Enter the Dungeon: An IRL Showdown with Mark Cuban on Kawhi-Gate

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

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

Kudos to you for finding your sources.

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S on Steve Ballmer.

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Hey, there he is.

It's a dungeon in here.

Welcome to the dungeon.

Good to see you, man.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for coming in.

Yeah, of course.

Water, bathroom, coffee.

How we got the bathroom.

Smelling salts.

Yeah, hopefully not.

No, I haven't got much sleep.

I'll take it.

I was going to say

Patrick next to me.

I was going to say, you're a wildly busy person, so this is a lot of fun for you to do this for us.

Yeah, Cusbus has been driving me crazy.

Just the pharmaceutical industry, you know.

Yeah, just a little bit of a lot of people.

Casually trying to change healthcare.

Why not?

Test, test, tests.

That's where you want want it lined yeah if you could

that'd be great

look at you double double double fisted

it's the only way you roll pablo i know just the finest

the most luxurious

just for reference before we start this dial is for your own voice um and the second one is for pablo's turn down pablo turn up mine

look i i promised over email this would be respectful i totally do your thing yeah i have totally go where you want to go

Easy peasy.

The thing I want to start with is to say thank you for giving me the line that now leads my resume.

Which is a great podcast entertainer, great acting skills, but in terms of getting to the real, real,

not so much.

There you go.

I'm here to oblige.

I want to do this in a way that's probably, hopefully, a little different, a little more fun than like Frost Nixon.

Okay.

I actually just want to understand

like your life right now.

I mean, you're in New York.

Thank you for being here in the studio formally.

Why are you here?

What's going on?

Like, I went to the conference, the healthcare conference for 32BJ is a union and they work with a variety of unions and organizations.

So, I came in to talk about what we're doing with costplustdrugs.com to reduce the cost of pharmacy, to change healthcare, to help guide them as they negotiate new contracts, just the basic stuff.

So, I had it on the schedule for a couple months already.

Just the basic stuff.

I wasn't sure.

It was like, was this stop in New York part of your larger plan to eventually become the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission?

Yeah, right.

That was my goal all along, right?

have you got me pablo yeah

finding out all the time

finding out all but you did want to be sec chair for no i had no no interest in being sec chair you said it at one point no that was me with gary gensler because i thought he was an idiot oh well this is why i asked the follow-up questions right that's what you do but some of the bio for people who are it's funny again for me to be like by the way i talk to mark cuban a lot these days but for those who are not familiar with your oeuvre minority owner now Oeuvra.

What does that even mean?

Your body of work.

Oh, my body of work.

Okay.

That's a little French.

I'm

trying to class you up.

There you go.

I need all the help classing me up as I can get.

No, look, you're the minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

27%.

We've established that.

Also, you co-own a major league pickleball team.

Right.

The Dallas Flash.

Yeah, did they change your name to Flash?

Are they Dallas Flash?

I don't even know.

I did it as a favor to a friend.

But I like pickleball some.

It's fun to watch it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Your Dallas Flash.

That's right.

And, you know, you mentioned great acting skills.

Great acting skills.

You see me in Play Dirty here recently?

I watched it this week.

What?

How was the steak?

Fine.

Do I.

The Lady of Ontero.

I'll own her.

And you are impatient.

Where is she?

Whoa.

Mark Wahlberg

brandishing a firearm

at a white tablecloth restaurant in front of you and an associate.

Do you have any concept who the fk you're talking to?

You're not answering my question.

I don't have to moron.

I'm one of the most important

people on the planet.

This isn't some rat-infested alley.

You're out of your league.

You're dealing with a different class of people now.

What a smirk.

You know how long?

Jesus Christ!

The best part was Mark Wahlberg was not there when we were shooting it.

Oh, that was

all acting.

That's just me putting myself in the moment.

A method smirk.

Yes.

The fear.

The smirk.

There's just a zillion things I actually do want to ask you about.

I want to get to at some point, like Dallas and Mavs and Luca, if that's okay at some point at the end, maybe.

But the reason, of course, you're here is because you remain by far the most devoted, most famous, most polarizing, most public member of Team Bomber.

Yes, sir.

As you have come to call it.

Do you know how much you have tweeted about this story and my reporting?

Not really, no.

You have sent 160 tweets.

Most of them were just little tiny responses.

A couple of them were articles.

Yeah.

The one time.

Yeah.

The one time was like the 4,000 words or whatever.

You typed a total of 17,053 words in 36 days.

A lot of that is chat GPT generated, but yes.

I suspected that.

I feel no less insulted by that.

But nonetheless, I'm here to confront you and the robot.

Please do.

And I just want to try to keep this accessible as always to like the general audience.

So I guess the conversation, which I want to begin here, starts with a simple question.

Why do you think the sheer existence of the aspiration sponsorship deal with Kawhi Leonard was never announced in any way?

Through a press release or anything ever?

The deal was signed, if I'm remembering correctly, April 4th of 22, but it was dated April 1st.

March 30th was a much bigger announcement, and they didn't want to step on each other.

The first reason.

Do you know what that announcement is?

Who is?

Oh, I thought you would know.

No, no, no.

What announcement?

Oh, that's when they announced their deal with the Boston Red Sox, which was an $80 million deal.

And that's where they were going to get their logo on the field, right by the batter's box,

but by the on-deck circle, all that stuff.

So it was an $80 million deal.

Rule number one in marketing, when you're getting PR and you've signed a big deal, you don't step on it.

And so once I saw that they had done this big deal and realized how big it was, it made perfect sense why they didn't announce it then, right?

And then after that,

the people who had done the deal,

I shouldn't say the people, because Joe Sandberg did the deal, but they changed over the focus of their business.

And as best we can tell, No one wanted them there and no one wanted to do the deal.

And so there was no reason to announce it.

That's my perception.

Well, so just the Red Sox deal, we mentioned that in episode one of the show.

I'm glad you bring it into this context because it was another deal, another real sports team that Aspiration got into business with, of course.

So let's say that Aspiration didn't want to announce this.

Kawhi didn't want to announce this.

No one wanted to answer this.

No, no one said, no, no, now you're putting words into the system here, right?

So there's a difference between making the right marketing move, right?

So you just signed an $80 million deal with the Red Sox, and the Red Sox come out and say, like the Clippers did September of 21, so that would be six months earlier or whatever, right?

That how important the whole carbon credits thing was and conservation was to them, right?

So a big part of the Red Sox deal was very similar to the Clippers deal.

In fact, they looked, I'm going to use my bet.

In fact,

they look very similar to each other.

I'm trying to.

I'm right at you.

I am with you.

No, I am.

So they're very similar to each other.

I've seen hundreds of emails with the Red Sox and Aspiration.

The premise here, again, is we're zeroing out the carbon footprint.

Right.

So it was very important to the Red Sox like it was to Balmer.

So nothing unusual there.

Right.

So the question becomes, right,

why did the marketing people not do anything with Kawhi?

Well, on one hand, that's the question you asked me, right?

No, no, no, the question actually was simpler.

It was, why did no one ever say that this deal existed at all in any way ever?

Well, first of all, we don't know that for certain.

I have never seen anything.

I've said this this for five episodes, and no one's ever provided a counter argument or a factual correction or evidence.

Two ways to activate the deal.

One is like you're expecting, let's do the tweet, the things that were in the contract that he was never asked to do.

I actually just want to be very clear and specific here.

I just mean they announced with celebrities all of the time.

We signed Leo DiCaprio and we signed Drake and we signed Robert Downey Jr.

and Orlando Blum and Cindy Crawford and Cynthia Carpenter College.

When did they announce all those things?

All in this time period.

When did they announce those?

Is your argument going to be that by the time they signed Kawhi Leonard to a deal that was four times larger than everyone else combined in that celebrity roster, they had decided to no longer care about celebrities?

No.

My point was they were not profitable, but they were fully and well-funded in 2021.

And they were run with the goal of having a consumer product, the credit card from Aspiration Bank.

And what you do with a consumer product is night and day different than what you do with a B2B product, right?

So making those announcements make perfect sense.

Now, come April of 22, they were in deep shit, right?

And as you know, and I think

some of the folks have told you that the conversation, because we know Uncle Dennis incorporated KL2 Aspire, I think it was called, in November of 21.

So they had been talking for a long time and it had been delayed, obviously, for a considerable period of time.

So the fact that it was delayed is one indicator.

Because if they were really excited to sign the deal and use Kawhi, the marketing team would have been pushing.

let's get this done because we really have a lot of places for him to use.

Right.

The opposite, of course, happens, right?

The marketing people

the CMO doesn't know who Kawhi Leonard is.

Right, even.

Right.

So the question is: why was there a deal?

No, no, I think the question is still, why, just to keep on the first question, why past April did no one mention that they had signed Kawhi Leonard at all?

Because they were in a different business at that point.

Not as of that month.

Yeah, if you look at their numbers from September 30th of 2021, the last real numbers they had that they published.

So I guess what I'm saying is what we agree on is this was a bad deal for Aspiration to sign as of April 2022.

Not necessarily, right?

So here's what you haven't discussed at all yet, right?

And that is activation.

And I'm not talking about traditional marketing activation.

So you've been to the Staples Center, right?

Mm-hmm.

Right.

So you know here's the court level seats.

And then a lot of people go into the tunnel and they have that club that's there, right, where all the celebrities hang out and everything.

And then the people who buy the court the front row seats have access to that correct and they see the players walking through and it's not unusual because it's happened to me i'm sure it's happened to you where people fans right there that have come from the court will stop you and take pictures introduce you to customers da da da da da we have no evidence one way or the other but i'd be willing to bet that a dollar to a dime right that joe sandberg took full advantage of that and was able to use Kawhi just to take a picture, to say hello, just like I've done a thousand times with the Mavericks, right?

Oh, we signed a deal with this sponsor.

Hey, Mark, a sponsor's in town or hey, Mark, the sponsor is going to be at the game.

Will you take pictures with them?

Sure.

Sure.

Easy peasy, right?

Just have them in the tunnel before halftime or after the game.

Easy access.

So when I talked to people, the one person, two people I know, but one person I talked to that worked at Aspiration, they said, yeah.

I love how you've been doing reporting, by the way.

Yeah, just because they reached out to me, right?

When I hear about them reaching out to you.

