, by the way, that Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson was referring to is a guy named Mike Shuckerow, who was Aspiration's chief legal officer.

But the other thing I just need everybody to understand about the deal that Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson was apparently texting about, the second prong, this is new, okay?

According to sources directly familiar with the $20 million equity deal Kawhi was granted, this deal in which he would be paid $5 million a year over four years

had something called a put option on it.

Mr.

Alhassen, do you know what a put option?

is?

I know it very well, but in case I hadn't done my research, please explain to the people what a put option is.

I think I have someone who could help us out on that.

So, source number one, if you could help me out as a former member of Aspirations Finance Department, what is a put option?

To oversimplify, a put option is a fixed price at which a buyer is able to sell their stock in a company.

So, say they bought a put option at $5

and that stock essentially drops to a dollar.

They have the right, but they're not obligated to sell that stock at the higher price, which is $5.

And they have that put for a certain length of time.

So let's put it in more concrete hypothetical terms.

Let's say.

Kawhi Leonard acquires $20 million in equity from

Joe Sandberg.

And Joe Sandberg puts a put option at $20 million on that $20 million in equity Kawhi Leonard has just acquired from him.

In other words, if Kawhi Leonard exercises that put option, he is guaranteed to get $20 million.

Yes, that's how that would work.

It is assuring Kawhi Leonard that no matter what, even if aspiration goes into the shitter,

you're getting $20 million guaranteed by Joe Sandberg.

Correct.

That's a pretty good deal now that you spell it out like that.

It's the dream.

Like I said.

It's getting a little hot in here.

Yes, I want to undo that top button.

Because just to translate this as if I am five years old.

Yes.

If Aspiration stock declines, dropping this deal's value below $20 million,

Kawhi Leonard was assured the legal right to sell his equity back for $20 million.

It's like investing in something with no downside because if it doesn't work, you get your money back.

But if it does work, you get to reap the benefits.

Mr.

Alhassen, you have just discovered what a put option fundamentally is.

It is a way to mitigate downside risk.

It is a way to ensure that no matter what, the worst case scenario is not going to be less than the price that you were told you would get.

Hardly the vote of confidence, though.

Look, I'm just just saying, hypothetically, in this scenario, Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson and Kawhi Leonard, they're not rookies when it comes to getting paid.

They have questions.

Is this a theoretical $20 million or is this a real $20 million?

And according to the reporting that I've done, they wanted the real kind.

And so the next document in your folder, Mr.

Elhassen, explains how it is that Joe Sandberg was able to make this part of Kawhi's deal happen over the protests, by the way, of those fellow executives who saw what this was and they were like, we can't do this.

These are the people who are dragging their feet in the process of talks with Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson.

And so Joe Sandberg said, you know what?

I'm going to personally grant that guaranteed $20 million

myself.

And he did it through one of his 12.

He has 12 personal LLCs.

And it was not AGO partners, as previously reported.

It was another one of them, in fact,

an LLC which Joe Sandberg called what, Mr.

Elhassen?

RJB Partners, LLC.

You are holding in your hands the statement of information as registered with California's Secretary of State from RJB Partners.

And I knew to find this because Sandberg refers to RJB Partners in an email which he sent to his personal attorneys with other aspiration executives, CC'd.

And that is the next piece of paper in your folder.

If you can please read what this document says.

For avoidance of doubt, any and all benefit to aspiration from the Kwai deal is being subsidized by my contributing my equity to make this happen.

In conjunction with my offering to do that, I also explained verbally to Andre that Kwai's team wanted his legal fees paid.

I'll state it here for you.

I, via RJB, am transferring $20 million in all caps of stock to Kwai over four years to enable this partnership for Aspiration.

The benefits that you, Mike, that Andre, that Rojay will get from this partnership are subsidized by my, in caps, $20 million of stock.

Regards, Joe.

And this reminds me, Mr.

Alhassen, of another conversation I had with source number one back in part one of this series.

It does seem very very clear that the people inside of Aspiration loved to email each other.

Yeah, that's uh

stupid idiots

quite frequently.

Yeah, let's put it in writing.

Great idea.

To be fair, Mr.

