The Halo, Ballmer's Bowl and a New Crisis in the Super-System: Kawhi-Gate, Part XIII

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is During the terms of help is going on with you know the salary caps are convention right away The light bulbs went off in my head in terms of oh, yeah This is also going on with other parts of the into a dome project as well Right after this It's a board of point out that we are underneath a roof the same roof again. I mean, yep. Thanks for being here I mean a problem. Are you adjusted? Yeah, they're okay. I like it. Yeah, this is true narcissism I like hearing the sound of my own voice. It's shocking to everybody. Yeah, it's like oh, yeah There it is the the deep baritones of amino acid I do really love this part for people who are just somehow finding out about us for the first time You're about to see along with our audience for the very first time What the fuck's going on today Last week you may recall that we broke the news of Kauai Leonard's secret unannounced part ownership This is a quiet episode. Got it. All right. Cool A second tier pro soccer team on the opposite side of the country from the less Angeles Clippers in Rhode Island While the Kauai trade with the Raptors remains frozen at least for right now as the NBA's investigation is still hanging over the head Of Clippers owner Steve Balmer and my personal favorite piece of feedback from this last episode is in fact the first thing in your folder This is from user at PD. Whoa on blue sky David Samson basically gives up the game on getting public financing for sports stadiums and it's maybe the sea plot in this episode Our friend David Samson former president of the marlin was explaining to us how he hid things from journalists By relying on intermediaries these third-party entities during the construction of the stadium that he had built marlin's park And you may recall that after years of this very careful secrecy David told us that he finally got to the point. This was in 2011 where he could autograph a steel beam a beam that got raised to the roof of his brand new stadium in a beautiful ceremony As we showed you in our last episode You could remind us what you see in this photograph. It's our guide David Samson First of all these sunglasses are the mid-Auto's I want to say a little morpheus from the matrix He's got a marlin's heart hat on and a construction vest Yes, the neon yellow high visibility safety vest is what that is called apparently and he's pointing at a massive beam with a massive sharpie And there are all sorts of names and messages written and signed on that beam and I'm assuming that this is the one that goes to the roof This was the sea plot the third most important thing it felt like in the last episode because we had spent 10 months investigating the perfect storm of life after aspiration Asperation that do-good-ing clipper sponsor which it specialized in Planting trees and giving you carbon credits for them. That's right. Asperation was broke and under federal investigation leaving Kauai Leonard looking for the multiple millions of dollars he was owed on top of his guaranteed eight-figure ownership stake in said tree planting company despite never Doing a single thing Not planting a single tree. That's planting a single tree all of it somehow Leading the Kauai's sub max extension with the clippers in January 2024 The week after he formally registered two LLCs titled the Rhode Island football club and its owner Brett Johnson's real estate development around their brand new Centerville bank stadium a nine-figure project sucking up millions and millions of taxpayer dollars that had been originally earmarked for Affordable housing which takes us back to this headline. I mean from the athletic which remains extremely useful context for this episode NBA investigating second Kauai Leonard sponsorship deal as part of aspiration probe and here is what RIFC itself told our collaborators at local WPRI TV last Friday the day after our episode dropped in an updated statement Rhode Island FC can confirm that neither the club Brett Johnson or anyone else affiliated with four two-itus partners Has been contacted by walk to elliptine rosen and cats as part of the investigation into the LA clippers and Kauai Leonard Therefore suggesting that Kauai's random ass soccer team may not be the NBA's mysterious second sponsorship Looming on a grassy but treeless knoll after all And so another very common question we've gotten in our feedback to the RIFC episode is How is this secret side deal connected to salary cap circumvention right we never really Connected the dots between what's happening in Rhode Island and the clippers which is Necessary for any cap circumvention conversation. There has to be a team circumventing said cap and lots of people around the NBA are saying exactly this They're asking yeah how the fuck is Kauai's private money trail after aspiration directly Tied to the clippers and for the record the clippers did not respond to our request for comment about any of that shot haven't Responded for months now despite us asking the kinds of detailed questions you're gonna hear today I had a time giving them the opportunity as always to correct us But the clippers did recently say what I mean in a statement to ESPN We remain confident That when the facts are evaluated fairly and thoroughly the NBA will confirm exactly what we have said from the beginning We have not done what we are accused of doing And just to remind everyone our job in this studio actually isn't to do walktels job The law firm in charge of the NBA investigation They were hired to help commissioner Adam silver decide if any of Kauai's deals can be rationally explained as anything but salary caps are convention In an attempt what might presume to finally end this hellish almost year-long news cycle for the league Whereas our job is to broadcast the truth of what happened as best we can understand it to the public And to go as high up as this story might take us and so today I mean before we go any further I do want to show you that photo of David Sapson and his autographed steel beam One more time. Yes, please Because it turns out that this sort of beam autographing photo op Is something of a time-honored tradition in the stadium construction business The genre of which brings us to the very place We ended our last episode Which is the house that Steve Balmer built So can you now describe what you see in these photos from March of 2023 That's the mayor of Inglewood And the owner of the clippers side-by-side both signing a beam With white sharpies as opposed to the black sharpie that David Sapson had in the prior picture That