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Chapter 1: What update is provided on the pizza crust debate?
This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz Podcast.
It's crazy that they're just aliens now. But we knew that, Mike. No, we kind of knew that. Tony knew. But they're just saying it. You have Congress people just openly saying, get him out.
Not illegal aliens. No, no, no. Space interventional beings.
The little green men. The Martians. The ones, you know, you've watched Independence Day. They're here. You just have a congressman being talked to.
There's tanks of aliens somewhere, you think? There was a congressman that said, like, there are five to six alien bases underwater that I know of.
I believe him. Yeah, of course I believe him. Why wouldn't you believe a congressman today? Not even the congressman.
Anybody who says it. Yeah, okay, sure. We've got aliens here in our midst. They're living among us. Dan rips the crust off a pizza and eats it. That's huge alien behavior. In fact, all three guys in that studio, if you were to tell me... that they were aliens, I'd be like, it checks out.
Most likely, though. Who would be most likely?
It's Dan, and I'll tell you the reason why. Dan is, like, almost evolved enough. I think Greg and Zaz are done evolving. I think my dad's the least, actually, in this game. I just go back and listen to where Dan eats pizza. It's pretty easy. Dan says things sometimes where I'm like, wait a second, why did he say that? Dan always talks weird. Yeah, like, he's kind of an alien.
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Chapter 2: What new revelations does Pablo Torre share about the Clippers?
Tim Grover is Michael Jordan's trainer, famously. So just the guy who's working on Kawhi's body, forgive me for offering the context, but the most famous sports trainer there's been is Tim Grover, Michael Jordan's trainer.
Right. So I'll just take it chronologically, because they recruit Kawhi in 2017. They hire this assistant GM, Mark Hughes, who is also a former San Diego State guy. They send Mark Hughes to talk allegedly to Randy Shelton more than a dozen times. They promise him a job. Lawrence Frank allegedly talks to Randy Shelton, promises him a job.
And what is not so clear until now is that Uncle Dennis is being used as Randy Shelton's agent. And so we have Randy Shelton's contract. There's this dispute going on in L.A. court. It's headed to private mediation right now. The Clippers, of course, deny everything. Randy Shelton does the opposite.
But we have this document that shows that Uncle Dennis is the representative, the listed representative on Randy Shelton's contract, on his extension now into 2021. Right? And so what does that mean?
It means that after the NBA investigated the Clippers and Uncle Dennis for capsule convention and all this stuff in 2019, they were still directly doing business with the guy, I am told, in order to get him money directly via the commission on the trainer that they shouldn't have been talking to when he was a San Antonio Spur Associated employee of Kawhi Leonard.
Are you guys following this? You basically have a trail that leads back to Ballmer trying to get to Kawhi since 2017. The most powerful sports owner there is allegedly trying to do everything inside of this to ignore what are understood rules of the sport because he doesn't have to respect rules of the sport if there are no legal consequences to not respecting rules of the sport.
Again, all alleged.
But the thing that I keep on juxtaposing this against, Dan, is the idea that Steve Ballmer in the present tense is saying now in this other lawsuit filed by 11 Aspiration investors that he did thorough due diligence on Aspiration.
And of course, we have documentation, the email chain, the privileged information with Ballmer's chief investment officer and his lawyers and Aspiration's lawyers that show that, oh, wait a minute. He did this in an insanely fast timeframe at the founder of Aspirations Urging. And now Steve Ballmer says that I did thorough due diligence and still I got scammed, right?
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Chapter 3: What allegations surround Kawhi Leonard's recruitment by the Clippers?
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Don Levitard. Greg, how's your birthday going so far?
I invented it. It's going fantastic. My wife and I are staying home tonight.
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Chapter 4: How does the discussion shift to the financial implications for the Clippers?
We're watching the debate on TV. We're going to do something special for dinner. It's a nice day for me so far.
Stugatz. That sounds like not a super nice night. The debate. Old people love that shit.
Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. That's exactly right. Mm-hmm. Old people do love that shit. And I'm old now. I can't deny it anymore.