Tori,

as it continuously gets a little hotter in here.

Steve Balmer, Dennis Wong, Lawrence Frank can all say, well, that has nothing to do with us.

Oh, yeah, that this could all be done independently according to the the foregoing theory that has been presented.

And so, this is where I just want to begin to pull on a thread here: a thread of something that Joe Sandberg in that email that you just read

had mentioned because he mentioned, quote,

a benefit to aspiration and the quote benefits that Mike, that Andre, that Roger, the rest of the C-suite, in other words, will get from this partnership, which again, he is personally subsidizing with his $20 million for Kawhi Leonard.

And what nine aspiration sources now tell me is that to aspiration, the benefit was not simply keeping Kawhi Leonard a Los Angeles Clipper because Aspiration wanted this team that they were already sponsoring to do well.

That actually was the benefit to Steve Ballmer and the Clippers, that their player would be very happy.

The benefit to Aspiration was actually rational in its logic, in its financial thinking, because the benefit benefit to aspiration, according to my reporting and these nine sources, is what the company got from Steve Ballmer in exchange.

The giant founding sponsorship deal, the signage all around the Clippers arena, the jersey patch on the bodies of the Clippers themselves, the sign on the back of the court side seats.

It was Steve Ballmer vouching for Joe and Andre, the co-founders, with other investors, helping to arrange meetings over email and in person as an internal email sent by mr sandberg in october 2021 to charney and another aspiration executive confirms as by the way our old friend david sampson read for us in part one of this investigation bomber himself is enthusiastic to help and will personally be a reference and advocate where we ask him so please keep that front of mind and then i mean if you will there's an email on november 1st 2021 from steve bomber personally connecting the CEO of Intuit with Andre and Joe.

Since Intuit and Aspiration already have a business relationship and all of us share a passion for the clips and our Intuit Dome project, I thought it might be fun for the four of us to take in a game together sometime soon.

Pablo, it strikes me that if the names Sandberg and Cherny were different, if Aspiration had a different name, we would call this sportswashing.

we might mr alhassen we might detect that they would want to use the impremature the cosine the representation of a very respected rich mother

and that would help them make their business real the part i want to get to next is the part where he said something that You kind of, I think, raised an eyebrow at as you were reading it.

Because this part part was, quote, I also explained verbally to Andre that Kawhi's team wanted his legal fees paid, end quote.

We've been focusing a lot on Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson in our investigation so far.

Of course, he was the designated representative on the $28 million no-show endorsement deal that I obtained a copy of.

He's also the guy whom my original source in the finance department, source number one, had told me, had been calling aspiration when they were late on those quarterly $1.75 million payments to Mr.

Leonard.

But Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson, for those who are not familiar with the saga, he was also the protagonist, right, of the 2019 investigation by the NBA into the prior cap circumvention claims levied against Steve Ballmer's Clippers.

Because even though the NBA did not find evidence of cap circumvention back then, What did the NBA do, Mr.

Elhassen?

They instituted what might affectionately be called the Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson rule, which is only certified personnel personnel may negotiate on behalf of a player for compensation, aka an actual agent, not a family member, not an uncle.

Yes, and there were in fact increased fines and penalties for teams that dared to not do that.

And

the question then is who is the certified agent representing Kawhi Leonard this whole time?

It's a gentleman by the name of Mitch Frankl.

Mr.

Mitch Frankl, not Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson, used to be an NFL agent, actually, before trying to build this whole agency around Kawhi Leonard, his biggest client by far.

Mitch Frankl came to represent Kawhi during that time when Kawhi was with the San Antonio Spurs, of course.

And in fact, we found a photo of Mitch Frankl standing right next to Kawhi Leonard.

Kawhi has his arm, his left arm around him.

This is after they won the 2014 title.

And what is Mr.

Mitch Frankl holding in this photograph, Mr.

Elhassen?

I believe that is what is now now known as the Bill Russell Finals MVP Trophy.

That's correct.

Mr.

Leonard is holding the Larry O'Brien.

Mr.

Frankl is holding the Finals MVP trophy.

And so in this way,

I would like to lead you to the next piece of paper in your folder.