Yeah, I know, and I know.

And I said, I was fine with it, right?

So I had no problem.

And likewise.

And yeah.

and so it's just normal business right so the issue is that the guy that's going to one of the guys going to jail joe sandberg right he obviously was the one that did the deal because even in your tweet it said joe is is slow rolling the deal no he said to joe from uncle dennis that mike the the lawyer was the tropical the general counsel general counsel was slow rolling the deal right and that it was obvious that joe sandberg had signed so the value proposition here where we disagree and we don't really have detail one way or the other but where we disagree is the value proposition wasn't necessarily to the marketing people at Aspiration.

It was to Joe Sandberg specifically.

So why do we disagree about that?

Well, because I think that's where he utilized Kawhi.

He got his money's worth.

I fully agree that Joe Sandberg was the one to benefit from this deal.

It wasn't the marketing of Aspiration.

The question is, what was the goal Joe Sandberg wanted to achieve?

And you have this theory that Joe was using it to gladhand with Kawhi during the games that the Clippers were playing or before or after or whatever.

No, I've even evolved that theory.

Okay, but I guess what I'm saying is the reason Joe Sambrick wanted to do it was because, of course, he had a relationship with Steve Ballmer and there was an agreement.

Hey, we're going to do this deal that no one ever is going to know about.

But what I'm saying is, I know that business.

You're making that up.

No, no, no.

I have nine sources that told me that.

No, nine sources that worked in the accounts payable department.

Not all finance.

Not all finance.

Mark, Mark, Mark.

So look, what I want to make clear here is a couple of things because you're really good at talking and being shot by Mark Wahlberg.

Incredible at both those things.

There is simply no evidence that this deal was ever announced in any way.

And the reason I keep on harping on this is because at a certain point, if you are Joe Sandberg, selfish guy who wants to boast and peacock about all the things he's done, you would want to say, No, we also have this deal with this guy.

So if you look at Joe Sandberg, right?

What was his job at Aspiration?

I mean, so

this question matters.

I have many ways that I can talk about this for a very long time.

Joe Sandberg was not actually an employee of aspiration.

No kidding.

But what he was, was the co-founder, and they want to peacock about all of the celebrities, all of the sports teams.

I have a deal with Leonard DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Orlando Bloom, Drake, the Crawfords, and Kawhi Leonard, who he paid for the price, by the way.

The price of what you're saying, the glad-handing theory.

$48 million.

No, he didn't.

He paid him $3.5 million.

The agreement.

The contracts.

But if you know you have no money money to pay the agreement, it's meaningless.

No, no, no, no.

He knew he had no money to pay it.

Mark.

Just like me saying, Pablo, I'm going to give you $200 million right now.

So what we need to establish here is that Joe Sandberg may know, right, at the time of the deal, he has no intention of paying the total term of the deal.

He has no money.

But Kawhi Leonard absolutely thinks it's a real deal.

Yeah.

It's a real contract.

Yeah.

So the point is, the intent of what we're doing is that...

No, the intent on Uncle Dennis's and Kawhi's side is obvious.

The intent on Joe Sandberg's side is not, right?

So why?

Because Uncle Dennis wants to get paid.

Okay, so we established that there is no evidence at all that this deal was ever announced anywhere.

Unless, I mean, not publicly.

No, we agree.

Not to

be waiting, man.

I was hoping you might bring it in.

I've been waiting for anyone to tell me why

was this a top-secret deal that they never talked about?

My theory is they wanted to keep it secret because it was a $48 million no-show contract that circumvented the cap.

Your theory is something that is not that.

Yeah, no, no, because let's move on.

Let's move on.

No, no, no, no, no, no, not just we, let's just move on.

Because what's at stake?

Because at the exact same time the Kawhi deal was signed, right, Joe Sandberg was also trying to take over Blue Apron.

And he didn't have the money to do that either.

And so he was looking to do an acquisition that was, I don't know, I don't know the exact amount, but there's plenty of evidence on documentation out there where he effectively was lying to say he had the money in May of 22 or whenever the day was.

Was eventually pleading guilty to wire fraud.

Yeah, for sure.

But you've got to look at from here.

So you want to know what the intent was.

So you're asking the question.

We agree that Joe Sandberg initiated the deal and negotiated the deal with Uncle Dennis and Mitchell.

The initiation, I'm not saying one way or the other.

I'm merely saying negotiated the deal.

Are you agreeing that Joe Sandberg was the one who negotiated this deal?

I cannot tell you that he's the only one who was involved.

Mark, I'm a journalist.

I know that he was involved, but is he the only one in the room negotiating?

Okay, so

fine, right?

So if he's the driving force and he's taking responsibility for this, isn't it relevant what else was going on in his financial life?

Oh, and absolutely.

And so the time

he point us to.

So here we are.

Okay.

Right.

So here he is.

He's committed to

a deal with Kawai that pays $1.75 million a quarter to be paid first

on June 30th, right, of 2022.

That was the first payment when it was due, right?

So at the same time,

at the same time, Nosy doesn't have the money because we know from the September 30th, 2021 financials, which would have been after Ballmer put in this money, that they only had $13 million.

So Ballmer puts in his money in September of 2021.

Right.

So September 30th.

So he put it in September 14th or 17th, one of those two dates of 2021.

And as of September 30th of 2021, according to the S4 that was filed by InterPrivate because of the SPAC that they were trying to take.

Interprivate was the holding company that was going to absorb

a SPAC at $2.3 billion.

That's a valuation that came up when, Mark, because Steve Ballmer and Oak Tree Capital Management invested together and resulted in this valuation of

SPAC is valued, but that's besides the point.

That's not really relevant at this point.

I think it's deeply relevant.

It speaks to why Joe Sandberg was doing the deal at all.

Well, Well, okay.

He wanted to get the payout, right?

Because that was the only thing that he wanted to be in business with Steve Ballmer, who gave him $50 million personally alongside Oak Tree.

And guess what?

The SPAC that wasn't over $2 billion as a valuation was after that roughly $300 million infusion payment.

You're missing the point because you're trying to just drive at just the one thing you know.

Okay.

So.

I'm talking about like sports washing, and I think you're trying to

do that.

Lots of other things.

No, no, you're not letting me finish.

Please, please.

All right.

So now we know from Joe Sandberg's perspective, he's got Kawhi that this company owns $28 million to.

Plus $20 million in an equity deal.

Yeah, but that's coming from him personally.

That's worthless.

And so it's relevant, but I'll tell you that.

Okay, that's fine.

We're going with it, right?

So that's one.

Two, he also committed to the Red Sox to pay $7 million a year the exact same day, the day before.

So that's another seven, right?

They're collecting these sports deals.

Right.

At the same time, he owns personally $145 million that he is unable to pay.

And he's hoping that he can figure all this out.

But what we also know is that Ballmer invested September 14th or 17th of 2021.

And there are published financials that InterPrivate put to the SEC that shows they only have $13 million.

So at the time that long, long before, I should say, long before Joe Samberg completed this deal, he knew they had no money.

Oh, oh, oh, so

he knew he had

to do it.

All the money, think about it, all the money.

And then when you had numbers after that.

You know what happened to the money?

They're not counting the marketing dollars against their valuation.

It's because they're just spending right that special, I forget what they call it.

It's amazing.

They made it an acronym.

They made it an acronym.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the point being that I fully agree and have reported that the money goes in from Ballmer and others, and the money goes out almost immediately.

Immediately, right?

It's crazy.

But think about that.

Think about that.

So if all this...

Which is to say that.

Of course, when it comes to Kawhi, right?

The question is, okay,

why did they even do the deal?

Yeah.

And why did they even do that?

And I think that we're circling a question for which the only rational explanation is that it wasn't in aspiration's interest to do it.

It was in someone else's interest.

This is where we disagree.

None of this has anything to do with aspiration's best interest.

That's what I mean.

That's what I'm saying.

None of it.

None of it.

No, I'm not.

I created a terrible deal for aspiration.

No, Joe Samberg only cares about Joe Samberg.

Yes.

Joe Samberg doesn't care.

Well, no, no, hold on.

So Joe Samberg benefits if Aspiration goes public at a two-plus billion valuation.

Of course, of course.

But he also needs to survive because cash flow-wise, he is toast and he knows the company is toast because even his money is.

Yes, he needs to raise money perpetually because the money is trying to change.

That's what Cherney said, right?

He needs to raise money perpetually.

And what did he say to Cherney?

I'm going to kill you because you don't even know what I have to do to do all this stuff, right?

Yes, right.

The whole thing is only about Joe Sandberg and him trying to stay on the job.

It's about Joe Sandberg trying to get aspiration to cash in on a two-plus billion dollar SPAC.

Right.

That's his right.

And that's what I literally get out of it.

That's what I've been writing.

No, no, no.

And

you didn't mention that at all in your first time.

Episode one.

Episode one.

We did all that.

You mentioned the SPAC.

You mentioned the SPAC, but you didn't tie it back to him just trying to stay out of jail.

But it doesn't matter.

I disagree.

I think Chat GPT may be doing me a little bit of an injustice in terms of the summaries it's presented.

I got the transcript somewhere, but anyways.

And that's what I mean.

But look, what I want to say is, when they get to April, they sign Kawhi.

He's due the first payment at the end of June.

And all of Bomber's money.

All of of Balmer's money is gone.

Yes.

Gone.

Right.

Now, you would think,

you would think if there was a deal that was made between Balmer and anybody, anybody, anybody with half a brain would say, hey, look, we've got this deal with Balmer for whatever reason.

I know what the reason is.

You don't have to understand.

This is Sandberg talking.

You would set aside that money.

No question.

Okay, there you go.

But do you agree that Joe Sandberg is also somebody who maybe isn't as smart as he thought he was?

I don't know or care.

All I know is.

But I guess the point is there can be some mixture, as always, of cleverness and there can be a lot of mixtures of a lot of things, but you don't have proof one way or the other.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

We're going to get there.

The question here I asked you was, sir, why did they never announce this deal at all?

And so we're now in the weeds, and that's okay.

Yeah, you know, because you're trying to make that a big deal to show up the no-show job, right?

It's not inexplicable.

It is.

Okay, so we're very explicable.

If you've ever done marketing, if you ever worked in a company, why live for two years.

Let's give it two years.

Did they never mention it?