is in fact mayor butts The aforementioned mayor of Inglewood And I applaud both of us by just saying that very straight ahead see more We're gonna see more of him okay turns out and that is in fact the richest owner in American sports They're wearing the hard hats. Yes the high visibility vests their names. Yes on the back like jerseys And if you zoom out you will see that Balmer is surrounded by dozens of the clippers construction partners and basketball players All of whom are in attendance And you can see Balmer pointing to the assembled crowd including Of course Quieted front and center there with a do rag under his hard hat. We've got who's that Mason Plumley a row behind there You got Russell Westbrook to his right. Yep all of them listening to Steve Balmer tell everybody about his uniquely designed and to his credit privately funded stadium in Inglewood Which is as of this day in March 2023 a construction site a construction site where Steve Balmer Big numbers guy seems to have analyzed pretty much every single detail Toilets 1160 toilets and urinals Three times the NBA average number of toilets and urals the most passionate toilet speech ever You were there at the Intuito, right? I've been to weekend. I was yes earlier this year You've been there for games in the past I have It is a delightful place to watch basketball is it not you know People ask me a lot of questions about this investigation and I tell them one of the things that makes it hard is that Steve Balmer Is a very well-liked guy is well-liked by his peers the other owners He's well-liked by players because of things like the Intuit dumb a 100% self-financed Modern marvel of architecture and he's not lying every couple of feet. There are massive bathrooms The Gajillion urinals. How are the toilets? Amazing great suction Clean, spacious. He took his time clearly in the designing of these receptacles of human waste By the way, you're not alone in that review time magazine Named into a dome no less than one of the world's greatest places period Clippers owner and former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer's ambitious game plan at a price tag of $2 billion has set the bar for the nation's stadiums, starting with its sustainability initiatives. It's nearly 40,000 square foot halo board, a double-sided ultra-high definition display with a quarter-billion LED lights wraps around the arena. And this arena is where today's A-plot is taking place, because something else I mean that you should know is that for the last 10 months, I have not just been investigating RIFC, the Rhode Island Football Club, and parallel to our still ongoing investigation into aspiration. I have also spent the last 11 months on a third parallel investigation in addition to aspiration and RIFC. Now reporting for today's investigation actually began two days after we published part one of the series, way back in September, 2020. I mean, how giddy he is. You have something on your screen right now that you're like, I can't wait to lay this out. Well, it's actually a call to somebody who is intimately familiar with the house that Balmer built. Is that it? Who's in that? I'm looking at a picture of the intuito mid-construction, you're wearing a yellow vest at a hard hat, and you're standing next to, for zoom, is that a colleague? Yeah, so it's another colleague of mine, and you can see just in the background, there's still dirt on the ground. There's not a seat in the arena yet. We're wearing hard hats and high visibility jackets as things are going in. This is from my video call with a high-level source who was under contract for the Clippers into a dome project four years. We modulated the voice, animated the face so they could be candidly about what they saw and heard without fear of attribution. And on this call, I mean, we were in the middle of discussing the exact time period that we've been investigating. Right. 2023 into 2024, when aspiration was collapsing and Kawaii Leonard, it turns out, was secretly getting into business with Rhode Island for some reason before taking a shocking pay cut in order to help the Clippers salary cap. And you should also know that I've met and interviewed this source in real life. Their story is stay consistent over the last 11 months, which takes us back to the start. So you're listening to part one of this series, and you're hearing the story of salary capture convention with aspiration. And how long does it take you to realize this reminds me of something? Hearing it in terms of what was going on with, you know, the salary capture convention right away, the light bulbs went off in my head in terms of, oh yeah, this is also going on with other parts of the into a dome project as well. This is also going on with other parts of the into a dome project as well. A part in particular that has been hiding in front of your eyes, the mean in plain sight. I mean, it is important to know that in the build out of the house that bomber built, the order of operations was extremely careful. Because in order to start the construction on this arena, Steve bomber had to win a big legal fight involving the city of Englewood. Yes. And you know, doubt recall the name of the mayor of Englewood who was involved in this whole thing. But the honorable mayor James T butts. It's so good. It's the greatest name in his entire saga greatest name in the sports, technically. You may recall, by the way, that we showed you this footage of mayor butts standing near Clippers co owner and truly rationally inexplicable aspiration investor, Dennis Wong, at that very same ceremony in the Dennis walkup episode that we did last year. Remember that? Yes. There he is. And I mean, there is a more obscure name in this Englewood story that we now need to understand. And it is a name that PBS SoCal reported on in 2018. Documents show how Englewood Clippers arena deal stayed secret. Englewood city officials were secretly negotiating an agreement to build an arena for the Clippers basketball team for months before giving a carefully guarded notice to the public, according to newly released documents. The attorney negotiating for the project added that the entity he is representing, quote, "will have a generic name so it won't identify the proposed project," and quote, Englewood residents would see only that the meeting involved Murphy's Bowl LLC, an entity formed in January, 2017, in Delaware, and who I mean, you may ask now, was hiding behind the evasively named Murphy's Bowl LLC. Who? Well, in your folder, there is a bit of paperwork from the California Secretary States database. And will you please read the name of the sole manager of member for Murphy's