Because the second name listed under the legal notices section of that $28 million no-show endorsement deal after Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson in section 4.1A, as you take off your your jacket.

It's hot.

I know it's getting real sweaty in here.

What is that name there?

These legal notices were sent with a mandatory copy to Mitchell Frankel of Boca Raton, Florida.

Which means that any legal notice that Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson received at his South Florida address, Mr.

Mitchell Frankl, Kawhi's actual agent, would also receive at his South Florida address.

Which takes us now to the next sheet of paper in your folder, because this happens to be a series of text messages sent from Mr.

Mitch Frankl to Mike Shuckero, the aforementioned general counsel of aspiration, who provided these to me on the record after I requested any and all documentation of any communications that Mr.

Shukaro had had with Kawhi's agent that were not protected by attorney client privilege.

And so just to set the scene,

this is

all about Kawhi Leonard's second ever payment of $1.75 million that was due from aspiration at the end of September 2022.

But of course, September 22 came and went.

October 22 came and went.

And that takes us to when this text message was sent.

Please play the role of Mr.

Frankl.

I will be the General Counsel of Aspiration, and you can time stamp us as we go.

November 2nd, 2022, 8:44 a.m.

Mike, good morning.

Can you tell me the status of the payment from Aspiration to KL2?

Thank you.

Mitch Frankl.

10:22 a.m.

I have a call into our finance team.

They are West Coast, so still early.

I'll be back.

Thank you.

November 3rd, 2022 at 1.09 p.m.

Any update?

Thank you.

Yes, I'll send via email.

Sorry, morning got away from me.

November 3rd, 2022 at 5.30 p.m.

I never received an email.

My address is

at gmail.com.

Thanks.

lowercase, sending now, period.

November 3rd, 2022 at 6.43 p.m.

Thank you.

All of which is to say, Mr.

Elhasson, that this scheme, as it has been reported and alleged, was not merely Mr.

Uncle Dennis Robertson going rogue.

This was something that Kawhi's camp, his actual licensed, registered, and certified agent, alongside aspiration, clearly considered pretty pretty important.

And I should just say here that we did reach out to Mitch Frankel and his office again with a detailed list of questions and an interview request to which he did not respond.

But for the record, Mike Shakero, the general counsel for aspiration, has told me that he would make those texts available to the NBA, to the Clippers, to Wachtel Lipton, the law firm that the NBA hired this month to investigate this alleged salary capture and convention scheme.

All of that is available to them, I am told.

But yeah, man.

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

It seems like this was a thing that everybody knew needed to be paid, and as of November 22, wasn't.

This wasn't an alley in which Mr.

Uncle Daniels Robertson was standing with a trench coat.

This was a whole plan.

This was the lobby of Kwai Leonard Inc., in essence.

And the question then is inside the Clippers building,

what did they think about this arrangement?

And this past week, I will say, I checked in with a former Clippers official,

and they said they really do like Steve Palmer personally still, by the way.

But this is the quote they gave me.

The world in Clipperland revolves around Kawhi Leonard and the moon is Dennis Robertson.

There is no way the Clippers did not know about this deal, end quote.

And they pointed

straight to Steve Ballmer

and the president of basketball operations, Lawrence Frank, the innermost circle who handled the most sensitive issues around one of the most delicate

superstars that anyone has managed in professional sports.

I'll tell you a story, and I believe the Statue of Limitations has run out.

None of the people here can be punished for this.

But when I was working for the Phoenix Suns in the lead up to the 2007 offseason,

we had a whiteboard where we would write our projected starting lineups and all these different permutations.

If you remember the time we were in talks to acquire Kevin Garnett or trying to acquire Kevin Garnett, so there was a version where Kevin Garnett was our starting center.

It's a version where Myers Stadame is our starting center.

All these different lineups, different permutations.

What if we get this guy?

What if we swing the trade for that guy?

Maybe our first round pick here will be that slot.

But in every permutation, the starting small forward was Grant Hill.

And I remember asking, how can we be sure that he's going to sign with us?

He was going to be a free agent that summer, but how do we know he's going to sign with us?

And everybody laughed.

And July 2007 came around

and we signed Grant Hill.

I don't know.