Because they changed business and they brought in a new CEO.

April, May, June, July.

October by October.

October, November, December.

So I gave you the first hit, right?

First of all.

I'm just saying that's a year.

So let's walk through it.

Let's walk through it, right?

Rule number one in marketing.

If you're making one big announcement, you don't step on it with another announcement.

How many months does it take for a bit of breathing room?

You find out, right?

By the time

one, two, three, four, five.

But that's not five, six.

But wait, there's more.

It's not about that.

You're trying to game it, but it's not like.

That's a lot of months.

No, no, because April 30th, right?

I'm sorry, March 30th when they signed and announced the Red Sox deal.

Big deal, right?

So you don't step on that.

Okay, so the question is how many months?

By the time they got to, I'm trying to think when they actually changed their business model, but it was prior to October.

because that's when they let Cherny go and that's when they brought in Olivia, right?

But they had already

the numbers were already there, as you saw in the S4, that they were making their money in business to business.

They were getting killed, destroyed,

had no upside whatsoever on their consumer business.

So it wouldn't be the first time in the history of marketing where you sign somebody to do something, pivoted in your business, and decided not to use them.

So I want to add a little bit of texture because...

They signed him to a deal, again, that is four times larger than everyone else combined.

It was like a million times later.

You keep on going to that.

You keep keep on going to that as if it's a reflection of some insidious you know effort okay so let me

ask what at all let me ask a basic question it but it's not as relevant because of course it is mark because it speaks to why exactly this deal was specifically the way it was constructed it reflects an intent no the somewhat no the businesses were different

So I just got to jump in here to clarify something about the timeline here, because the business of aspiration, which Mark was just alluding to, was not meaningfully different in April 2022 when Aspiration signed Kawhi Leonard to this top-secret $28 million no-show endorsement deal from what the business of aspiration was in September of 2021, when they signed this $300 plus million dollar founding sponsorship deal with the Clippers.

In fact, that Clippers deal reflected this pivot that Mark is trying to say happened after the KL2 Aspire LLC deal was brokered.

But that deal, the Clipper deal, was the embodiment actually of this pivot.

It was the thing that was designed to draw attention to it, as Steve Ballmer himself announced at Clipper's Media Day in September of 2021 with, you know, a French accent of his own.

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

Joe Sandberg, who runs Aspirations here, he'll talk to you a little bit more about their company.

We can talk about our partnership.

But to have our first founding partner be a company that focuses in on providing services to

consumers and businesses to reduce or even go negative on their own carbon footprints was a great thing, particularly we played that clip in episode one, by the way,

which I do strongly encourage you to go back and listen to at some point, not least because we also established in that episode that the top secret no-show $28 million endorsement deal with Kawhi Leonard was also about this pivot to carbon offsets, as one particular deliverable in this very deliberately structured contract that we had read indicated.

That Leonard has to be available and participate with company to create an annual program in support of the company's reforestation program

with a tie to calculating Leonard's carbon footprint given his annual schedule events and travel boy I'd love to see that well it's hard because it didn't happen

I thought you were gonna say that was the one thing he did do

And so if you want even more of our analysis of Aspiration's carbon offsets business with the Clippers and even more also on the flow of funds from Steve Ballmer to Aspiration, which was largely inspired by our first conversation on this show with Mark Cuban.

That stuff happens to be in part four of this series, just in case you're curious.

But I do want to return us now to the argument that I was in the middle of having with our special guest.

When a business is thinking it's going to be profitable and it's operating like a normal business, it's one thing.

And then when the owner, the main guy goes and borrows money again fraudulently and all of a sudden their business is no longer a good operating business.

Let's say you didn't like, you had immediate buyer's remorse and you were like, whoa, we just paid this guy four times more than the biggest stars in Hollywood combined and we don't want to use him anymore.

Shouldn't you at least say we did it?

So you get something?

No!

Because then you look like a fing moron.

I mean, I think and fear that that might have happened anyway.

Well, yeah, but they're trying to survive, right?

You don't announce that you signed a guy that you, and by the way,

they ended up paying him less than they paid those celebrities

how do you know that because he's only been he only was paid twice

that I have reported so far no that anybody that's anywhere if you back go back on the sources that

you had more than what I reported at most so let's just do the math the bankruptcy filing says he's owed seven million right the deal was 28 right and so somewhere between the three and a half that I've reported in 2022 and that is a big gulf no right so what happens is the 28 million when they, the day that they go bankrupt, anything past that or the date they file.

Yeah, so wipe off the last year.

So wipe out, so that's 21.

Yeah.

Right.

So that's seven.

Now that's down to 14, right?

If there wasn't any other conversation or anything.

So at most.

Do you have information that there was conversation about that?

About the remaining dollars?

No.

I just don't think we can definitively say based on the evidence that he got paid only $3.5 million.

But think of it this way, right?

16 potential payments.

You only knew about two of them.

And one of them, from your first reporting, right, you had tied specifically to Balmer.

But we know Balmer's money was all gone by the time the agreement was even signed.

So you went out and made this assertion about Balmer without knowing that the money wasn't even available.

I had seven sources, but I want to go past that because you don't believe the source of the source.

Seven sources was the guy with

the whatever modulated voice.

One of the finance department employees who was interviewed by the federal government, who's pointed me to documents that have been verified by every single person.

All of the means he works in the accounts payable department or in the finance department.

I think it's easy to dismiss the sources and I can't possibly convince you otherwise.

No, that's okay.

But it's not even just about dismissing.

It's just not enough.

You just on a guy's reputation by having some guy in the AP department who's tried to tie it.

Your guy said, your guy said, everybody knew it was common knowledge that this was circumvention of the source.

In the department in which they had to make payments to kawhi leonard that no one could explain there was talks payable department mark you don't know who these people are and i wish you would stop i just it's it's it's just we can specify i can tell i can tell by the the form that you showed in in your first podcast we have over 3 000 pages of documents there are a lot

yeah but what you showed what you showed was just an accounts payable ledger That's all.

We have documents that we can get to, and I want to.

I see a folder.

I see a folder.

So we're, I want to get to the folder, Mark.

You keep on preventing me from getting to the folder.

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Have you talked to Steve Ballmer about this?

The first piece of paper in this is something that people have pointed out to me a lot.

And I just want to make sure that because you're saying you're not just shilling for Steve Ballmer here, that you are not, in fact, this meme.

Oh, you busted me.

Yes, that's me.

Are you familiar with this meme?

No, I'm not.

You're familiar with a poo from The Simpsons jumping in front of another person behind a

billionaires.

Yeah, I'll only know the episode with other billionaires.

I only know the episode I deal with.

I'm the criminal with the gun.

You got to watch in season 20 the episode with the billionaire's handshake.

Oh, yeah, three points.

Big three and a big D for the big C.

Mark Cuban, that's me.

Who is that man?

And why isn't his enthusiasm being punished?

That's Mark Cuban, sir.

He's the most flamboyant owner in the league.

Do you think the Clippers knew that Kawhi had this deal with Aspiration?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I mean, it wasn't the first deal that he signed with the Clipper sponsor, so I don't know.

Right.

The Clippers knew about the previous one, the honey deal, which was the Jersey Patch.

Why would they not know about this one?

I don't know one way or the other.

Would you have known if you were the owner of a team and your most important player signed a deal with the...

Not necessarily, but probably.

Probably.

Yeah, possibly.

I think at some point right if you have to speculate like when would they have known at the very least

that they had a deal i don't know i mean

maybe the ceo would know before ballmer would know yeah it would before ballmer would know because that's typically how i would find out i wouldn't get a list of deals or anything like that sure i would find out when someone said hey you know would you say hi and take a picture with so-and-so we signed a deal with them that's typically when i would know now the bigger sponsor with aspiration i would know about obviously yeah

right so we agree on that i think yeah So Steve Bommer says that he introduced, of course,

Kawai's camp to aspiration.

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

We weren't involved.

So at some point, the introduction is made, and then the question is, when does the curiosity arise?

I wonder what happened to that.

Never.

Never what?

I've had sponsors that worked with us.

Hey, can you connect me to Dirk's guy, to Lucas People?

People for the founding sponsor of this level.

A little bit of a business.

No, just, no, that's for me on a a $300 million deal.

I'm knowing about it.

Like when we did Chime, I know about it.

Of course.

But anything that came across, like I couldn't tell you, like Luca, Luca's people would, you know, talk about certain deals.

So you think it's possible that Luca had a side deal with Chime and you wouldn't know about it?

Yeah, I would have no idea.

I wouldn't care.

You wouldn't care?

No.

Why wouldn't you?

What if you were aware that the camp of the guy who signed the deal had a history of allegedly asking for things that the rules don't allow?

I don't care.

I mean, I'm not involved in it.

I'm not involved in it at all.

Well, I know that that's the position, but the question is, personally, in terms of being honest, wouldn't you have curiosity?

I wonder if that deal is going to help me or potentially humiliate me.

The only time I really inserted myself in those types of situations was if I thought it was a product that was not good for Mavs fans.

And our people would come to me and say, hey, we think you might have questions about this.

You know, it's a supplement deal or it's, you know, a sports drink deal that's say doing.

something funky.

That's the only time I'd get involved.

And the salesperson would say, is it okay for us to go after these guys?

Do I follow up with that afterwards?

No, we have a CEO who does that.

Sure, but I'm curious, based on that, what you think about how Lawrence Frank, the Clippers president of Basketball Operations, answered this line of yes or no questions at Media Day.

Has Dennis Robertson, Kawhi's uncle, ever asked for any extra benefits that wouldn't be allowable under the NBA seller cap directly to you?

There's been a lot coming out about his asks.

Yeah, look.

Dennis knows the rules.

Kawhi knows the rules.

Mitch Frankel knows the rules, and we know the rules.

Is that a guess right now, though?

Yes, we all know the rules.

Yeah, I mean, he's, he's doing what he's supposed to do, right?

Look, I, have I ever been asked for that not legit?

Yeah, of course.

You know, do I do it?

No, right.

That's just the rule.

But in terms of the business deals, that's why you have a CEO.

Sit Marshall did 99% of the chime deal.

Oh, sure.

Look, and I think there are obviously the reason the president of Basketball Ops has asked that is because, of course, it's not just Steve alone in an alley.