Bowl LLC that was officially revealed in writing years later. Steven A. Balmer, according to a formal letter to the city council from the public integrity division for the district attorney's office of Los Angeles County, which is now in your folder as well. This LLC was part of concerted efforts between the city and the LLC to limit public awareness in addition to what? The generic name of Murphy's Bowl LLC was used intentionally to obfuscate the identity of the proposed project and those associated with it. If any of that sounds familiar. But thanks to the statute of limitations, nobody was punished by the DA. Balmer's lawyers got these big legal fights either dismissed or settled or else resolved, so that the Intuit dome construction, of course, could begin a pace, which finally allowed Steven A. Balmer, a different Steven A. Yeah. Now I want to do Balmer quotes in Steven A's voice, toilets. You can never have too many toilets. It allowed Steven A. Balmer to focus on the most special and complicated detail of this whole construction project. It was the thing that he and his right hand woman, Gillian Zucker, the very important CEO of Balmer's Halo Sports and Entertainment, which handles the Clipper's business affairs, were so excited to reveal. They had very clear aspirations. They wanted this to be a house of hoots. What? God. Come on, guys. Get of the saw with someone. Look, I can only presume that this was a total coincidence and or a Freudian slip in the way that a story like this can just sort of burrow into your brainstem, but this was in 2024. Okay. Before the dome officially opened later that year, and this, by the way, what we're talking about is the largest 4K quality full ultra high definition LED board in history. It is glorious. A type of super scoreboard at the world had never seen. So we started going about accomplishing this and we realized that in order to do that, we actually had to map every single pixel and every single seat. And in order to do that, we had to find some partners who were like-minded people who would tolerate our somewhat unusual and often seemingly impossible aspirations. Come on. What the hell is going on? No one in the wings is like, you know, maybe not the best. Just, I mean, like, yeah. Anyhow, somehow the clippers seemingly impossible aspirations were realized and should we look at it? Yeah. Introducing the head. Yeah. This is how Christopher Nolan wanted the Odyssey to be seen. I mean, imagine the Odyssey on a double-sided wraparound scoreboard in the shape of a halo. It is remarkable. This thing has everything. Yes. There's a built-in T-shirt cannon. Did you know that? Yes. The cannons are in the scoreboard and they shoot with precision because they're trying to get to the fans who are the loudest because they have sensors in the seats, Pablo, that picks up how loud you've been and how consistently loud you've been. And so they want to reward their most passionate fans with freebies. I mean, look, as a content person, these are pretty incredible content offerings. The Halo board has a whole content portfolio, all of which is thanks to the relatively obscure partner that helped the clippers achieve those aspirations. A company that I at least had never heard of before. So for the screen itself, we went to South Dakota where Dactronics sets the standard. Despite numerous challenges, many caused by the pandemic, Dactronics, and its strong local employment force, shipped every single piece of this board across the country on schedule. Let's hear it for them. So this. This is the approximately a hundred million dollar Halo board, a record price, the most expensive jumbo tron ever created. It is a whole acre, an acre of 4K video, three times length of the Hollywood sign, weighing 519,000 pounds. It is the double sided oval shaped crown jewel of Steve Balmer's Intuito. Look, I've been a bunch of Georgia Tech games over the last few years, all over the country. And almost every stadium we've been to, I believe the jumbo tron has a dactronics logo at the bottom because they made it. Yeah. I mean, that's the same company that David Samson used to build the jumbo tron at Marlins Park. They're the worldwide leader, arguably, in jumbo tron manufacturing. Even though lots of people like me just aren't as familiar with the name. Right. And look, you may now recall, I mean, how dactronics fellow Clippers partner at the time aspiration, they got their name out by hiring celebrity spokesperson, such as Robert Downey, Jr. Leodicaprio, Drake, Orlando Bloom, Kuy Leonard, of course, Kuy Leonard, who, according to our reporting, made more than four times all those A-listers combined to do nothing in private. Dactronics by contrast does not use public facing celebrity spokesperson people or endorsers to promote the brand at all, apparently. In fact, we wound up connecting with a half dozen current and former dactronics employees. And we asked, "Could you recall the company having a single sponsorship with the celebrity of any kind?" And as one former dactronics employee told us in a text message, I mean, "This is the quote, L-O-L definitely not. Dactronics was conservative to a fault for the 20 plus years I was there. I remember asking early on why we didn't do more traditional advertising and promotion to increase brand recognition. I was told since it's B2B and not a consumer product, it didn't make sense to advertise that way." Individuals do not order jumbo trons. These are devices, otherwise used to display other people's advertisements in giant public spaces. But this is where I do need you to know something else. And this is something that I initially heard on the phone from the first high-level source I've been talking to for the last 11 months. So when we first got connected and we first spoke, I said, "Probably, you know, the big halo board hanging from the ceiling and the interior dome, that's from a company called dactronics." And dactronics also had a spokesperson from the clippers named Kauai Leonard. Welcome to Part 13. Christ, man. What questions, I mean, might you now have about this apparent sponsorship deal in which Kauai Leonard is apparently considered a spokesperson for dactronics. I'm going to play stupid and say, "Well, what were his responsibilities?" Well, I mean, you should know, there is no public trace of Kauai Leonard doing anything for dactronics that we could find and even stranger. It was never publicly announced that he was hired as a sponsored athlete and or a spokesperson and or an endorser and or a partner of any kind. So they ran the aspiration playbook basically. Yeah. Yeah. How about that? But while Kauai's alleged dactronics arrangement