At that time, I was very, very, very low on the totem poll.

I believe I was, I might have been a basketball operations assistant.

But I say it to say that there are

what sometimes can be classified as open secrets, meaning we all know, you may not know all the details, but you know what's going to happen.

Now, obviously, that's a much smaller scale than what we're talking about here.

But it would not surprise me that, A, of course, the president of Basketball Operations is involved.

He's the architect building the team.

If we're committing to something of that nature, of that large of of a commitment, then obviously he's included.

But the other person I would assume would be included in that conversation very, very intimately would be the head coach of the team.

And this is where I should probably point out that Ty Lu, the head coach of the Cliffords at the time and today, will be speaking at Media Day.

And I would be curious if anybody wants to ask him.

the question you have suggested logically might deserve asking

but now I want to just swing the camera back because the finance team came up in that conversation between the General Counsel of Aspiration and Mitch Frankel, the agent of Kawhi Leonard.

And so this is where I think it's really worth pointing out that there's another benefit that Joe Sandberg didn't necessarily spell out directly to his C-suite at the inception of the Kawhi Leonard arrangement.

Because this benefit Again, I would argue, is simple.

If Steve Ballmer wanted Kawhi Leonard to get paid on the side, and if Steve Ballmer wanted that payment to be completely secret at risk of NBA punishment,

he needed Aspiration to have enough money to pay Kawhi Leonard, which would then logically explain why Steve Ballmer kept putting in money into this collapsing company.

But the windfall, undeniably, seems to me an enormous benefit to aspiration.

In fact, the biggest benefit that Joe Sandberg might have been alluding to is that you have a source of not merely credibility, but a whole lot of money that you could tap into when needed.

Straight cash homie.

That's what we call that.

But Pablo, when did the Clippers stop giving them money?

So the timeline here, right?

Kawai wasn't getting paid in September, October, November of 2022.

That's where we are now in the timeline.

And the reason I think it's possible that Steve Ballmer and the Clippers stopped putting money in at that period was because perhaps they were learning what was happening.

They might have detected the fact pattern we are reverse engineering now.

I mean, as the Clippers themselves admitted to us, quote, we made payments to Aspiration until the company was unable to fulfill their responsibilities, end quote, which would then explain why both Uncle Dennis and Mitch Frankl would be calling and texting about Kawhi's money.

But

on December 6th, 2022, to remind everybody,

what happens?

Who finally comes through to save Aspiration?

Because it wasn't Uncle Dennis.

It was Mr.

Grandpa Dennis Wong.

The person who saved the day was Dennis Wong, according to multiple sources and bank statements and cash forecasts that we reviewed.

Steve Balmer's college roommate, the only minority owner of the Clippers he trusted to own a piece of the team, who on December 6th, 2022 invested $1.99 million, having never invested in Aspiration before.

Dude signs off on a purchase agreement that tells him that the company is in default, that its independent auditor had resigned, that the SEC and FINRA are probing the company, that they're facing seven-figure litigation, and Mr.

Dennis Wong, a different Dennis, who did not respond to our request for comment, invests anyway.

And nine days later, on December 15th, while the company cannot make payroll, on the same day Aspiration lays off 20% of their staff, Kawhi Leonard gets paid $1.75 million.

Grandpa Dennis said, never tell me the odds.

He turned into Han Solo right there.

He put in just enough money at a time and in a quantity that was inexplicable to anyone who's ever reviewed the fact pattern we have established.

I await also the appropriate spin on that.

Let me go off script here a little bit.

Mr.

Torrey, let's assume right now you and I have an interdimensional portal that takes us straight to Clippers Media Day.

We're credentialed.

The mic has been passed around.

Kwai Leonard is on the podium.

Yes, in the front.

Kawhi, why didn't you do anything to promote Aspiration despite signing a $28 million endorsement contract with Aspiration?

They didn't ask me to do anything.

Did you ever exercise a put option that would have guaranteed the $20 million in equity that you were granted by Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg?

I don't know what that is.

Did you know that your agent and uncle were pressuring Aspiration to make its overdue sponsorship payments to you?

I'm not familiar.

I just go out and play basketball for the Clippers.