This is a deal that when I said who negotiated this I'm like I think there are more than just Joe Sandberg and Steve Ballmer in the conversation no chance like yes no chance none zero that what being involved in the negotiation of a contract uh for a plan no no no I would look the theory of the case here based on my reporting is Steve Ballmer turns it over to people who get into the actual nuts and bolts of the deals.

The reason I bring that up is because, of course, Steve Ballmer said the same thing to ESPN.

So since 2019, has Dennis Robertson asked you for any other benefits that would not be in that would be in violation of the league rules?

They know the rules, they meaning Kawhi and his representatives

including his uncle.

We know the rules and

if anything's not clear we remind ourselves what the rules are and we make absolutely clear we're going to abide by those rules and they understand them as well and it's important for them to abide by them, which they have.

But can you translate what is not not being said here?

It means what?

What is Lawrence Frank not willing to say that you are personally?

All I said was there have been players,

not even agents, normally somebody affiliated with the player, a relative or whatever that asked for something.

But to be clear, to be clear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're not saying that.

You don't have knowledge that you're admitting to about that.

No, I'm just saying.

The business people do their business, right?

There's no reason for basketball to get involved.

I tell them not to get involved.

Of course, but according to the reporting, and this is out of Toronto and the Lakers, of course, Kawhi's camp was explicitly asking for things.

Yeah, but then go back to the honey deal.

No-show deals, equity.

So why wasn't the honey deal a no-show deal?

Because that was, there are, by the way, they signed some deals that passed Muster.

The reason it wasn't a no-show deal was Kawhi did ads.

Kawhi was announced as a honey sponsor.

And

what?

That's it.

But they asked him to do all that.

You have no proof that he was even asked to do anything.

So just to clarify here what does it matter if kawaii was asked by aspiration to do anything

it's everything now right but is it but whose side does it help if they never asked just out of theory it doesn't help either side it's a failure on the the part of aspiration that's all certainly but that's it but but marketing

so you there are multiple deals that kawai did that he did stuff and they announced it this is why i keep on asking the beginning of the episode what the question is why was this what a deal where it was was never announced he needed to be?

Because Aspiration is a fucked up company.

And they were turning over people left and right.

And their founder, the money guy, the guy who kept on bringing them the money, was a huge Clippers fan.

He sat front row all the time.

Oh, yeah.

He would bring his girlfriend.

He would do all this stuff.

He would get all the accoutrements.

Is that French?

Well, he and Steve.

Is that the right French?

Great French.

And there is a certain genus équa about the dynamic between Steve and Joe.

It's not even, put put aside,

but it has nothing to do with Steve.

Okay, so

I want to sort of advance the ball here a bit because Aspiration, which is a team sponsor and a company that Ballmer personally invested $50 million into, that established and not in dispute.

I want to go back to the team sponsor dynamic because you mentioned honey and chime.

And another one that came up brings us back to this story about how, you know,

the Clippers famously ended up keeping DeAndre Jordan, the center that they had, from you.

This is 2015.

And it turns out, and this is just me going through the time machine here, it turns out that in 2015, you were asked about this in a very funny setting.

It was on stage during a talk you gave at the George W.

Bush Presidential Center in Dallas.

This is the day after, this is July 9th, 2015, and it sounded like this.

Now, the sports fans among us, and I know there's a bunch here, know that you had kind of a tough, tough night last night.

So this week on Shark Tank,

without rehashing all the details of the DeAndre Jordan commitment.

Oh, you had to say his name, okay.

From a leadership standpoint, when you have a setback, when you have a tough day, what do you say to your people?

What do you say to the family?

The conversations we've had today that it's over.

You know, there's nothing you can do about it.

You think for a second, is there anything I can change?

You think for another second, what have I learned so I can do it differently next time?

And then you move forward and say, what are our options?

You know, I'm a big believer you have to reearn your business every single day.

You have to look to see whether or not you're going to be able to do that.

I just like that you were talking about DeAndre Jordan in front of Bill Clinton and George W.

Bush, who are in the audience at the presidential center there in Dallas.

Why do you think I'm bringing this up now?

No idea.

Okay.

I'm bringing it up because Steve Balmer was fined $250,000 for Capstar Convention.

Right, you mentioned that to me, yeah.

Yeah, reportedly because his team offered a marketing side deal for DeAndre Jordan through Lexis.

Would it be surprising for you to learn that Lexis was not only a team sponsor, but also, like Aspiration, a founding partner of the Intuit Dome.

No.

So I'm just saying, like, team sponsors being used in these attempted ways to circumvent the cap against people like you, his competitors, he's done a both.

So, but why did you try to make it sound like it's something he does all the time?

Well, he's been, but why didn't he?

He didn't do it in 2015.

Right.

So why didn't he do it?

Investigated 2019.

How many sponsors do you think they have?

Oh, I just think he does it for the ones that he really cares about.

Oh, okay.

So the big ones, but he didn't care enough about Kawhi with Honey in 2020 before then when he could have taken care of all this.

So let me just do some basic math here because you raise a really good question about like why this now in the timeline.

So the Raptors during 2019 free agency, I'm just looking at the numbers here, right?

So they can offer a max of $190 million over five years.

The Clippers and the Lakers could only offer $141 million

over four years.

2019, 2019.

This is the big, Kawhi just won the title free agency.

The thing that got investigated by the NBA because the Raptors and Lakers groups complaint.

190, 141.

Do you know what 190 minus 141 is?

With taxes, no.

A very Texan answer.

190 minus 141 is 49.

Oh, so you're trying to say the numbers match up?

The number the deal is 48.

It's 48.

Yeah, but okay, let's just go right there, right?

Please.

So when you did episode one, you thought it was 28.

You didn't know it was 48, right?

I didn't have the evidence that I have now.

Right, right, right.

So now you're backtracking to try to make those numbers fill, right?

But that's not the point.

No, no, no, no.

The point is when you went in episode one, yeah, and you thought it was $28 million.

It is on the endorsement deal, $28 million.

Okay, but that's not where I'm going.

Right, you've got the paperwork, right?

So it's $28 million.

And you tied the $50 million from Balmer to say this is what was being used

to pay the $28, correct?

I was saying Balmer put in $50.

Right.

Kawhi was getting out $28.

28.

So I don't know the French word.

So Air is whatever, right?

Then one must be connected to the other.

No, I'm saying that based on...

Otherwise, what was the whole point of the episode?

Well, the whole point of the episode is that we can't.

If Balmer wasn't paying that $50 million in order to pay Kawhi,

what's the point of the episode?

You've got to remember that we had so much more evidence in the episode.

But you made the point, did you not?

I'm trying to simplify it down in the conversation.

Conversation changing now.

I'm just going back to episode one.

No, no, no.

So when all this is.

In episode one, it it was 28 i had not mentioned the 20 because you didn't know about it at the time i could not report it absolutely besides but the point being that now we have the proof it was no no no no no no not the point right the point is

48 you tied is that a coincidence to you yeah is it yes or no is it coincidence yes it is yes that's a hell of a because you do no one looks at the the gross delta as the number when it comes to choosing between one team versus another if it's based off of economics nobody so so texas teams know florida Florida teams know that you have, Oklahoma teams know, you have a state tax advantage.

I get the difference that these are not, of course, what the take-home pay is going to be, depending on where your team is going to be.

Is that what matters?

Of course it does.

But I'm saying in terms of how this got roughed out, I just am pointing to the question of there is a difference of 48.

So the deal was very coincidentally 48, and it was also in the way that Kawhi's camp was asking.

No show deals.

No, he wasn't.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You're putting words in there.

That's according to the reporting from Toronto Star.

No, no, that's in Toronto.

That has nothing to do with LA.

But Kawhi's camp asked the Raptors that in 2019.

The Raptors were like, we're not doing that.

He asked that of the Lakers, reportedly.

Lakers were like, we're not doing that.

And in 2021, guess what happens?

$48 billion, a million off from the 49 in exactly that fashion.

So it's okay.

Let's segregate two different things here.

Like I said when I first came on, I don't care if Steve is guilty or not, right?

It's better for the Mavericks if he is, right?

My issue is when you came out with podcast one,

you had nothing.

That's not true.

It's very true.

That's not true.

Right.

And you tied the things you tried to get.

The things you tried to tie together.

Can the sources be wrong?

100%.

Can they be misinterpreted?

Can they be misinterpreted?

They've been proven right for now six episodes.

No, no, no, no, no.

You make them into Euro factually.

But let's just go back.

Let's just go back to what caught my intention.

You're not even factually correcting me.

You're just bringing out other stuff.

No, no, I am factually correcting you because you've tied specifically the $50 million investment.

$50 million in to $28 million.

$28 million out.

Right.

But they weren't tied at all.

They were not connected in the least bit.

Of course they were.

No.

I had more than seven sources saying this was for salary capture convention.

That is what.

Then why was the money not paid?

Because it was a company run by a clever but ultimately criminal.

Oh, so when it comes to supporting your facts, you can use the fact that he's a criminal.

I've been using that from the start.

It's the fact.

No, but it's not.

You're using it only to subs, to

the first podcast was very clear.

We have to disagree, I think, on what

I'm saying, but I'm happy to.

Let me just finish and tell me if I'm wrong, right?

The first

podcast said $50 million, which was earmarked specifically

for the 28 million of Kwa.

Yes or no?

Earmarked specifically.

No, I said 50 in, 28 out.

Right.

So isn't that saying earmarked?

I mean, look, Mark, I can refer you, generally speaking, out of journalistic caution to the definition of how one does provide a password.

It's fungible now, but why would so the point is, you're coming out with this thing that's really, you know, just destroying a man's credibility and integrity.

No, no, no, no, no.

You knew what was at stake for bomb.

You knew 100%.

We made it very clear.

Right.

But you've said 50 in, 28 out.

Yes.

That looks like a damn thing.

Like a deal that never got announced.

Of course,

the dots were connected by the seven sources that I have.

If the source is

saying,

why was the money?

We disagree that the sources,

even a criminal, criminal would know.

Pay the 50.

If you're getting the 50 to keep this guy happy for a circumvention that he needs for his business, make sure he gets paid on time, at least the first time.