was unknown to so many of the dactronics employees that we talked to, perhaps because it was never announced and extremely unlike the company to have one of these things, the deal was apparently not a secret among executives who were working on the house that Steve Balmer built in 2023 and 2024. And we are talking here about the Clippers organization and dactronics. And this would make it the sort of deal that is hidden but also obvious, which once again reminded me of the Kauai sponsor that allegedly preceded it, aspiration. This was talked about just openly within the organization and from people working on the project that Kauai was a spokesperson for dactronics. And it was just the biggest thing it was just openly joked about within people working on the project that knew about this as it was 1000% away to circumvent the salary cap. How else could it be anything else rationally speaking? How could it be anything else is a very good question. I should point out that all of this eventually led me to a different source with knowledge of dactronics relationship with the Clippers. This is a person who worked for the team itself in a high level role and who was also there in the Intuit Dome as was being constructed during 2023 and 2024. And this former high level Clippers official also requested anonymity due to fear of retribution because this, I mean, is what they wanted me to know. Quote, I know Kauai had a sponsorship with dactronics, unquote. In over months of vetting the second high level Clippers source, a former official, they also independently confirmed something else, which is that this Kauai deal was not only talked about by fellow higher ups at the Clippers and dactronics as a way to circumvent the MBA salary cap. This second source was also told that Kauai's dactronics sponsorship was a multi million dollar deal as my first source separately explained on tape. People at dactronics, people within the Clippers organization themselves, had told me about this multi million dollar deal with Kauai and dactronics. They're not a company that you would see a celebrity endorse your four. You know, and then it wasn't coming out of their end that the Clippers were technically kind of funding it. You know, and that it was funneling money from the Clippers due dactronics back to Kauai. First of all, I would love to hear the rationale again of, hey, why would this company that has never engaged in this sort of marketing? All of a sudden decide, we need a spokesperson to sell what? And the spokesperson has to be the dullest human being imaginable. I'm going to go back to Article 13 because bringing up the CBA on his iPad. And D, and it says, a violation may be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence, including but not limited to evidence that a player contract or any term or provision thereof cannot rationally be explained. This is what we're talking about, right? With all of these things, because I talk to people in the NBA. I talk to people, you know, agents and people, execs for other teams and even media people who cover a team. What do you mean? What are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with this. So there's a company in their sponsor, they're paying them. What's a big deal? And I said, when you lay it all out, we say, can we rationally explain this without using Hey, capture convention as the reason I've yet to hear one good explanation. And that was respiration, which at least had a track record had other celebrities that they were paying. We do this and we get big names to do it. You're telling me that however many years thatronics is, call it 40, 50 years old, almost 60 years of being in business, they're going to change their policy and their whole approach to this and they're going to start with quiet Leonard. I just told you that they're the foremost jumbo-tron manufacturer in the world. You know how many teams they work with, how many stadiums, they have their pick of the litter and they win with quiet Leonard, who then never does anything. They don't even put out a press release. I think the key part of aspiration and electronics and their sponsorship for the Kauai as alleged is that they never announced them. And so look, I just got to point out that aspiration is a tangled web, although I think it's fairly simple to understand that we've laid it all out over the last 11 months. This one is pretty damn simple. And so I just got to say here, once again, that we reached out for comment from the clippers. We reached back out to Kauai's new agent. We got no immediate response, although we'll quote them if we do in the show notes and in future episodes. So this takes us to dectronics itself. And the way that they handled our questions, I mean, I would say, was far more interesting. And for this part of our journalistic group project, which previously it called upon our local news pals at WPRI in Rhode Island, I now have to turn to somebody who specializes in the analysis of public companies. This is our friend Sam Coppelman, the publisher of the Independent Investigative Outlet, Hunter Brook Media, the investment arm of which, by the way, holds no positions in the jumbo-tron space. Yeah, I mean, in the world of stadium buildouts and jumbo-trons, dectronics is a massive player. If you walk into a minor league baseball game or a stadium all across the country, you might see a scoreboard built by dectronics. It's a publicly traded family business, 58 years old from South Dakota, sort of run in a very old school way. Yeah, and my fascination has to do with this alleged sponsorship that they had with Kawaii Leonard. And so in your deep diving into the annual reports, the quarterly calls, what do they say about sponsorships? One really interesting line is that they say, quote, other competitors use sponsorships as a way to win business, which to me implies that they don't. At least publicly advertised using sponsors at all. Yeah, I mean, like I said, 60 years of policy, it would be, it would, you know what it's like? It would be like the United States, all of a sudden said, you know what communism, not so bad. I'm just saying that like, hey, when, when we had a very particular world view to change it on a dime and not, again, not for the most charismatic, influential game changer of a person that made us throw away our prior strategy for a guy who's not going to do anything. He won't even retweet. It is kind of like if Mahatma Gandhi was like, you know what, I love violence and a burger. But this is where I want to get to another way that Dectronics reminded me of aspiration, which is even more fascinating, maybe because by the spring of 2023 aspiration, you will