Were you aware that the owners of the Clippers were investing in that same company while you were awaiting payment from that same company?

Again, I have no idea what happens.

I just go out there and I play basketball.

Have you seen the video of the last time that your boss, Steve Ballmer, spoke at Media Day?

Because it was 2021 and he sat on stage right next to the guy who co-founded the company that was paying you $1.75 million

late.

I'm usually pretty busy on Media Day.

I don't get to see what everyone else is doing.

Well, check this out.

The piece de resistance, as we went through this, is when we had a chance to really sit down and meet the folks from Aspiration.

I'm pretty keen on all the projects, and we're keen to have these guys as a marketing partner.

I don't think there's much conflict between what we're doing on the basketball side in the short term and what we're trying to do with Intuitome.

In parallel, and there's no financial tie, we're going to invest in our team, whatever we need to, to put ourselves in a position to win.

And we try to get guys signed up to long-term, you know, longer-term deals, which I think we did well this offseason, Lawrence Frank and his team.

But at the same time, so we're going to invest to win and we're going to invest in the building.

Okay, what does that really mean?

I don't know.

Oh, that aspiration.

I think at this point in the story, the thing we got to do is really get into Steve Ballmer's relationship with the guy sitting next to him on that stage, Joe Sandberg.

So with that, let me turn things over to Joe Sandberg.

And I'll give you one guess as to when we're going to do it.

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So, if you have listened, I mean, and you're increasingly sweaty.

Yeah, get comfortable.

We're almost there.

If you listen to the two public interviews that Steve Ballmer has given since we broke this story, this was with ESPN and then with Sports Business Journal,

he, in fact, is a victim.

This is not a fun thing to be through.

I was personally defrauded.

Remember, they defrauded me.

They defrauded many other investors.

These were guys who committed fraud.

How would I be able to?

Look, they conned me.

You're one of the richest men in America.

They conned me.

I made an investment in these guys, thinking it was on the up and up, and they conned me.

Sea Baumer has been trying to say very clearly that he is a victim of Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg, who has now pled guilty to wire fraud, that he is a a victim as well of Sandberg's alleged co-conspirator, Aspiration board member Ibrahim al-Husseini, who got arrested in October 2024 and has since pleaded guilty to wire fraud, acknowledging the falsification of financial documents at Joe Sandberg's direction

on Media Day.

I suspect you are also, again, going to hear a party line about victimization and fraud and being conned quite a bit.

There are a lot of layers to all of this.

And the Clippers and Steve Ballmer, they have denied vehemently any wrongdoing in all of this.

I know Steve Ballmer and I think he's a great guy and he says he didn't do that.

I believe him.

I give him props for acknowledging that, for owning up to that, for saying that, for saying that he got duped and what have you.

And I do believe it warrants an investigation because of Pablo Torre finds out podcasts and stuff.

How could you invest 50 million?

The answer is he invested 50 million because it's nothing to him.

And he kind of liked it.

And you might say to how could you not do your due diligence?

Because it's literally nothing to him.

It's like, did you do your due diligence on the Mexican restaurant where you had dinner tonight?

Did you read the Yelp reviews?

And that sentiment, to be maximally clear, has been echoed very explicitly, I mean, in the statements provided to us as a show by the Clippers.

Quote, Neither Mr.

Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to aspiration.

Any contrary assertion is provably false.

The team ended its relationship with Aspiration years ago during the 2022-23 season when Aspiration defaulted on its obligations.

Neither the Clippers nor Mr.

Balmer was aware of any improper activity by Aspiration or its co-founder until after the government instituted its investigation.

The team and Mr.

Balmer stand ready to assist law enforcement in any way they can.

So the question then becomes: when did the government start its investigation?

That's an important

time peg here, given what the Clippers are saying to us.

And the crucial question I've been following this whole time, therefore, is when does it become implausible for a billionaire defrauded by Joe Sandberg in the way that we have heard to continue to give money to Joe Sandberg?

And we pointed already to Dennis Wong, Polymer's most intimate Clippers proxy, putting in 1.99 million in December 22 while the company was in default and so forth and so on, which to me, frankly, I mean, is enough.