I just want to make clear that what I am reporting is that steve ballmer did not know at the outset that he was going to get victimized by joe son

we agreed that's not the point the point is

the question is why was it that the payments were late right or not or not prepaid or not prepaid or not done something in the carbon credit stuff we did in the episode before you didn't do the margin dollars but anyways it's okay i want to get to this thing okay

oh mark mark mark pablo pablo pablo um i am enjoying this by the way me too okay good the thing that I'm trying to get to here, though, is that Aspiration truly was like horrifically run.

Financially, they were toast.

And I want to show you actually just like, so this other document in here, you know, so much more about business and forms than me.

So this is a series of disclosures that Aspiration had to present to potential investors.

And it lists a number of very real problems.

Yeah, you talked about this before.

If you can just like...

Yeah, this is all in Schedule 310.

Yeah.

So the company is in default.

on the first page.

What does default mean?

Just for people who don't know what that means.

Seriously.

I'll let you define it.

Okay.

It means they're broke.

KPMG.

Well, it doesn't mean they're broke, right?

It just means they're late and there's a good chance that they won't be able to.

That's why I asked.

Broke ass is the more colloquial.

But here's a good example of what you were trying to do.

No, I want to list what it is.

Right, but here's

whatever you want.

KPMG resigned as the company's independent auditor.

So while on one hand, that's a red flag, right?

Yeah, the independent auditor was a lot of people.

But they didn't give why.

Yeah, they didn't say why, right?

And that's the same thing.

Why do you think, in retrospect, they might have done that?

Yeah, because they couldn't, because Joe Samberg was doing all these round-trip deals and they couldn't confirm.

Because the company was in default and other reviews.

It wasn't even that litigation.

It wasn't that they were in default.

They were by the government.

They couldn't confirm all the.

It was fishy.

It was all fishy.

Whatever reasons they had.

Whatever reasons they had.

But the more important thing is, from an investor standpoint,

they just changed auditors.

Okay, but it resigned.

It didn't.

Again, they didn't change it.

They resigned for

independent auditor.

Oh, they They didn't give a reason.

So the company is in default.

KPMG resigned as the company's independent auditor.

The next page, scheduled.

The company's in default, but let's say what it is.

Inherit notes.

Inherit ended up being the company that acquired them after it was all said and done.

Inherit was the senior lender.

Right.

Mark's reading.

It's pretty bad, man.

This doesn't really say anything.

The company's in default, I believe.

I'll just go back to it.

There's some stuff on here.

It's pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah, I read this in the SEC.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

The company is in default.

So So look, I get your point then.

Why would somebody invest in a company that shows you this?

Litigation, 8.7 million in damages alleged by Nano.

So there must be some ancillary thing.

Claims of breach of loan, breach of the implied covenant of good faith.

But you have to ask the same question.

NRES conducting five inquiries.

Right.

SEC is conducting a review of the ESG representations.

It's just.

What was the date on these?

Well, so

let me ask you this because.

But what was the date?

Because it's important.

No, it's in there.

It's in there.

If you were pitched to invest in this company at a 2 billion plus valuation,

first of all, the investment wasn't at a $2 billion valuation.

So there's this.

This one, I'm saying,

hypothetically, if you're presented with this at a $2 billion plus valuation.

It wasn't a $2 billion valuation.

You're pivoting.

So here, if I was selling it on Shark Tank, right?

Yeah.

I would say, look,

we were Aspiration Bank and we screwed up.

We were in the consumer business.

We screwed up.

We even paid money to endorsers that we didn't even use.

That's how screwed up we were.

But now i'm going to show you the p l for our b2b business where we're selling carbon credits higher margin bigger deals right which are the things that game change new ceo getting rid of the old exacts right so now let me show you a pro forma based off of just this business and excluding all the other business

the 2.3 billion dollar number is very misleading because that's only realized if it goes public with exactly exactly right and if it doesn't go public which is all about all charney cares about right that's why not Cherney, Samberg cares about.

That's why he's lying.

They do, but Charney's gone in a minute.

Right.

Right.

So

the SPAC isn't going to happen, right?

Oh, yeah.

Joe knows it's not going to happen unless he pulls it around.

It's a very good point.

It does.

But in this case, in this timeline, it's absolutely still.

You're right.

No, the goal is still, right?

Because it's 21.

Yeah, it's 21 is still.

But the investment that they're making at that point in time isn't at the valuation of 2.3 until it converts.

And that was the point you missed before in your podcast.

Okay, I know I'm trying to.

So let me explain to you, right?

Yes.

You're buying it lower, right?

And you're getting a price.

They had rolling closes all the time.

That's why they would have a C1, C2, C4, C, you know, series close, right?

And that's why it was like confusing that Ballmer put in in September and Dennis Wong put in in December of 22, and then Ballmer puts in in March 23, because they had these things called rolling closes, right?

So at that point, so there's basically two businesses here, two businesses that are being sold, Shark Tank approach, right?

The two businesses are at the beginning, at this point in time, when everybody thinks the Aspiration Bank itself is going to happen and there's this back merger going to happen.

You're only going to invest if it's considerably lower than the $2.3 billion.

I see what you're saying.

Because you see that as the grand profit.

But this is, but this thing, the reason I'm jumping in here is because this presentation, these disclosures were made to outside investors, 19 of them, according to court documents, who heard this pitch like you and said, no.

No.

No.

Yeah.

You would say to

this series of disclosures, no thanks.

No, I wouldn't necessarily say that.

I don't know what the pitch is.

Companies put in the business.

Okay, so every disclaimer.

So let me put this in the timeline specifically because this was the raise in Q4 of 2022.

And so all that stuff is disclosed.

So what happened in October of 2022?

A lot of bad shit for aspiration, man.

No, a lot lot of good shit for aspiration.

A lot of good stuff.

What was good about a company going into default that was losing its entire executive structure as employees were saying, Are we going to make it a role ever?

They went to Katana.

Katona.

Katona.

Katana.

Right.

Katana.

So, December 22, they changed and they were able to show a PL based only off their B2B.

They did, again, the execs that were pitching.

But, Mark, the reason why they were pivoting was because

the company as it existed was, of course, pardon my French, totally fucked.

And so they were figuring out, okay.

No,

no, no, no, no.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Now you're a big aspiration fan.

No, I'm not, you know, the more I got to know about Katana, the more I liked it.

Katona, right?

The more I liked it, right?

So I could see.

You liked, okay, very good.

Because when you look, the base numbers going back to September 30th of 2021, showed their B2B business where they didn't waste all that money on marketing, right?

Was had a chance, had a chance.

So for that reason, you're in.

I at least would look at it, right?

Okay.

But

not that I would invest in that business, but it's not unheard of for a company to pivot to a new business, have multiple lines.

In fact, the only thing left for this company to do is

that's everybody.

But the reason I'm saying it is that because 19 outside investors looked at this and said, as aforementioned, hell no.

And so the question I have now is, since you know how many people said no to Airbnb?

Okay, but I guess everybody, the Federal Express, everybody.

Of course.

That's, of course, an insane comparison to Aspiration, which went bankrupt and is embroiled in lots of fraud and humiliation, Airbnb, FedEx, and so forth.

But in this case, the question I have is just

since the first podcast, which you hated, came out on September 3rd, have you communicated at all with the vice chairman of the Clippers, Dennis Wong?

No.

Okay.

Dennis Wong is Steve Ballmer's close friend and college roommate.

the one and only co-owner that Ballmer trusted of equity in the team.

He also wound up being the only person who who did not have money in aspiration who saw these disclosures that I presented to you in December 22.

Not the only person.

The only person who had never put in money into aspiration before.

Oh, that put in money into aspiration before.

And said, you know what?

I want a piece of this.

This is the signature page for Dennis Wong that's attached to the same disclosures that I just handed you.

That's what he saw.

What you just saw is what he saw.

But to your point, right, now let's think this through.

Please.

There were other investors because we got to see the pitch all previously.

The point is, right?

The point is, those other two investors that invested around the same time as Dennis Wong, right?

They, as best I can remember, so they also said, you know what?

I like what I'm seeing in this pivot.

But I do need to just take a quick beat here to clarify something that we had reported previously on the show.

When it comes to the identities of the only other investors, the two other entities who gave Aspiration money in December 2022 in that same series C5 round, having been presented with that same exact set of disclosures in all of their bleakness as Clippers co-owner Dennis Wamp.

Because one of those two investors was Aspiration board member Ibrahim Al-Husseini.

The same guy who pleaded guilty to wire fraud in March 2025.

The same guy who was the alleged co-conspirator of Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg.

And the other investor

was, yes, Joe Sandberg himself, who, of course, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in August of 2025.

So the question I have is: those disclosures are the things that Dennis Wong signed off on, and Aspiration's

quarterly payment to Kawhi Leonard was at this point more than two months late.

Dennis Wong put in $1.99 million.

He acquired 0.072%

of the company in default facing those problems as aforementioned.

Why do you think he put in that little money for that little equity?

Maybe to make his daughter happy, his daughter worked there, right?

Maybe to keep him alive, maybe to keep him, give him one more month.

Maybe they said...

Do you think that I would save the balance sheets of aspiration, $2 million?

And by the way, lots of people came in and out of the company.

I'm not here to interrogate them at the moment.

So the people who went back to work there.

But why would people who would Dennis Wong put in specifically that little amount of money after $300 million had already been raised the year before?

Because maybe that was a bridge loan.

0.5 million.

Maybe it was a bridge amount.

Maybe they said, you know what, we got to make this one payroll, right?

And we have more money coming in.

We have more money coming in after the population.

Which turned out to be true.

I get asked all the time.

This wasn't a loan.

This was an investment.

Okay, whatever it was, a bridge investment.

It was a

purchase agreement.

It was a Series C5 preferred stock purchase agreement right i can't tell you how often i hear right hey we're close yeah we have this other money coming in which turned out to be true right because they ended up raising 68 million dollars kind of they raised the company is just spoiler alert the company is

well no this is our we're we're getting

decisions with the benefit of hindsight i admit joe sandberg is

joe sandberg is

the company literally is in default at the time that this payment

and aspiration needs to pivot to a totally different business.

That's what companies do, but that is also a synonym for being f ⁇ ed.

They filed for bankruptcy.

So, okay.

Why would a new CEO take the job of CEO?

That's a great question for Olivia Albrecht.

Great question.

Right.

Why does she stay there for an extended period of time?

I want to ask about Dennis Wong.

