Pablo Torre wasn’t shocked when the National Basketball Association hit the Los Angeles Clippers with a suspension of its owner, $30 million fine and the confiscation of five first-round picks on Sept. 2 after finding that the staff assisted two-time champion Kawhi Leonard in circumventing the salary gap.
In fact, he grinned ear-to-ear, listening to the NBA’s verdict unfold on a livestream from his YouTube channel, “Pablo Torre Finds Out” — the same channel where he had been documenting countless details on this for the past eight months.
Not everyone believed him after all. Despite winning a Pulitzer Prize on that investigative reporting just months before the NBA’s announcement, Torre had his reporting style criticized by prominent sports figures including sportswriter Bill Simmons. Former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had consistently discounted Torre’s reporting on the scandal last year, eventually conceding a “congrats” after the NBA released the results of its investigation.
Torre didn’t feed into the speculation, and instead simply encouraged viewers to keep following along each episode.
The NBA was quick to take notice when Torre broke the news. When Torre released the first episode of the reporting into Leonard and LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer last September, the NBA commenced an investigation later that day.
Torre’s persistence in digging up the wrongdoings of the Clippers and their associated companies had gotten the league to hire law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katzan to investigate the team and its owner. The last encounter of an NBA team being punished for a similar infraction was dated back to 2000 — the Minnesota Timberwolves had been found guilty of circumventing the salary cap by arranging endorsement deals to pay Joe Smith outside of his smaller contract.
The word that came to mind was “delight” when he read the report, Torre told The New York Times’ The Athletic.
“It is not, to me, the triumphalism or spiking of the football that I am certainly tempted to do.,” Torre said. “But it is the enjoyment that people now realize why I’ve been behaving this way for a year, why I’ve stayed on this.”
The sports desk can be reached at sports@ubspectrum.com.
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Photo: Courtesy of Nicc Williams; photographed by UB Athletics
