The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
The Big Suey: Who Killed The Montreal Expos? (Starring David Samson)
11 Sep 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the Big Suey, presented by DraftKings. Why are you listening to this show? The podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Lebitard podcast. I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for that. In fact, the only difference seems to be this imaging.
I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries if they're just there.
That hasn't happened to you guys? I've done it. And now, here's the marching man to nowhere, fat face, and the habitual liar.
As I mentioned, David Sampson and Amin Alhassan have been very helpful to Pablo Torre in helping contextualize what is a thicket of complicated subject matter. And David Sampson joins us now. His podcast, Nothing Personal, as I've told you many times, covers terrain by himself that a whole lot of people are not covering. Pablo is way out in front of this story.
And David, you have familiarity with PR crisis. You have a familiarity with scandal and how businesses can handle scandal. Have you ever seen your entire history in sports
The documentation that Pablo has that can come this close to feeling like the most damning of circumstantial evidence on proving something is a rule break by a really powerful, rich person and organization because I just cannot believe the amount of information that Pablo has that has everyone saying by consensus, I miss this kind of journalism. I can't believe how locked down he has this story.
Well, he's got the sources inside Aspiration and inside the finance department of Aspiration. And what the finance department has are documents like bank statements, like investor agreements. And what Pablo did, and this is, I took issue with this with Pablo. I don't like going into these tapings and I don't know what he wants to talk about. So I don't have time to prepare anything.
And Amin and I are just looking at each other with a folder of documents that we can't look at. And then all of a sudden he's rolling and that becomes an episode. And so what he enjoys is that mystery box. Hey, look at the surprise of Samson and Amin. But what's in those folders
What you're seeing in the episode is my actual reaction to it because we didn't know that it was Dennis Wong who had put $2 million in or 1.99 in December of 22. We didn't know the payment that went to Kawhi Quarterly for his $28 million four-year no-show contract with Aspiration. And all of a sudden you see it. And in real time, you're trying to seem smart while you're live to tape.
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Chapter 2: How does David Samson reflect on his role in the Montreal Expos story?
But also how he handled the Pablo investigation. Hold on, David, you'll be able to correct me in a second. Let's get to the Adam Silver sound first. where he's reacting to not even today's Pablo report, because that was today at 5 a.m., and it's more damning. This is before the damning of today's 5 a.m. report.
The podcast came out. It was news to me. I... frankly, never heard of the company Aspiration before, and I'd never heard a whiff of anything around an endorsement deal with Kawai or anything around engagement with the Los Angeles Clippers. So it was all new to me. I heard it. I saw some of the follow-up information. We spoke internally.
Rick Buchanan, our general counsel, is here, who oversees any investigations.
Chapter 3: What insights does David Samson provide about crisis management in sports?
Rick had a conversation with Steve Barmer, and we quickly concluded this was something that rose to the level that necessitates an investigation. In fact, one that's done outside of our office.
And again, I would also say I've been around the league long enough and different permutations of allegations and accusations that I'm a big believer in due process and fairness and you need to now let the investigation run its course.
David went from smiling to laughing.
What are you doing? I've just, I've heard that clip so many times. I watched it and I talked about it on Nothing Personal. It just, it's not credible to me for him to say he's never heard of Aspiration. They were on the seat backs of a Clippers game in 2022 at Crypto.com Arena number one, number two.
When there's a $300 million sponsor of a club, which is what Aspiration was, they sponsored the Clippers for over $300 million.
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Chapter 4: How does Pablo Torre's journalism challenge traditional narratives?
What the league does in that case is they call on the company and say, hey, you got any more for us? We'd like to do a national deal. So there is so much cross-pollination when it comes to the commissioner's office and the teams, when it comes to sponsors and companies, that for Adam to say he's never heard of Aspiration, it just doesn't make sense.
It would have been smarter of him to say nothing, to say Wachtell Lipton's investigating, See you later. Let's talk about the heave rule. Let's talk about the fact that we're a highlight league. But instead, he kept going. And I don't understand why. And now he's got to wake up this morning and the bat phone's going to ring and it's going to be Dennis Wong putting two million dollars in.
And there is no denying this. This is a fact. Dennis Wong put $2 million into Aspiration, and that money was used to pay Kawhi Leonard when they couldn't pay the rent. When it was collapsing, he put $2 million in. You know, if you want to make a bad investment and throw good money after bad, okay. Dennis Wong had never invested in this company before.
It was Ballmer who had invested 50 million before. So Dennis Wong comes in and LLP, Limited Liability Partnership, Tony, way to go. But that just means it's named DEA. You wanna find something out? Could you find out if the E and A in DEA 88 is maybe his wife's first initial and his daughter's first initial?
Not very original to name your LLP that, but if you look at his family, maybe you'll find what DEA is. But it's Dennis Wong, a minority owner of the Clippers, the minority owner who puts $2 million in to a company that has no money, and then nine days later, 1.75 of that goes to Kawhi Leonard for a quarterly payment that was late. How does the NBA ignore that?
Forget what Adam says about burden of proof. I think that Adam's going to have to change his mind, and you'll see it happen.
I don't think you answered directly my question. Have you ever seen, in a rule-breaking type of environment, this kind of documentation produced by a journalist that is more information that the league has more information than any of us have, and it's all there in paperwork you can see.