We don't care about Olivia.

Yeah, we do care about Olivia.

No, I get, well, lots of people, lots of people either fell for or went eyes wide open in for a fed scenario as described.

But no, but see, no, no, no, no, no.

Okay, so our mutual friend has been very clear that he didn't know that they were.

He's a friend.

He is a source, and I appreciate the distinction.

But the point being, and I want to leave him to the side for a second, because what Dennis Wong decided to do nine days before

KL2 Aspire LLC finally, after months of delay, got paid 1.75,

are you suggesting that is another coincidence?

Look, there were 16 contractual payments.

You have one payment that was in proximity to an investment weeks before, after months of delay.

After months of delay.

Let me ask you the question, why would he put in 1.99 specifically?

And your only response was maybe he wanted to save the company, which doesn't ask.

No, maybe he wanted to make his daughter happy.

By the way, his daughter, according to people who worked with her, quote, she 100% knew that the company was a sinking ship.

End quote.

Kawhi got paid 1.75 the day they laid off 20% of the staff.

Yeah, that's because they were pivoting.

Of course, you're going to lay off staff.

Look, you're trying to put everything in.

Joe Sandberg is his own unique entity.

Aspiration, the people doing the work, the people that came every day.

Yes, they believed in the mission.

Those are my sources for the record.

And that's great, but they had no idea or understanding of why Joe Sandberg did what he did.

And what they did, though, was see wire in and wire out knowledge in the finance department.

Like, this is Dennis Wong's wire in.

This is KL2's wire out the week before.

This is bookkeeping shit.

It's bookkeeping shit.

It's literally the flow of funds yeah the question i have let me let me say this again paul no i i hear you

16 payments yeah 16 contractual why this one

16 contractual payments but right i want to focus on one payment but why is this one the one that dennis wong put in money nine days before to a degree that is inexplicable to everybody any look any payment that's going to be made is going to be within some extra months late mark was that this payment to kawaii was months late yeah and i don't know maybe 10 days later so it got paid magically

who benefits the most from that payment anyone who wants kawaii to finally get paid uncle dennis kawhi's camp the clippers are the two parties

your uncle dennis constantly trying to so

as a link someone

as someone who's had companies that have done well and and poorly for a period unfortunately turned around right when you have a vendor that is calling you all this

time, right?

The squeaky wheel moves to the top.

Did it cross your mind that the guy was just so annoying?

But Mark, but yes, but lots of people weren't getting paid.

Lots of clients were getting screwed, right?

And they were all calling.

And the question is, why did this guy get prioritized?

Because maybe he was the squeakiest wheel.

Maybe because Joe Sandberg's a Clippers fan.

Maybe because Joe Sandberg would see Kawhi at games that he would go to, sitting on the front row or right on the court, wherever.

I don't know exactly where he was sitting, right?

And maybe he already had a relationship with Kawhi and he would be embarrassed next time because maybe Kawhi would say something.

Uncle Dennis was going to those games.

Maybe Uncle Dennis was saying something specifically to Joe Sandberg.

And that guy is saying, okay, we got to pay this guy.

You know, I'm the one raising money.

I got more money coming in.

It's just a very funny thing for the number one priority, according to my sources here to be pay the guy doing nothing for us in a deal we never ended up Samberg.

He's He's driving everything.

He's the one raising all the money.

So, but what does he raise money?

The question is, what does he benefit from in terms of this deal existing?

And my theory has been consistent throughout, which is that he benefits because he preserves a relationship with Steve Ballmer in which his opponent's.

So, the more I learned, so when I did the first podcast, I didn't really know all that much about Joe.

So, it was interesting.

And thank you, deep research, right?

Oh, boy.

So, it was interesting.

This is a guy.

What else was on Joe Sandberg's plate?

What else was he doing?

Please educate me.

He was actively involved in politics.

Oh, yeah.

He was one of the largest.

These are the good guys, Mark.

These are the Democrat donors, the biggest in California, some have said.

Biggest in California, right?

He's on the court.

He's got a famous girlfriend, right?

Who's taken to games?

He's a media personality.

Yeah, yeah.

And so

his whole spiel, his only,

if he collapses, if his image collapses,

his whole thing, taking over Blue Apron.

Oh, sure.

But all that stuff collapses.

But it's so hard to prioritize the deal that no one knows about amid all the time.

No, no, no, no, no.

You're missing the whole point then.

I'm not doing a good job explaining it.

No, no, he has lots of things that he's trying to keep the plate spinning simultaneously.

It's not just spinning, it's his whole image.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

He's selling.

That's what criminals do.

But they sell

what I'm pointing out to you.

And if the one guy that you see in a uniform or at that point in time in 21, well, I guess he didn't sign it till 22.

Well, he didn't

play in 21, 22.

Right.

No, that's what he said.

He didn't sign, and they didn't sign it till 22, right?

And they signed April of 22, right?

And so

that season starts in November, right, of October, November.

Yes, the 22nd.

And so because we're talking about him getting paid in December, right?

And so now he's seeing them at the games again.

The guy's got front, they've got a big suite where they entertain.

Yes, they do.

Right.

They've got staples at the time.

Right.

They've got the seats on the floor.

He's probably seen them in the tunnel before or and or after every game.

Sure.

And he's seeing Uncle Dennis, and I'm sure Uncle Dennis is in his ear.

And Uncle Dennis is.

I fully agree that Joe Samberg was

getting paid.

So let me just ask you a question.

If you're Joe Samberg, which is more impactful to your life,

paying Kawhi Leonard or paying some random vendor?

I would say that making sure that I paid Kawhi above and beyond, not a random vendor, but my other financial obligations is insane because he's returning zero ROI to my company.

No, no, he's for sure.

No, he's literally doing nothing.

He's actually just net negative.

You got the wrong ad on, Paul.

I know, I know you're talking about

pressure, and I know you're talking about who's bothering me day to day.

No, no, no, no, I'm not going to be able to do that.

I'm talking to Joe Sandberg about what is the actual health of my company.

Why am I prioritizing somebody?

No, no, no.

The goal is to get to SPAC.

Right, right.

But okay, but in 2022, a functional company.

So he's spiraling in 2022.

Absolutely.

You got to have a functioning company.

So paying Kawaii 1.75 isn't going to change functioning company.

The 1.99 is not going to change whether it's functioning.

You know what it would do, though?

It would keep Uncle Dennis Robertson and Kawhi's camp happy.

And

it keeps him from bothering Joe Sandberg.

Who else might be bothered if there were payments that were late?

Joe Samberg.

What about, I don't know, potentially, according to my reporting, the Los Angeles Clippers?

You think that could be a pressure?

I mean, it's possible that Uncle Dennis pressured whoever there.

Like

Lawrence Frank saying that he heard, or rather, wouldn't say no to whether he heard.

Yeah, but you can't.

I mean, look, that's ridiculous to even bring that up.

Using his words, using yes or no questions.

Right, but what do you think he's going to do?

You don't think he's got a prepared statement.

He knows exactly what he's going to say before he gets to be a game.

It's a terrible way to convince people.

No, you think he gives.

Look, it's a big he just doesn't want to be caught lying.

It's not even about that.

There's no point.

It's obvious.

There's no point.

Kawhi addressed it.

So think about this.

Andrew Cherney says it wasn't a no-work deal.

What was that guy so the three names uh mike shucker of the general counsel roje avenizian the cmo and eric anderson who was the cto they came out with a signed statement provided to me saying andre chierney in so many words is not representing our experience

Yeah, you're proving

and you don't even know it.

You're making my point.

And you're not.

Those three named sources are corroborating what my seven anonymous sources were telling me.

And Andre Cherny is on an island as the co-founder and friend of Joe Sandberg, who's now trying to say, according to his public statements, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this was a normal deal.

The Kawhi thing was a normal deal.

No, he said the contract was normal.

So look, what I want to get to here.

He said, because he even agreed, like, because the Joe Sandberg email to everybody in May of 22, where he said he would provide the source.

Oh, yeah, Joe said.

He said, he even said in the email.

Andre signed it.

Andre signed the contract.

No, no, no, no, no, that's not where I'm going.

Oh, I know.

Joe said that Andre didn't want this either.

And all the marketing team didn't want it either.

Nobody, so nobody, which was par for the course for Joe Samberg.

The same thing in that 29.5 rammed it.

That 29.5.

Did you read the lawsuit, the $29.5 million lawsuit?

Mark, I've read so many.

I bet you have.

I bet you have.

So you know that that's where you brought up the, they brought up the, not the audit committee, the investment committee, right?

The investment committee said no.

And then

the general counsel said, we want escrow.

Guy sends an email to Joe Samberg, and the next day it's all changed.

The next day that's how he did

look the whole thing here is that he was and is according to his own guilty plea a fraudster the question is why he wanted to do this and so for me what i'm getting to is also

as you foreshadowed march 9 2023 those same disclosures den as wong saw steve ballmer's like you know what i want in 10 million dollars more and i'll tell you exactly how that goes please okay guy comes to you pablo we've had problems right we're pivoting and i've got my gc coming back right i've got people that i think are going to do great i've got a new ceo and pablo let me just show you this this information these numbers this business to business stuff this enterprise business is good the carbon credit so good yeah enterprise yeah carbon credits we have meta lined up we have you know bank of america lined up and you know what pablo this is so good i'm gonna put in 40, you're putting in 10, Steve.

I'm going to go four times that amount and I'm going to put my own cash in.

That's how committed I am to this business.

Mark, you're putting in 40 million, whatever it was, dollars in yourself?

All right.

I can see the numbers.

My marginal cost is 10 million.

I'm already in 50.

So the marginal value of this, and remember, this is March of 23 when he invested.

And by that.

That was the same round as Dennis Wong.

It was the long round.

Right.

Yeah.

Which is not unusual.

Summer market.

Yeah.

They keep it going.

Right.

And that was also the time when Samberg was paying inter-private two $5 million payments to extend the outside date, which is the drop-dead date for the SPAC.

Yeah.

Right.

So he's going.

So it wouldn't be the first time.

Oh, no, no.

But

the idea that he's doing this, how stupid is he because he reads this?