Now? This is the Don Labatar Show with the Stugats.
you believe that part okay just understand when pablo is doing eight installments of this i this was the first episode where i was like wait a minute the original story was shocking wait this is going to get a lot worse than this like It's going to be more than just $48 million for a no-show job.
It's also going to have Kawhi taking $9 million in discounts that we can chronicle because God knows how many places some of this could have been existing if the world's richest sports owner is trying to conceal from everybody in a meticulous fashion that he's not going to play by the NBA's rules because how are you going to touch him if he can do it creatively?
I really was shocked as I was listening to this to be like, wait a minute. Aspiration can't be the tip of the iceberg. It has to be the iceberg.
But here's the thing that keeps on happening to Steve Ballmer and Lawrence Frank, right? So they keep trusting people to keep a secret. that they care about very, very deeply, which is NBA rule breaking. And so they trust Randy Shelton, who sues them in court. They trust Johnny Wilkes, who sues them in court. They trust Aspiration, which is now blown up, of course, in court.
And there is one document here, right? So the question has always been, you know, if you're going to play ahead the game here, like who's the fall guy? And I think the order on the league is Lawrence Frank would be the guy who has a four year extension. He has the alleged hush money. He has a payout if anything happens to him. OK, but the question is, what touches Steve?
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Chapter 5: What evidence is presented regarding Steve Ballmer's involvement?
And so there is one document that I've been told about by multiple aspiration sources, okay? And this is the part where it brings us back to aspiration in the present tense, because there are two reasons why I'm in this prison of reporting. One is the bankruptcy filing of Aspiration, which revealed KL2 Aspire LLC.
The other one is the fact that Joe Sandberg, the co-founder of Aspiration, one of these guys that Steve Ballmer trusted, who he realized later on, too late, I shouldn't have trusted this guy to deceive the NBA, that guy got arrested by the FBI and is awaiting sentencing He has a hearing in April.
And what I'm told by multiple Aspiration employees is that the reason Joe Sandberg got arrested, the domino that tipped all of this stuff over, that started a federal investigation that finally got Steve Ballmer out of the Aspiration business, was because there was at least one whistleblower inside the company who went directly to the federal government and submitted, presumably in writing, presumably under penalty of perjury, a complaint.
And that complaint was the roadmap to get everybody else who committed criminal acts actually in trouble. And the question that has been raised to me over and over again... This is important. The thought is, did that whistleblower, under penalty of perjury in writing, mention Steve Ballmer and circumventing the NBA salary cap in writing?
Did they put it into that complaint that started everything? Because if that document exists... That is the closest thing you could ever have to a smoking gun on letterhead under government supervision. And if that exists somewhere, then the NBA cannot possibly say this was a rogue president of basketball operations. This was from the very top with the richest man in sports.
Pablo, will anyone have the guts to ask the commissioner about this at All-Star weekend? I don't think so. I don't. I mean, I've been look, I've been canvassing media members. Sadly, Dan, like again, thank you, Dan, for paying for the reporting, for having me on the show. I have back channel to lots of other people with shows and they don't want to touch it.
because they don't get it, because they think nothing's gonna happen, because they're like, wake me up when the punishment comes. And I'm like, the whole point here is to use journalism in public to hold accountability up as a goal for everybody to still strive for. Waiting for the NBA to punish this? You're waiting for the system that enabled it to punish itself.
Why would anybody expect them to do anything they didn't have to do? And so all you can do, Zaz, to your question is ask questions. But I don't think people really are in the mood for doing that.
That's the shame of it. Well, let me ask the group here, because I don't know if it's a founding principle of Pablo Torre finds out necessarily, but it's certainly become one of its ideals as it's gone on. Pablo is tweeting that he's committed to using journalism to doing something that feels increasingly impossible, holding billionaires accountable. And this is the richest organization.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of the lawsuits mentioned in the episode?
Let me ask the question of the group here, because I am curious about this, right? Joe Rogan is one example, made an entire empire out of believing in conspiracies and it being profitable. Then presented with the Epstein actual one, now that's one that he doesn't quite believe in the way that he believes in all the ones that didn't have any proof. What's happening here with this as a conspiracy?