recall, was on the road to bankruptcy and federal investigation following the whistleblower complaint. We obtained that detailed salary caps are convention in writing under penalty of perjury. And around this same time, it turns out, things weren't going that great for Dectronics. Dectronics's balance sheet definitely wasn't the kind where you'd expect them to suddenly decide to invest in a sponsorship deal with Kauai Leonard. You're seeing a company that once had quite a bit of cash as much as $80 million in 2021. In 2022, Dectronics made just over $500,000 in net income. And it owed way more than that in debt. Dectronics was on the brink, not just of not bringing home big profits. But I've actually going bankrupt. And even in 2023, Dectronics had just $10 million of cash on hand. And they had that cash through debt facilities, through revolvers, basically borrowing it just to fund their operations. And when you listen to Dectronics's earnings calls from this period of time in their second quarter of 2023, it's not like a normal, boring earnings call. The company is clearly fighting for its life. You can hear the company's then CEO who was the cyan of the family business. Talk about just how bad things had gotten and just how unprecedented the time it was for Dectronics. We previously announced recent wins of the new super system for the LA Clippers, New Alina. Having said that, in our 54-year history, we have not been faced with the perfect storm that died last two years for a percent. Beginning with you. I just love that Sam Kaplanman was grinding hours of game tape of earnings calls for this episode. Somewhere Tom Tugittal smiles. I'm the Kobe Bryant of earnings calls. I'll just watch it like over and over and over again. And there was another moment I saw, I just kept for whining, which is when the company's audit committee chair, a member of the board, spoke up, which isn't very common. It's like seeing Tyler Kolek at the end of a game or something. And he was speaking because the company's auditor had issued a dire warning. The company's ability to continue as a going concern. We unfortunately had to conclude that substantial doubt did exist. I will now hand the call over to Reese. To be clear, a going concern warning is very bad. That meant that the company might go bankrupt within the next 12 months. Great time to sign a celebrity sponsor. So this is the part where I'm curious, right? Beyond just the ridiculousness of the situation of, hey, we're going to do this about face. It's publicly traded. So this outgoing cash would have to be disclosed. That is a very good observation. Also, when I was listening to that, it kind of sounded like they were describing building a death star of a new super system for the L.A. Clippers, new arena. Yes. I definitely thought of director Crenick and grandma Tarkin and all I'm kind of in that little board meeting talking about, hey, man, what are we doing with these? The Empire is fine. We have a new super system coming to protect the Dactronics Empire. And so just in terms of the influence that Steve Balmer and the Clippers had over Dactronics and their operations in 2023. This is how my first source, the person under contract for the Clippers into a dome project, but it's to me. If the Clippers told Dactronics to jump, they would say, how hard? Is there something about a failing business that makes it ultra amenable to capture conventional schemes? Well, unlike aspiration, in this case, Abeen, because he raised a very good question, Dactronics did a lot more than just survive. They went from being severely financially distressed to, as this 2024 Sportico headline suggests, the opposite. Scoreboard maker Dactronics hit 17 year high on into it dome success. And just to consider the stock chart now, you've raised questions about public companies and how they must report things. As Sam explains, the stock chart is pretty stunning. The stock went up six times between 2023 and today. And the into it dome marked that bottom. That was the deal that really helped kickstart Dactronics and turn things around for that. Look, I don't fully understand the difference between correlation and causation, but maybe it was a really good decision to pay Kauai Leonard some money or very least a good decision to take a payment from Steve Balmer and build the into it dome, because the into it dome really did help save Dactronics. As far as I'm concerned, that might have been the greatest endorsement deal of all time. I'm looking at the chart right here. And right around 2023, it's trading at less than $5. And by the time we're done in current day, it is $20.28. Yeah, I guess you could say Halo Boardman gets paid. That would have been a good ad campaign. Halo Boardman gets paid. And that would have just cleared everything. See he did something for them. What's again, an Instagram slide, can do a lot of work, perhaps because Photoshop didn't even need to take a picture. It doesn't even need to be there. You hire a social media manager, post it, interact with people like retweet, repose, share, and he never had to do a thing even within the context of you don't have to do anything. They could have created miles of coverage of an acre plausible deniability. They chose not to do a single damn thing, Bobo. Look, in fairness, maybe Dactronics would claim that there were private secret things, you know, the things behind closed doors that Kauai would do to fulfill this alleged multi-million dollar sponsorship deal. And because of that possibility, late last month, Sam Coppelman, of Hunter Brook Media, reached out to Dactronics directly. I always start by looking for a company's number. In this case, Dactronics only had one number on its website, like the sort of sleepy, six-year-old company that it is. I called up the number and I was on with customer service. For sales assistance for new display systems, press one. And then I press zero and I press one and I press three and I press all the buttons. Press two. If you would like to speak with an operator, press zero. And I couldn't find a human being to speak to. But I did find a part of Dactronics' website that was for media inquiries, so I submitted a request for comment. And thankfully this worked. I got an email from someone who seemed to be a PR person, a marketing person at Dactronics, who asked me to share more details on the story. I then sent him my number. This is on July 23rd. He then writes back to say, "You know what? I'm not going to call you. But let me introduce you to our VP." But that person was actually the general counsel of Dactronics. Well, that's not suspicious at all. Lawyering up. Have they even mentioned Koai's name