Well, he's so stupid that the guy who he still trusts that he doesn't know is a fraudster is putting in four times as much cash as he is 20 times as much cash as dennis wand right that's why he's doing it right so i guess it's worth pointing out though that at this point when you go to december before steve walmer made that decision the spac as a premise had basically collapsed no

no no There was a meeting held in which 90% of the investors were like, we're cashing out.

Right.

But it still was alive.

That's why

90% said we're out.

Yeah, but you can, it's

90%.

Yeah.

But you can go

you can replenish those investments.

Okay, but how big an uphill climb is all of this in context?

But in context, it's a significant thing.

You have to look.

No, you have to look at what's happening with SPACs at the same point in time.

Yeah, and over time, SPACs were revealed to be a giant

illusion.

Not necessarily, but they weren't doing as well.

Right.

They're not doing as well.

I mean, yeah.

But the point is that.

But the point, no, you're using this as some type of thing.

I'm just giving you like

a lot of people

documented to be

using its appendages, its identity, its employment so pablo's its very basic thesis no that spack has a thesis just look at katona's web uh twitter feed right that's the so i'm giving you 90 of the investors are cashing out with interprivate and you're saying look at the twitter feed pablo because they got posts because it's because they dare to post It's a blank check.

A blank check SPAC, right?

And so they have the option to extract their money.

They have the option to get more money to put in there a variety of ways.

They have to come up with a total total of $400 million at some point.

The fact that these investors pulled out could be a thousand different reasons.

What data did they have available to them to make a determination if it was...

What if they saw that everybody who was in the executive structure was fired?

They didn't have any data.

Okay, but

as an investor, would it be

if they were having massive layoffs and needed to pivot the entire premise of the company?

They knew where they were pivoting.

A lot of people.

Well, so I guess what they're saying is, hey, you guys are pivoting.

This is most generously.

You guys are pivoting.

We think that we're best.

I'm saying, no, no, no, I'm saying

that's the way we ended up.

Pablo, you're coming to the conclusion that these people left, the 90% left, because it's obvious that it was a fraud or there's something wrong.

They smelled that it was a bad deal.

Yeah.

I'm saying you have no idea that that's the case.

None.

Not even smidget about.

I have a sense.

Yeah, that's all you have.

No, no, no.

I have a sense based on nine sources who are telling me this is why this is happening.

Here is the flow of funds.

Here are the 3,000 pages of documents.

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You check your feed and your account.

You check the score and the restaurant reviews.

You check your hair and reflective surfaces and the world around you for recession indicators.

So you check all that, but you don't check to see what your ride options are.

In this economy, next time, check Lyft.

Can I just get to the whole thing of like the Clippers say to us, we saw this deal was fishy in the 22-23 season, and we terminated it.

Mm-hmm.

For the end of the 23 season.

So, you know, how the NBA season works.

So Bomber puts in 10 in March, March 9th.

So that's pretty close to the end of the season.

So when do you think the Clippers would have said, oh, no, we should terminate this?

I don't know if they told him at all or when they told him or what was going on.

I'm sure they mentioned it to it.

I would say they mentioned it to it because you're closing a big deal, right?

So.

You know, and when did he start the investment process and when did he close it?

You know, he closed it in March of 23, right?

We don't know when they determined that they were going to shut off the aspiration.

We do know they tweeted happy birthday to Kawhi, right?

In

in June.

So, you know, because the NBA dates are June 30th, right?

That's when the season officially financially ends.

Oh, the league year.

For the

business year.

For the CBA.

I guess what I'm saying is when Steve Ballmer says, and I believe him on some key level that he is a victim of Joe Sandberg, and there is no disagreement from me.

Yeah, we both agreed there.

Of course he was.

The question is whether he was deceived by a guy he was entrusting to help him deceive the NBA.

Right.

And you firmly push back, Team Ballmer.

So the question I have now is, look, you're a businessman who has said over and over again that like we are not immune to mistakes.

We are fallible.

We are

scammed.

It genuinely, this is just me like doing a bit of just, I imagine to be that rich and to lose money

from someone you trust.

That sucks.

Yeah, of course.

You must feel like, because you're supposed to be the smart guy.

You're humiliated.

It's not even that.

It's not even that, right?

It's because you trusted somebody.

Yes.

That's it.

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?

Look, they conned me.

You're one of the richest planners.

They conned me.

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

Why did Steve Bommer donate $1.875 million to the charity Joe Sandberg personally founded and was still the board chair of?

And when did he start donating the money?

When was the first time he donated?

2018.

Okay, so you think that he said, hey, I want to keep you on the line because you have this business and I'm going to use you at some point in the future.

And so I'm going to keep on.

I don't know why.

I couldn't tell you.

I'm just wondering, how could you feel like your trust was so broken and yet donate $1.875 million to the deuce?

How much does his foundation, you looked up his foundation and you looked at the $99.

At last check one of the 10 richest people in the world put that aside he has a zillion donations to zillions of places right and do you really really think he checked i would say that if i was embroiled in this giant no right i wouldn't know like if one of the guys who scammed me my foundation was giving them money and we had an overall deal i would have no clue it's not worth my time mark is not worth my time if you had made a series of

donations to Joe Sandberg's charity since 2018, meaning you knew this guy since at least 2017.

Did we know that he knew him?

He was the chair and it's a tiny charity.

So was it specified by Ballmer to give to him or was it the foundation that founded and it aligned with Ballmer's goals?

So according to 60 Minutes interviews, of course,

Steve and Connie, his wife, go through grant by grant their donations.

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

now we we can't do population level measurement but place by place you know grant by grant we can do that right it's a list i get the same it's a list when the mavs did their with their foundation i'd get the list and i'd be like you guys like this

done okay there's a lot of like you have no idea what your money does when the money does bad stuff But when it does good stuff, you know exactly.

No, no, no, no, not true at all.

It goes the same way.

I don't want to bring up the Simpsons meme again.

I apologize.

The thing I'm saying is, if you were making these series of escalating investments into a charity and the charity was run by, in this hypothetical, Bernie Madoff, wouldn't you think to yourself, man, that guy, Bernie Madoff, who's been my entire life, that guy, do I want to keep donating to the thing I keep on signing off on?

I probably don't.

is what I would imagine.

And he's like, you know what?

I'm back for more.

December 12th.

What was the name of of the charity?

Golden State Opportunity Foundation.

And he started it, but was he the president that ran it and filled out the applications?

When it started, right?

When he first started,

he is the founder, the sole founder.

It is in his image.

It is his life story.

He is the board chair through this time period.

And there's somebody who operates it.

He doesn't operate it, right?

Over time, he appointed a president.

Right.

Mark.

Right.

But that person fills out the forms every year.

And every year they submit it.

But unless there's a reason that someone is...

But Joe Sandberg was the only person other than that president who had the title of president according to their 990s.

So what?

I give money to organizations.

Federal.

So like I give money to different organizations.

And if somebody goes rogue in one of those organizations, I'm not going to know.

If you were donating to a guy as central in your suffering as Joe Sandberg has been presented to us.

Okay, no, so here's the presumption that you're making.

I'm saying saying September 20th.

So

the federal government has been announcing.

The reason I'm in this chair right now

I'm one of the few people that has experienced all these things.

And that's why I love that you're here.

Right.

Because I can, I can, I've been there, done that every single piece of these things, right?

Well, and I hope not every single piece.

Well, no, I've been frauded.

No, not well, no, because I don't think he did anything.

So, okay.

Right.

So, but at the same time, there are charities I've made, I've given money to.

And if somebody at that charity, even the founder, even the original chairman, goes rogue,

the chances of me knowing unless somebody at the foundation catches it are minimal.

Even if the guy was the guy who was around your games.

Even if the guy was the guy around my games.

There could be a guy

who seats down for me at the Mavs games.

$300 million partner show.

Signage all over the building that you built with your bare hands, this founding sponsor.

Yes, because...

It's not any guy.

It's the guy.

No, you're trying.

That's right.

That's the whole, that's what you do, Pablo.

You're trying to put all this on, you know, if there's a connection

for the decisions they make that are documented.

Look, if the guy decided to give to the charity, you're presuming now he's saying, oh, this guy f ⁇ ed me.

Go, somebody go look up to make sure that I'm not involved with him anywhere, any shape, or something.

If you say that you were victimized, that your trust was broken, humiliated, this was a guy that you did not trust, that you only met in this one way.

Yeah, but he probably has no idea that his charity is giving money to Sandberg's charity.

Probably has zero ideas.

His public commentary about how they'd make decisions about donations say otherwise.

Right, so no, no, no, it does not.

No, it does not.

They go grant by grant.

How much time?

How much time do you think that would take?

I assume that if you are sincerely somebody who cares about charity as they present themselves to be, you would have some awareness that this person who is in business with you so many different ways and has been embroiled in this same year, by the way.

It's not like any year.

It's the same year when the fed.

You're presuming.

You're presuming.

No, no, no, no.

This is Newberg and January reports of the federal government's investigating.

What's going to film is the picture.

Let's just say Pablo gives to 20 charities.

Okay.

Do you go back and review the applications?

Because

the way the rules work is if you give to 20, there's probably 100 plus because they have to be

independent.

Right.

There's a bunch of bunch.

The thought that when they're going through, I never read the detailed applications.

Okay.

Not one single time.

I just, I just want to.

Not one single time.

That's what you would would do, and I want to I want to agree on on that perspective.

Why don't you think the Clippers or anyone else associated with them have like made any of these arguments that you've been making?

There's no upside.

There's no upside.

You got to deal with the NBA.

Look, what happens if Twitter wants someone like that?

But no one's even leaked it.

There's only downside.

No one's leaked it, Mark.

There's only downside.

That means they have a good organization.

No one leaked it.

There's only downside.

There's only downside to somebody who's not going to be able to do it.

It just feels like you're making arguments, and I'm just wondering why they don't anyway because they're going to have to tell everything to the NBA anyway.

Okay.

So, look, if we get to the mabs for a sec, sure.

So, the mabs of it, because

again, I want to make my point.

Oh, no, and we can we can keep you talking about it.

It's not me trying to get you out of here.

I've got no idea.

Right.

What got me mad

is that you didn't have anything concrete.

You had to.

I had seven sources in 3,000.

No, seven sources.

No,

those are physical.

I had the contract contract that was never announced.

Great.

Great.

He did nothing forever.

Great.

And we have.

That has nothing to do with whether or not Ballmer violated the CBA.

But the whole...