All there that would be available in public through the bankruptcy filing and then through a source. No, we were looking for papers like this in baseball. A quick Marlin story. We tried to find out with the Shohei Ohtani signing. We would always try to find out what the Angels had promised Ohtani that would have been against the rules.
We try to find stuff out on the Yankees and the Red Sox who are doing things with their reporting of revenue issues. So we'd go to games and look around for sponsors that they may not have reported or try to get to the bottom of things. But we could never get things in writing. And there were committees who were formed for the sole purpose of trying to make sure teams were being honest.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of Dennis Wong's investment in Aspiration?
But between those months when all of this is missing, so September, October, November, and leading up to December, the actual certainty of the company even existing is up for grabs at that point. Are we going to get paid as employees? Why does Uncle Dennis keep calling us? We have such bigger concerns that we're thinking about, which is our own salaries.
Are we going to have to go through layoffs? Where is the money going to come from? But lo and behold, Uncle Dennis gets paid.
So this payment was made December 15th, 2022. When was the 20% of the staff laid off? The same day.
Pablo has documentation that just shows that the payment to Kawhi from this bogus tree planting company, it just says right next to it, critical. The payment to Uncle Dennis is critical. Let's play the longer sound that offers some of the context around what was going on at this company and just how clear cut some of this stuff is. I knew the name Dennis Wong.
because i got two texts from this very senior um this very senior executive at the firm uh regarding dennis wong so inside of aspiration dennis wong's investment was identified as an investment with the clippers clearly attached as part of the identification yeah and i do have another text as well this is from november 13th 2022 and it says wong is balmer partner
How surprising is it that a new investor would put money in in December 2022, who had not already clearly been deeply invested into the company?
So it is beyond shocking. And I will tell you, I knew that the board, which is Ibrahim al-Husseini, who's been indicted, and Joe Sandberg, who's been indicted, I knew that they had put money in in December 2022. to make payroll and make rent and all that material. It is not a rational investment that someone would make.
So it is very shocking to me that $2 million was made as an investment by Dennis Wong, who in my text is identified as the Clippers, Steve Ballmer's partner, a week before $1.75 million was paid to Kawhi.
David? I think it's important to understand two things with what we just heard. One, when you associate Dennis Wong and the Clippers, I'm not using the fact that he got information, this source, she, they, whoever it was, we heard the modulated voice also during the show, was that, It said Wong, open parens, Clippers, close parens. As I've told you, I have in my phone Steve Drycleaner.
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Chapter 6: How does Adam Silver's leadership impact the NBA's public perception?
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Dan Levatard. Tatas. Stugatz. Tatas.
This is the Dan Levatard Show with the Stugatz.
i have a number of different questions and i will continue to tell the audience a couple of different things first of all nothing personal is growing at a very very fast pace and uh it is a perfect lead into what it is that we're doing uh your timing was terrible but so was the audio so good work by you chris uh david sampson's nothing personal uh is uh getting more and more popular and he's in the middle of this pablo tory finds out episode that a lot of people are saying is even more damning
than the first one so I've got a handful of questions. First of all, For you, more damning incrimination that Dennis Wong is a 1% owner and the only other percentage owner of the Clippers with Ballmer's 99% ownership or the fact that he was Ballmer's college roommate in 1975? Which of those two things do you take?
Which is more damning in terms of what this relationship is and how hard it's going to be for Ballmer to say, I didn't know anything about this?
E, none of the above. The fact that he's the alternate governor, the fact that he's the vice chairman of the Clippers, that means way more to me than whether he owns a percent or not or whether he is his college roommate or not. He is a part of the Clippers organization, definitionally has a relationship with Steve Ballmer. That proves it more than college roommates.
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Chapter 7: What are the reactions to the latest Pablo Torre episode?
I was like, no, no, no. Let me upscale every ingredient that I can. That's what a good chef does. Let me get this to be so quality. I am attaching my name to this. Let me pour my heart and soul into this. And you know what my extra ingredient was, Billy? Despite your intentions right now? Love. I wanted you to love that, too.
I did bring up this conversation. Game changer.
I love that soup. It's a damn good soup. I will also say this. One of the voters in yesterday's contest said after the fact, and I'm trying to remember whether or not spoiler alert, it comes out on Mystery Crate or not, but one of the voters said that they were very much intimidated by Dan and trying to get their vote the way that they thought Dan wanted the vote to go. It was jamming.
So that's why they voted for Greg. Well, I actually think you voted for Greg just because you like Greg. That's what I think, and... And forget the votes. Greg continued to perpetuate this lie on the air that he made more soup than me. He did not. I made way more soup than he did. There was more soup at the end of Greg's. That's right. Which means that maybe he made more than you. No.
It meant that people liked my soup more. You continue to do this. Why are you so divisive, Billy? I'm not. You know what? You make the soup the next time.
Chris, Billy, Greg Cody's now winless in these competitions.
Which was mentioned many times before the vote. That's what he tried to tell me, my dad, yesterday. He's like, when do I get to win? I'm like, Dad, in this show, you're probably 745-4. The only losses you get around here are these competitions. Again, people hate me on this show. People love him. There's nothing sinister at play here.
I disagree with you only here. The sinister thing in the fraud in the voting? Chris voted for his dad. Chris was lying. Chris saw. Chris saw how wounded and prideful.
Chris wanted a good competition. Chris. Jeremy started voting for Mike.
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