That feels like the de facto smoking gun right there.

The alternate governor of the Clippers becoming the only new investor in that round of fundraising and an amount that made zero sense otherwise.

But then you add in what we reported the last episode, which is that in March of 23, after Joe Sandberg sought investment from at least 19 other investment firms for that round, and this spanned the fall of 22 to the spring of 23,

all 19 of those investment firms, which are listed in court documents that I obtained, said no.

And yet, Steve Ballmer personally decided to invest another $10 million into this completely fed company at $23 a share days after a Forbes article came out titled A Floundering FinTech Risky Reboot.

You may be thinking to yourself, I mean, well, maybe Steve Ballmer doesn't care about Forbes.

Well,

please flip over the next piece of paper, because because this is an article in Forbes from later that same month.

Please show it to the camera.

Yes,

I can't even read this.

I know there's an audio audience.

What do you see?

It is the cover of Forbes,

an extreme close-up of Steve Ballmer's smiling face.

It's a pleasant, slight smile.

Says LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, the title, Welcome to the Ballmer Dome, is new $2 billion arena raises the game in the NBA.

And then the article, the cover story itself.

This is the daily cover, online only for the record, but nonetheless, big Forbes over his forehead.

For Steve Ballmer, building an NBA champion is harder than running Microsoft, but more fun.

Maybe, maybe whatever.

What if he's only just scrolling through Twitter?

Maybe he's not even seeing that stuff.

The next piece of paper.

Sure.

Could you read the tweet that Forbes sent to promote the article?

Just so we have it in the public record.

This is from At Forbes with the gold check mark.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been trying to spend his way to an NBA championship from the start.

The problem, of course, is that if money could buy championships, the fingers of both Ballmer's hands would be weighted down with rings.

March 26, 2023.

Yeah.

So,

again, in the master timeline here.

Weeks after those articles and Ballmer's $10 million investment, I am told, the federal government began its process of interviewing dozens of Aspiration employees, two of whom are the sources you've been hearing on tape throughout our series here.

The federal investigation at this point was underway.

And by January of 24, as your tie is now off your deck,

this is a lot of stuff, man.

We're not done.

January 24, Bloomberg publishes this headline with a giant photo of the Intuit dome across the top.

Clipper's Arena deal dragged into U.S.

probe of California FinTech.

And Bloomberg, by the way, also in that article, got a statement from the Clippers.

This is dated January 18th, 2024.

The Clippers said in a statement that, quote, the sponsorship agreement entered into between Aspiration and the LA Clippers was terminated by the team last season.

This in no way relieves Aspiration from the obligations they are under contract to provide.

So I will just remind everybody here that the Clippers, having terminated their sponsorship agreement with Aspiration during the 22-23 season, is very interesting phrasing.

Now, when you remember that Steve Balmer invested another $10 million to the benefit of Aspiration in March 23,

there happened to be 14 regular season games left in the season, meaning he did the opposite.

He went back in.

And by the way, so did Bloomberg because the coverage proceeds.

There was another Bloomberg article in July of 24.

July 10th, 2024.

DiCaprio-backed green finance startup unraveled on dubious deals.

Three years after pursuing a $2 billion IPO, Aspiration Partners faces probes by U.S.

authorities.

Look, you get the gist, which is that by early 2024, it was beyond obvious, using even just the Clipper's own statements, that the government was all over this.

And Mr.

Ballmer, of course, had become aware of improper activity by Aspiration or its co-founder, Joe Sandberg, at least by that.

And all of this reminded me of a particularly thoughtful interview that I once saw Steve Ballmer do with 60 Minutes.

60 Minutes in October 2024 had profiled him.

Well after the government had started its investigation into Aspiration.

He bought the basketball team, which is certainly an extravagance, but he's also giving away billions through a philanthropy he runs with his wife Connie.

It really is kind of grant by grant.

You can't look back and say, well, people's economic mobility this year was a two, and next year it's going to be a two point two.

Now, we can't do population level measurement, but place by place, you know, grant by grant, we can do that.

So the Ballmer Group is an entity that I want to introduce everybody to.