at that point? This elevation of priority to the general counsel, yeah, I had the same question. Had you mentioned Koai Leonard yet? I had not. And then four days later, I wrote to everyone. And I said, "At 452 PM, hi all, we are preparing to report on Dactronics and its sponsorship deal with Koai Leonard. Please let me know if you have any comment. Thanks, Sam." And the thing is, Pablo, as soon as I mentioned the name Koai Leonard, I didn't hear back directly from Dactronics, but within 30 minutes, I got an email from someone from the domain name GFBunting.com. And so, I mean, I want to show you the landing page of GFBunting.com. GFBunting.com, there's a picture. I believe a sure mic, which is the microphone that we use here in studio. Correct. And it says, "We help clients tell their stories." And if you click over to the team section, you'll find a bio for their founder and president, whose name is? Glenn F. Bunting an award-winning journalist at the LA Times turned crisis communications expert Geofbunting and co is a firm. It turns out that quote prides ourselves in establishing and maintaining long-term relationships with our clients. What does that mean? What does that mean? If there is a crisis, you want to call us. And apparently, relatedly, there is a crisis as further evidence by the email that Sam received from a Geofbunting and co executive. Sam, the folks at Dectronics passed along your email and said you plan to write something. I've helped them on a few things media wise and can help get you a comment or answers if it's something they can talk about. Do you have a couple of minutes to tell me about it? And a massive Geofbunting and co logo at the bottom. And so Sam picked up the phone. His vibe was pretty friendly. I think he wanted to get out of me what we were going to report. And he said very clearly that he was not a spokesperson for Dectronics, though it later became clear that this firm had been hired by Dectronics to respond to this crisis or other crises or whatever various issues the companies faced. And I'll just say that when I brought up Kauai Leonard and a sponsorship, it didn't sound like this was the first time this guy was hearing about it. Well, and so this conversation, just to be very clear, this part of the conversation as you're meeting each other and you're identified as a journalist and he is talking to you and getting you to say things, is this part off the record? No. Does he ever go off the record with you in the conversation? Yes, but not before saying a couple of interesting things. One, he says, quote, my understanding is Dectronics doesn't have a deal with Kauai right now. Okay. All right. There's a temporal right now. Yeah. See, it's it might have had. Well, could be in the future. Right now, it does not exist. Well, remember, Sam's email to Dectronics PR and its General Counsel had said, we are preparing to report on Dectronics and its sponsorship deal with Kauai Leonard. And so for this crisis comms guy to call back and say, quote, my understanding is Dectronics doesn't have a deal with Kauai right now. Is kind of like if someone asks about your girlfriend and your response is, my understanding is that I'm single right now. We're not together right now. Another possible answer, by the way, might have been, I don't know what you're talking about. But that's not the answer I got from these professional crisis comms strategists when I followed up on it. What he said was, quote, I don't know what the company wants to say or can say given the walk tell investigation and all that. And it was clear to me that that investigation wasn't something that Dectronics was loosely following. But it was something they were intimately involved in or asked about. You ever given a deposition Pablo? I have not, although I like to play a composer on TV. I have. And the first thing, you know, when the lawyers are prepping me for it, right, do not provide any added material. Just yes or no. Yes or no. Yes or no. Don't give them any extra exposition that they didn't ask for. This guy who's just, you're a crisis management PR firm. A direct straightforward premise is presented. And you get a reference to the NBA's ongoing investigation, which is a strange thing to have a thought about if you're not involved in the investigation. Do you know how locked in you have to be for the name walk tell to come? I mean, not like the investigation. Not the NBA was that in this walk tell. He knew the name of the firm. Almost like you listened to podcasts about it. I mean, a time on a tradition that has followed us this whole time from the Clippers to aspiration to RIFC to dectronics now is the conspicuous evasiveness of the people who allegedly have secret deals with co-ilinert when they're presented with these straightforward questions and premises about said alleged deals. And RIFC at the very least, they came out and said they have not been contacted by walk tell Lipton Rosen and Katz as part of the investigation into the LA Clippers and co-ilinert. But here, we're not getting that. We're getting that the whole NBA investigation means that he's not sure what dectronics wants to or can say. And so why would a company that's not being examined by walk tell for an alleged secret deal with co-ilinert be concerned about said investigation? Well, for his part, Sam did try to get clarity. And so I gave dectronics the opportunity day after day after day to deny its sponsorship deal with co-ilinert to explain it. And then very explicitly I asked repeatedly, if there was even a single instance or example of co-ye delivering any goods or services to dectronics in exchange for this sponsorship deal, which we understand to be worth millions of dollars. And day after day request after request, dectronics didn't respond at all. Very. I mean, we've now found what multiple high-level sources have identified as another multi-million dollar sponsorship deal for co-ilinert that was never even announced publicly in any way by a sponsor doing business with Steve Balmer that happened to be in financial distress during the alleged partnership, which took place while Balmer was building the into it though. And if anyone can explain this to us outside of the salary cap, aka the rule that makes it so that billionaires ostensibly cannot spend whatever they want to win, I welcome them to do so. Because in the meantime, I mean, I just have to keep quoting you from a previous episode, quoting the GM of the Clippers during this time period. How many f***ing side deals have we made with Quai? I feel how Michael Winger felt when he said that. Exactly. How many side deals y'all f***ing have, man? I should say that we hear