Back in July, Variety spoke with the trailblazing sports journalist about “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” his engrossing podcast, a mélange of chat show and true-crime docuseries wherein Torre breadcrumbs investigative reporting to his pals, and its monthslong, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into how the Los Angeles Clippers were alleged to have circumvented the NBA salary cap by having its star player, Kawhi Leonard, receive a $28 no-show endorsement deal from Aspiration, whose co-founder was recently sentenced to 14 years in prison for defrauding investors (Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, the richest owner in the league, among them). Ballmer had repeatedly — and vehemently — denied any involvement in the salary cap-circumvention scheme, and Torre had received a barrage of public criticism for his in-depth reporting from the likes of Ballmer’s billionaire pal (and former NBA owner) Mark Cuban and former NBA player turned podcaster Ty Lawson. His reporting was even undermined by his former employer, ESPN, in an Aug. 17 story by reporters Don Van Natta Jr., Baxter Holmes and Ramona Shelburne, under the headline, “Sources: NBA has no evidence Ballmer funneled money to Leonard via sponsors,” and the news site Puck, whose writers Dylan Byers and Peter Hamby accused Torre of chasing “clout and clicks and building your audience.” But on Sept. 2, the NBA handed down its punishment, and it was historic (translation: the biggest penalty levied against a team in league history): The NBA, who’d hired the law firm Wachtell Lipton to conduct an independent investigation into the Clippers/Leonard saga, found that the Clippers had “committed multiple significant rules violations” and that Leonard, via his uncle, Dennis Robertson, had compelled the Clippers “to assist him in obtaining off-court income opportunities, successfully obtaining those opportunities, and failing to reimburse payments by the Clippers for personal expenses.” Leonard released a statement saying, in part, “I accept full responsibility for the lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle,” while NBA commissioner Adam Silver said, “I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct.
The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.” Ballmer, for his part, released his own statement accusing the NBA of “a heavily biased investigation” and adding they are “exploring every legal remedy to address this gross injustice.” Variety caught up with Torre to ask him how he feels about everything from the NBA’s ruling (and Leonard’s slap on the wrist) to ESPN and Puck throwing him under the bus. Hmm … On some level it’s hard to resist the feeling of vindication but truly, my perspective on all of this is that journalism does not exist to be validated by the entity it investigates or by the awards it receives, as much as I welcome and deeply appreciate both. I just think it’s a dangerous game for me to play when the only way you can trust a multipart, monthslong, deeply vetted, obsessively researched series is if the person you investigate has to say, “You know what?
This podcaster had a point.” I don’t expect that, but it’s so amazing to have a plot twist in which I get to say any of this. It was, for that reason, both vindicating and the opposite. I don’t want that to be the standard.
I think it’s good that people have high standards, but the way to assess that is by assessing the work on its own merits. What I’m heartened by is for the people who did take the time to listen — or watch — and really followed the story, there was no ambiguity about what this was. My experience with that report was … not great.
It was a sign of the power of a mainstream media entity, and the question I always had with this reporting I’ve been doing for a year — which they were not — was why they felt comfortable framing the story that way; and why they never called me before they published it if they were going to frame it that way; and why, after I provided a statement after it published, after being told that they would include it, they never included it? And the statement, to paraphrase it, was simply: “We stand by our reporting. We look forward to the NBA’s ruling.
And our investigation continues.” What my own reporting suggests is that the Clippers and a crisis PR manager hired by Steve Ballmer were shopping around a story that would be their best chance at telling a version of events that would be helpful to a man — who we now understand, based on the NBA’s investigation, as well as my own — to have repeatedly lied about what really happened. In retrospect, what seems to be the case is that the Clippers fed ESPN information — that the NBA immediately refuted — that deeply resembles the exact press release that the Clippers released almost concurrently with the story. So, it’s not exactly a mystery as to where the information came from, but it is a mystery as to why ESPN presumably consumed at least some of the work we had done over the last year and said to themselves, “This framing of events feels more credible than the former employee we all know who’s provided multiple episodes backed by human sources as well as documentary evidence in which there is no alternate rational explanation for anything that happened other than the thing that he’s been saying for a year.” This was the work of people who had seemingly no real interest in even consuming the work I’d put out but felt very comfortable attacking my personal standards and credibility as if they had.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