The Balmer Group is Steve Ballmer's philanthropic arm, his organization that he runs with his wife Connie, who was sitting right there next to him in that interview.

And as you heard them say thoughtfully, they care about their donations.

They go through them grant by grant, as they said.

So, what I did

was go through their donations grant by grant.

I went through their database.

The Balmer Group has a website.

And in the Our Grant section of the website, you just notice immediately there are donations ranging from $500,000 to $424 million.

It's vast and impressive.

But what caught my eye as I was scanning these dollar amounts was a $1.875 million grant.

Don't say it, please.

And it was made to an organization that is listed on the next piece of paper in your folder.

$1.875 million just seems a little, ah, God.

I've come full circle.

On the first day, I was like, oh, I can't wait to see what's under these papers.

I don't even want to see this anymore.

What is the organization called, Mr.

Elhassin?

Golden State Opportunity Foundation.

Golden State Opportunity is dedicated to ending poverty by providing all Californians with the tools to build financial well-being.

Our grant supports its outreach to more than 1 million low-income Angelinos, helping them to claim hundreds of millions of dollars from tax credits and improve their financial situations.

And so.

What I went to go do was learn more about the Golden State Opportunity Foundation.

But when I went to the Where We Started section of the Golden State Opportunity Foundation's website, this is what I saw.

Not found.

Sorry, that page was not found.

Which was weird.

It's weird, right?

And so, what I did was I went to the trusty old internet archive, a journalist's best friend.

The Wayback Machine.

The Wayback Machine.

And this, I mean, is what a cached version of the page used to read as recently as November 2024.

Jesus Christ.

Oh my God.

Oh, hold on.

Golden State Opportunity founder Joseph Sandberg grew up in circumstances familiar to many Californians.

Raised by a single mom who struggled to make ends meet on her public school teacher salary, Joe's family lost their home to foreclosure after falling deeply into debt.

And it goes on, and it is a tremendous story.

In case anyone was wondering, maybe it's another Joseph Sandberg.

That's the picture on the page that was erased.

Folks, I had a whole thing.

I was going to do a southern lawyer accent.

I was going to push back.

Now you've just dropped.

We're just talking in our actual voices now.

Completely broken character.

None other than disgraced aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg is, in fact, the founder of the Golden State Opportunity Foundation.

This is his charity.

It's his baby.

And it's a fact that is verified, by the way, by the organization's Form 990 IRS filings, which also list him as the longtime board chair.

You can find references to Joe Sandberg's role in this organization all over his Wikipedia page, easily Googleable articles, interviews about his ambitions in Democratic politics.

And so the relevant question, I mean, I suppose, would be this.

When did the Ballmer Group decide to give yet another seven-figure infusion of cash to an entity founded by Joe Sandberg?

The answer to that question,

as you can establish here in this paperwork, is that the Ballmer Group announced this grant as part of a larger roundup of grants

in December of 2024.

Jesus Christ.

It's hot as hell.

I'm just saying.

Is anyone else hoping?

December 24 was a month after the last recorded mention of Joe Sandberg on the charity's website, which we showed you.

It was a couple of months after the arrest of Joe Sandberg's co-conspirator, Ibrahim al-Husseini, by the FBI.

It was almost a year after Bloomberg publicly broke the story of the government's investigation into Aspiration.

It was more than a year after the Clippers claimed to end their partnership with Aspiration and dozens of Aspiration employees had been interviewed by the federal government.

In other words,

Well beyond the point when Steve Ballmer would have learned that he was humiliated and defrauded and victimized by Joe Sandberg, as he keeps on saying,

Steve Ballmer's charity, the Ballmer Group, appears to have donated around December 2024, according to the public records of his own internal database,

$1.875 million to that same fraudster for the first time.

Golden State Opportunity, what is it?

10th anniversary.

There is this.

10th anniversary.

They've been around for a long time, Pablo.

A long time.

They've been doing good work, right?

And also the Ballmer Group, you said they've given out $400 million.

He doesn't know.

It's like loose change in his couch cushions.

We gave it something called the Golden State Foundation.

Golden State Opportunity.

Sounds great.

It's true.