a public Tory finds out, took a detailed list of questions back to dectronics proper to that PR staffer and general counsel that Sam had been trying to deal with before we publish this episode. And dectronics did not respond for our deadline. But again, we'll quote whatever response they give us in the show notes and in future episodes. I'm speechless. I'm speechless. Well, because it's the same coin. There's two sides at the same coin. One side is incredibly creative and sophisticated allegedly. And the other side is horrible execution. And I can't come the grips with the idea that these people are really smart. Why are they doing it in the dumbest way possible? But the other thing that sticks with me here is the name, Lin Bunting. And I say that because the founder of the crisis comms firm that dectronics hired, it just sounded familiar to me. Do you have punting? It had been rattling around in my head for the last couple of weeks, like I had heard it on television or something before. And then eventually, I found out where. Let's hear it for the fabulous Clippers and our new coach, Don Rivers. Shout out to Ed O'Neill. Shout out to Lauren's Fishbird. Yeah. Two things about this. Number one, Ed O'Neill. For those who don't know what Donald Sterling was like, he nailed it. He nailed it. Like, it was eerie to watch it on TV. The other thing is that Lauren's Fishbird, one of my favorite things is about this role. Asmold, you know, how excited were you to play Doc Rivers? He's never heard of him. He's never right. He'd never heard of him. He took off his morphe his glasses. And I was like, who? He handed his morphe his glasses to David Samson and say, hold these for a second. We're talking about the aspiration investor, Doc Rivers. So okay, while I remember that show and I remember it fondly, where does Glen Bunting fit in in that clip? On the TV show Clipped, the clip of which we just saw the trailer, which aired on FX in 2024, Glen Bunting was admittedly overshadowed by the other Glen, Glen Doc Rivers, played by Lauren's Fishbird. And that guy with the red hair who played Blake Riffin. No, yeah. How are you not doing your Doc impression? Well, first of all, I've never heard of Lauren's Fishbird. So about that. But here is the other Glenn, I mean, in real life, split screened with the actor playing him, Jason Butler Harner. So Glen Bunting is a character in real life and in the show because long before Glen Bunting and co-got hired by Daktronics. Right. Glen got hired as the crisis manager for that. That's who Shelley Sterling. I remember now. The then wife of Donald Sterling, notorious former Clipper's owner who, after TMZ published a recording of his racist remark. to his mistress was forced to sell the team by the newly installed NBA commissioner Adam Silver back in 2014 and Glenn Bunting is the due to help Shelley strategize as she eventually got control of the Clippers and ultimately decided to sell the team to none other than Stephen a bomber. And once I started making calls about Glenn Bunting out of Clipper driven curiosity, I found myself talking to three people with direct knowledge of Stephen a bombers legal fight in Englewood. The same legal fight we told you about before with the honorable Mayor James D. Buts. And what those three sources told me was something that apparently had never been publicly reported before, which is that during that controversial Englewood legal fight, the mean Glenn Bunting was working for none other than Stephen a bomber. And so we asked Sam Copliment to ask Glenn Bunting's colleague, the crisis comms got working for the electronics. If Glenn Bunting had ever worked, first Steve Balmer. He said, quote, we have never represented the Clippers or Balmer. We did help Shelley, of course, referring to Shelley Sterling. Now that is definitive language. Right. We have never represented the Clippers or Balmer. Right. In this whole saga, this has been an endangered species. Direct answers to direct questions. We are watching us know leopard in the wild marveling at it. Oh my God. We got it. But then I remembered something. I remembered that whole thing with the L.A. D.A.'s office and how they wrote that this LLC had this weird generic sounding name as part of, quote, concerted efforts, including to obfuscate the identity of the aforementioned Steve and a bomber. Do you remember the name of that LLC? It's called Murphy's Bowl, LLC. A great memory. And so then just to be safe, we asked Sam to ask electronics crisis comms guy a deliberately specific follow up question. If Glenn had ever worked with Murphy's Bowl LLC in connection with Englewood litigation. He checked and 10 minutes later, he said, quote, I'm told we did some work with Murphy's Bowl. Another use of the word never gun down in its prime. But like, you know what? There's a part of it. Like I believe them. Oh, but this is what's so fascinating about crisis communications. Yeah. It's like, look, we don't want to lie to you, but we are going to keep ourselves from telling you the truth that you're clearly asking about, right? And it's tricky, right? So like, we don't have a deal with Kauai right now is one thing. The reference of the walk telling investigation also feels like it's not random through the same lens. And when we hear a public toilet finds out, reached out to Glenn bunting directly, asking about the extent of his previous work with bombers LLC. If he was connected to Dectronics by Steve Balmer or the Clippers or the representatives, and how long he'd been working with Dectronics. And if he saw any conflict of interest between the two, or if he'd talked with Balmer or associates about aspiration or Dectronics or the MBA investigation, he did not respond in time for our deadline today. But in fairness to Glenn of bunting, it's hard to be asked questions that there are no good answers to. Yeah. Especially when your job is to make lemonade out of these limits is to make it so that your crisis goes away. And in fairness, again, I should say that maybe all of this, as always, is merely a series of giant coincidences and misunderstanding. This is a big misunderstanding. Maybe Dectronics, which is this family business based in Brookings, South Dakota just happened to be using the same LA-based crisis comms firm that Steve Balmer privately used was trying to get the Intuit Don't Bill. No, he didn't. He didn't use it. Murphy's ball is it. Excuse me. I'd refer to both you and the LA District Attorney's Office on these matters, I suppose. But maybe also, it's a coincidence that while Dectronics was, according to our high-level sources, helping the Clippers circumvent the cap with this unannounced sponsorship for