Because... It is the rarest of things to have a reporter digging in on this kind of documentation, contracts, emails, texts. Like, it's hard work. So what's happening when the conspiracy is presented to you? Why wouldn't the entirety of the media grab that? Is it that much of a cabal? Like, is the whole thing that compromised that what Pablo is saying is true?
I don't believe that that can be true, that NBA media is so interested in protecting its economy that it doesn't dare touch this. I believe NBA media looks at this and says, I can't do it. It's too much. It's too sprawling. I can't do the reporting on this. It's too hard to do the reporting.
I mean, most sports journalists are lazy because they think of what they're covering as the toy store. And Pablo's exactly right. This should be a much bigger story in the other media than it is. It should be the overarching story of an all-star weekend hosted by, of all teams, the L.A. Clippers. But it might not even be touched because we'd rather write the fun feature about women.
I don't think it's lazy, though. I think it's just too hard to do.
It's too daunting. It's too daunting. That's fair. I want to be fair about this, right? So the reason why we do this, in fairness to every other media member in the NBA who's like, look, I just want to cover the games, man. I want to talk about how all of this is shaping up on the court. And I'm okay with that because on some level that leaves this niche to me.
That's why we are distinguished in comparison. The thing that I urge people to realize, though, is that this is like a true NBA crime story that is a conspiracy that's not a conspiracy. This is the story of someone for whom money is no object. And rules prevent him, as the richest man in sports, a guy with $140, $50 billion, from just spending in the way that he thinks he should be able to spend.
And there are rules against that. Do rules matter in the NBA? Do they matter in society? Do they matter in government? This is part of why I care about this stuff. It is because sports are a metaphor, but they're also reality. It's reality because the question of, and Greg raised a good question that I've heard a lot, could there possibly be other owners who do something similar.
What I've always said is that this is a function of degree. No one has the ability to buy the rest of the NBA combined. This guy does. No one was the CEO of the foremost monopoly in America, Microsoft, when the American government's antipress department was coming after them for monopolistic behavior and anti-competitive practices. That was Steve Ballmer. Steve Ballmer didn't give a shit.
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Chapter 7: How do the hosts react to the complexities of the NBA's rules?
Surely every time you're watching this, you recognize that your wife is laughing that she married. She married Larry David. Yeah.
I do, yeah. One of the great characters in the history of television, in my humble opinion. And to my credit, my personality... In my humble opinion, followed by to my credit.
To my credit. It's amazing.
My personality does predate Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Stugatz. Oh, wow.
I'm not going to say Larry David patterned himself after me.
All right, put it on the poll, please, Jude. You did, Greg Cody, copyright being an asshole long before Larry David.
This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz.
Going to the journalist element of it, like it is more complicated for these local media members who cover individual teams when they go out to All Star Game to ask these questions because for them, they're looking for job security, right? In a media landscape that's shifting the way that it is. Do you want to be the troublemaker?
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Chapter 8: What conclusions are drawn about accountability in sports journalism?
And now they might be looking at you asking those questions as who knows, maybe they're trying to cover up similar types of things as we're talking about. Like all of these owners and all of these general managers are looking for potential shortcuts to win. If you think that your family, do you really want to be the person that now potentially loses out on sources because of that?
20 seconds left in this specific landscape where journalism already isn't being funded. Why are you going to join the fray of the sort of outcasts of the league? I'm going to go ahead and go make a song. I'm going to go make a song. I'll be back at the end of the next hour. I'm going to go make another song for a sponsor.
Cut him off, man.
Your clock is sharper than that. What happened? You let him go for a minute and a half.
I eventually just cut him off before whatever the dismount was. It's like whatever he thinks the parasol and the gymnastics routine is, I came in and took him at the ankles just as he was hitting the pommel horn. Like he's, I'm going to nail the dismount here. Roy adjusted his seat in the middle of it. I was like, man, this room is getting muggy.
Cody's goatee is longer than it was when the question began.
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