It's really $1.875 million was approximately doing the math here,

worth 0.0014% of Steve Ballmer's estimated net worth at the time.

And so, in fairness, we put this in front of the Clippers and the Ballmer Group and the Golden State Opportunity Foundation.

I wanted to know what this $1.875 million was used for and why it was $1.875 million.

And what I can tell you here is that right away, once we brought up the question of whether Steve Ballmer made charitable donations associated with Joe Sandberg,

The chief communications officer of the Clippers acknowledged that the issues we raised, quote, are germane to the investigation by the NBA, and we will let them conduct their investigation, end quote.

But then, once we asked that chief communications officer of the Clippers specifically about this 2024 donation that Ballmer Group made to Golden State Opportunity, He took some time to send us a statement on behalf of Ballmer Group Philanthropy, which felt conspicuous,

in which the Clippers chief comms officer volunteered on behalf of Ballmer Group Philanthropy that Ballmer Group had actually sent four grants to Golden State Opportunity, dating back to 2018, which Golden State Opportunity in turn acknowledged receiving.

But when I then proceeded to line up all the dates provided to us here, I noticed something.

I noticed that in an email, Golden State Opportunity President Amy Everett told us that Ballmer Group's initial grant, which started on January 1st, 2018, was coordinated by her, quote, predecessor.

But according to tax filings, Amy Everett was the first person Joe Sandberg ever gave that title to, other than himself.

Everett also told us that Sandberg remained the chairman of his charities board up until March 4th, 2025,

which happens to be the day after Joe Sandberg got arrested following roughly two years of federal investigation.

And so, when it comes to what is germane to the NBA investigation, the known connection between Joe Sandberg and Steve Ballmer now dates back to almost four years before their names ever appeared together through aspiration, all the way back to 2017, when discussions for Ballmer Group's initial donation began.

All of this, I think, deepens what the decision to make a new ongoing donation from Ballmer Group starting in November 2024 to help with tax support for low-income workers that got granted amid that ongoing federal investigation into the chairman of this charity's board

might

actually

mean.

But look,

maybe,

I mean, this foundation has done and continues to do good work, but the timing of this donation is something that just to me would defy, what's that phrase again about explanation?

Cannot rationally

be explained.

That's right.

As source number one from the Finance Department at Aspiration also points out.

Am I taking crazy pills?

It's just inconceivable to me to be both hoodwinked and bamboozled, but yet continuously giving money to Joe Sandberg.

I don't know how to make that make sense in my mind.

Well, I want to anticipate the possibility that Steve Ballmer really believed in the mission of the Golden State Opportunity Foundation, Joe Sandberg's baby, the thing that he was the head of.

And so maybe there is an art versus the artist sort of distinction he's drawing.

No,

it

does not make any

iota of sense to

invest in 2021, contribute nearly 100 million in carbon offset pre-purchases,

reinvest in 2022 or 2023 around,

claim all of that to be lost in 2023, and then come back for more in 2024 and be a charitable donation.

Maybe Steve Ballmer is a secret masochist.

That

is honestly one of the most persuasive theories that anyone has offered at this point in the reporting.

Yeah, Steve Ballmer's kink is being robbed.

Rob me blind, daddy.

Mr.

Alhassen.

the table is strewn with papers.

Your clothes have

come off.

You are as sweaty as I am now, as I contemplate exactly where this story goes next.

But what did you find out today?

I found out that in a different world, in a different timeline, you would be part of Scooby-Doo's mystery team.

And Steve Ballmer would be wearing a mask, and we'd pull the mask off.

And as he's bound and tied and sitting on the ground, he'd look up at you angrily and he'd say, And I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you and you meddling kids and that mutt over there with the glasses on

Zoinks

to quote the only cartoon that makes sense anymore.

Rubber,

come on, man!

1.875!

Pick a different number!

Pick a different charity!

Say anything!

Find a new person!

Hey!

Sorry, we're not going to be able to make that payment anymore!

Scoob!

Jesus!

Jinkies!

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark Media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.

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Group health insurance can challenge company budgets with large and unpredictable rate increases.

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Same, they're so light and so comfy, and if it's not comfortable, I'm not wearing it.

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See site for details.