Kauai Leonard during the build-out of the Intuit Don, as a kind of replacement for the failure of aspiration, yeah. Dectronics happened to have another client, we've discussed, that was building their own new stadium during the same time period in 2023 and 2024, speaking of paying close attention to our words. Don't you dare. I happened to mention this parallel client to you last week. Because it long last, we get to opening day in Patucket where Red Johnson is finally opening Centerville Bank Stadium. There's a sell-out crowd of some 10,500 fans and attendance, that's capacity. People gazing up at the brand new Dectronics Jumbo Tron. Ooh, seen here. Manufactured by the same company that made the Intuit Don's enormous halo board. This is worse than Game of Thrones. Last week I said Game of Thrones, throw away line, it turns out there's a whole backstory. You gotta stop doing this, you have to. I mean, you were laid it up. I'm just trying to be very careful on the record at every possible opportunity. You set me up, you son of a s**t. Look, they're the worldwide leader in Jumbo Trons. Maybe all of this, again, timeline even accounted for is just a coincidence. And so I will simply remind you, neutrally, that Kauai Leonard started two LLCs for a secret Rhode Island football club side deal in January of 2024, the week before agreeing to what was at the time a shocking submax extension with the Clippers. For the 13th episode in a row, I mean, I guess I would just like somebody anywhere to give us a rational explanation of how our rigorously vetted sources are getting this all wrong. And by the way, like the names here, I also just want to observe, like the names Halo board and Halo sports and entertainment, they do not simply echo the branding that we keep encountering in this series through aspiration and fortuitous partners and benevolent capital. And now, in this case, with a halo literally over the heads of the Clippers. >>Literal angels. >>Steven A. Balmer's unprecedented Jumbo Tron was also so enormous. This is fascinating to be that the electronics needed to help the Clippers engineer the entire roof of their stadium in a very special way. As Balmer himself went on to explain. The panels that make up the roof, I didn't know what they looked like, so they brought the panels and we looked at them at the daytime, the nighttime lit from the back, unlit. Is this really a good idea? >>Is this really a good idea? That's the whole quiet Leonard saga with the Clippers. >>That's the same presentation that he was giving with Gillian Zucker that we showed you before. And by the time Balmer ceremonially raised his autographed steel beam to the roof of the into a dome in March 2023, alongside Gillian Zucker and Kauai Leonard and Mayor Butts and Dennis Wong and all these folks that we showed you before, that autographed steel beam became part of the architecture of the halo board super system itself. The super system as described to me by the people who worked beneath it formed this interconnected network of support that Steve Balmer needed to keep the whole thing, like the whole building itself from collapsing under the sheer weight of the halo board and his own seemingly impossible aspirations. >>This is oddly apt metaphor for everything that's happening. >>But there is one more thing that I needed to tell you about. Because speaking of metaphors, we've been talking this whole time about stuff hiding in plain sight. So I want to bring you the photo we showed you before from March 2023 inside the into a dome construction site with the missing panels Balmer was referencing and the dirt on the ground that my source described and oh, by the way, yeah, look, there's Steve and there's Kauai. We're back at the roofing ceremony, the topping off ritual where we started. But I want you to look closer now and tell me if you notice anything. >>You got the front row with the players there, other people I assume are clippers employees, maybe some construction people were actually there. And Steve Balmer is standing triumphantly pointing to the heavens, hand on his hip, other hand in the sky. There's an American flag there. I feel very patriotic at this point. What am I looking for? >>What's the other thing behind Steve Balmer next to that American flag? >>It's a sign, but I can't make out what it says. >>What's the other thing to the left of that? >>Oh, no! No! >>Is that a tree? >>I mean, when a steel beam like this is raised to the top of a new stadium, another time on a tradition holds that you don't just autograph the beam, you got to put something else on top of it. And to answer the question you just asked, I will now turn to Gillian Zucker, Stephen A. Balmer's right-hand woman and a CEO of Halo Sports Entertainment, who happened to speak at this very same ceremony in her high visibility, fest. to me there isn't free. It's not just any tree. It's a five foot tall lemon cypress tree. It is native to California and it will grace our arena instruction today with good luck. Then it and 999 more will be planted in the soil throughout Englewood in partnership with into it an aspiration to commemorate this milestone to absorb carbon to beautify and bring shade to the city. It represents our commitment to sustainability and into it though. You cannot have picked a worse good luck charm than that damp tree. Bringing shade to the city indeed and I want you to tell us where that tree went as we watch it here at the end of part 13 of this endless f***ing series ride this being come on. Where is it going to me? They're raising it up to the roof like it's like it's a banner. And then it's actually going to the room. No, come on. Come on. The tree don't tell me it's on the halo board. Went on to the roof right where the halo board and it's super system of beams would replace it. Unbelievable. By the way we must correct our reporting because months and months ago we said not a single tree was planted. Amended capitulate. I'd like to offer a correction that now we have actual proof that Steve Balmer's Clippers with Kauai Leonard right there smiling right behind him actually planted a tree. They put it right up there hanging over the clippers' heads. Unbelievable. This has been Pablo Torei finds out a metal arc media production with additional reporting for this episode by Michelle Sarah and True Ford, Eli Sherman and Matt Sullivan. For breaking news updates by the way on Kauai Leonard, the Clippers and more of the storylines that we continue to investigate, please do make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. And a friendly reminder that our tip line is always open at 513-85 Pablo. Till then, I'll talk to you next time.