Okay.

We're going to give my points here and hide it.

If you would come up, if you find a smoking gun in the middle of the morning, does the Dennis Wong thing even change your mind?

No.

If I was in episode one, you'd be like, oh, that makes more sense.

No, no.

A little bit.

No, because I learned more between episode one and two as I dug in more.

But the Dennis Wong thing is exactly what we're talking about.

Nine days' separation between money in, money out.

Okay, let's start going back to the beginning where I was what got me mad, if you will, not mad, but that's okay.

I'm not about here to do that.

Me interested.

Yeah, made me interested is you on somebody's reputation without having a real fact.

I was absolutely

deeply sourced documentary.

The fact that it's deeply sourced

relevant.

No, kudos to you for finding your sources.

No, no issues there.

The conclusions you came to shit on Steve Ballmer, and that was wrong because you didn't have enough information to make that confusion i totally respect that you feel that way i do and i and i don't i i want you to have said it so nothing okay moving on nothing about that that i want to disagree with i think it's okay for you to feel that way the mavs so part of the reason why it's funny to be in this eternal conversation with you is because people are like are you ever going to ask him about the mavs and the dirk novitsky sweetheart deal in 2014 to stay in dallas where he re-signed for about 8 million a year When, of course, he had max offers on the table that I have confirmed.

There's a conspiracy theory out there.

And by the way, this is just me asking.

This is like, I don't have.

I'm here to confess.

I gave him $48 million.

That is not Sora.

That is actual Mark.

The conspiracy out there, you know, is that why would he take so much less?

He wanted Tim Duncan money.

He was at his age.

And remember, the cap, I went back and looked, was $58 million three years in a row, right?

It wasn't going going up at all.

And it was how do you manage your cap?

And Tim Duncan had done a three for 30 deal.

And I vividly remember having the conversation.

And he's like, I'd like to get Tim Duncan money.

I'm like, Dirk, you know, cap stayed flat.

Here's what we want to do.

And he was like, okay.

And then the next year, 2016, when the cap went up, we were able to pay a lot more.

But the money he left on the table, the question is.

No, you're presuming.

Okay.

He had max offers.

I don't even know that they spoke to him.

Maybe he did.

Maybe he didn't.

I don't know.

but look i can tell you that he did from those other teams who did you talk to daryl and who else i can tell you that there were max offers on the table daryl would have come to me and said let's make a trade i can pay dirk i want to pay dirk more so you're saying that he didn't get max offers at that time

it's highly unlikely for the at the age he was and the fact that they knew that he wanted to stay that is highly unlikely look dirk wanting to stay in dallas is so clear to me i'm not saying he's getting offers not getting offers the cap was 58 million at the time, right?

So 35% of right.

So the question is, and this is truly like not my reporting, so, but the conspiracy out there, Reddit, our buddy Bill Simmons.

Yes, when Dirk had that documentary and Cuban's company bought it, and I would is this documentary.

So

the theory here is that Magnolia Pictures,

my company, they own half of it.

That's right.

Circumvented the cap by, you know, overpaying to distribute a documentary about Dirk.

How he he spent like Iron Man level money on the Dirk doc.

Here's 48 million for your diet.

Like, who knows what he spent, but how much do you think we paid?

Well, what we did was we checked with the producers of the film.

And to your credit, they poured cold water on the whole conspiracy.

The head of the production company told us that your company did a $100,000 deal for U.S.

distribution rights.

For how many years?

10.

So, yeah.

I'm just looking, I'm not here to say, gotcha.

I'm just here to finally say, I'm not sure if you're not going to be able to do that.

I appreciate you looking.

You know what?

And I thank you.

I thank you you for just dispelling all the nonsense.

I call it.

And so just to confirm, did the Mavericks circumvent the salary cap with Dirk Nowitzki in 2014?

No.

Very good.

Do you think the Knicks may have circumvented the cap in taking Jalen Brunson from your Mavericks?

I don't know.

A different answer.

Yeah, I don't know.

Okay.

I just think there was a lot of play there.

Yeah.

Luca.

I want to get to the Luca Dodgers thing because your first public comments on that trade were kind of incredible.

Yep.

They were very funny.

February 2025 of this year.

Oh, I mean, this is hilarious.

The setting, I mean, you had sold your majority stake of the Mavs by then.

Do you remember where you were?

No, I don't.

Let's play the video.

And so, I wanted to start off with a question because you've been in you know unique situations, and maybe you can help.

Um,

if after you left Microsoft,

you found out that Steve Ballmer

traded

Windows 11, like the new hot operating system,

for Windows 10, the Hall of Fame, but older operating.

What would you do?

I might have to hide from the press.

I know a couple other people that are in that situation.

So can you now refresh our memory?

I appreciate you showing that.

that was fun who are you on stage with thank you um bill gates you remember where it was it was in dallas i forget what the venue was dallas museum of art okay and so i bring this all up because what dallas is like when that comment is made and the organizations you support i thought you were going to tie it to bill gates to steve ballmer oh so i mean it was available for me but actually like what i've been doing is i'm like okay here are the organizations that mark's involved with the networks he moves in and we've mentioned a number of them in the conversation already we've We've mentioned your Major League Pickleball team, the George W.

Bush Presidential Center, where you gave a talk.

Got asked about DeAndre Jordan.

We're not rehashing all the details of the DeAndre Jordan commitment.

Oh, yeah, to say his name.

Okay.

The Dallas Museum of Art, where you joked about Luca with Bill Gates.

Of course, close to Steve Bomber.

And even, I was looking at some other causes.

By the way, you do, your charitable work is like real.

Like the MAVs under your administration, like the Southwestern Medical Foundation, like did really good shit.

But there is something that I realize that you've not volunteered with me in these back and forth that we've had.

And I wonder if you know what it is now that I've built up to this question.

I have no idea.

It turns out that Dennis Wong lives in Dallas.

Oh, he does.

It also turns out that Dennis Wong is involved with every one of those exact same organizations that you are that I just mentioned.

Really?

Dennis Wong also owns a major pigball team based in Texas called the Texas Ranchers.

He's a first face listed on the website's ownership group page.

Dennis Wong serves.

He owns the ranchers.

I know that.

Dennis Wong serves on the Executive Advisory Council of the George W.

Bush Presidential Center.

I did not know that.

Dennis Wong's on the board of trustees of the Dallas Museum of Art.

I did not know that.

Where his best friend's old business partner, Microsoft, Bill Gates, their old Harvard classmate, was invited to give a talk this year with you.

Did not know that.

Let me just say, on this, that was the first time I had met Bill Gates.

And so his PR people called me and said, would you be interested?

He's doing a book tour.

Would you be interested in interviewing Bill?

he's had different people interview him at all the different stops i'm like i'd never met bill it sounds interesting so that was the first time i had met him when was the first time you met dennis um he came to a mavs game probably towards the end of last season and there's probably i think there's a picture of of him being close to me in proximity um so somebody introduced me to him and said yeah he's steve ballmer's partner right he's he's also you know the alternate governor of the Clippers.

Okay.

Has been, according to LinkedIn, since April 2017.

Okay.

So I'm just saying, like, did you guys ever encounter each other at the Board of Governors meetings for like a half dozen years?

And when you were,

I don't know that I have.

Like a South African Asian dude.

Yeah, it's possible.

Not exactly looking like the other.

Yeah, Balmer, as best I remember, he was there every meeting.

But the alternate governor also can, you know,

take along.

But Balmer, like,

is that?

What's that?

This year, Steve and Dennis both were in attendance at the Board of Governors.

Okay.

I don't recall.

I may have met Dennis, but I do remember meeting him at a game.

Yeah.

So just to reiterate, he's not somebody that you talked to or anything like that.

Never.

Okay.

I've never had a conversation with him outside of being face-to-face.

Not even at pickleball?

Not even a pickleball.

I've been to the bottom.

When the ranchers are playing the flash?

Never.

I've yet to be, I'm sorry to admit, at a flash game or match or whatever they call them.

But I root for him.

I can tell.

I can tell.

So I guess

we're near the end.

No, don't let it end.

I know, I know.

So I just want to reiterate, you haven't talked to Steve Bommer.

You haven't talked to Dennis Wong.

Haven't talked to the NBA.

Haven't talked to Adam Silver.

Haven't talked to anybody associated with it.

What do they feel about you?

Oh, I don't care.

They're probably like annoyed by it, knowing Adam.

They're annoyed.

Yeah.

You know, but they know that I take, you know, this is what I do.

I like doing this stuff.

Right.

I like the challenge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I've been there, right?

I've been accused.

I've been accused by people who didn't know shit.

And, you know, I was under the, in the firestorm.

Oh, and so I've been there.

And I just want to make clear, billionaires are people too.

Yeah, and it's not like we all hang out.

The whole billionaire meme thing.

My friends are still my friends from high school, from college, from rugby.

Those are my guys.

I'm merely saying that I am trying to understand the networks and how the money flows because I'm not one of you guys.

I give opportunity to comment and fact check and push back at every opportunity for every episode.

And you deserve credit for that.

And I appreciate that.

I'm not looking for, you know, a pat on the head, but I just want to make clear that none of this is a bad faith effort.

It's why you're here.

Right.

It's because I went to the bank.

No, and I appreciate it.

Steel Manning, as they call it.

Steel Manning, right?

I want not straw men, but steel men, even those that get shot by Mark Wahlberg on Amazon Prime.

Do you think the Knicks at the end here should be worried about an upcoming episode of Mark Cuban Finds Out?

You know, that's behind me.

You know, more power to JB, more power to everything.

Was I happy that they only got dinged for a second-round pick?

No.

No, it should have been far worse, but it it is what it is.

Do you remain, Mark Cuban, at the end here, team balmer?

Yes.

I mean, 16 contractual payments, one investment that's within nine days of one of the payments is not enough to with Steve Ballmer.

I think that was wrong.

But thank you for letting me say my piece.

I appreciate that.

And you deserve a lot of respect for that, and I appreciate that.

And I there's no personal win in my life.

At the risk of being my own greatest enemy, I might even want to do this again.

We'll see what comes up next, right?

I mean, my disappointment is only one folder access.

Hold on, do I have anything else?

I seriously thought about bringing my own folder.

I will simply say, be careful what you wish for.

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

And I'll talk to you next time.

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