Pablo Torre believes story noting Steve Ballmer’s potential innocence was ‘fed’ to ESPN by Clippers

Pablo Torre is being crowned this week after his year-long investigation into the Los Angeles Clippers resulted in an historic penalty for the team and its leadership, but he and his staff hit a major bump in the road last month.

After ESPN had largely been on the sidelines of covering the Clippers scandal, three of its top reporters published a story in mid-August stating that the NBA’s investigation had not found evidence that owner Steve Ballmer “funneled money” to Kawhi Leonard. The public received the narrow terms of ESPN’s still-technically-true story as an indication that Ballmer would get off scot-free, and that Torre’s reporting had been disproven.

The NBA received ESPN’s story the same way, quickly releasing a statement calling the report inaccurate and misleading.

In the aftermath of the NBA levying a $30 million fine on the Clippers and stripping them of five first-round draft picks, the ESPN story looks like an even bigger miscue. The Worldwide Leader’s whiff also adds another to the pile of Torre’s vanquished foes.

Torre said in an appearance on The Dan Patrick Show on Thursday that he isn’t owed any response from ESPN, but did not hold back in airing out what he believes was a deeply flawed reporting process on ESPN’s part.

“What ESPN had done, according to my reporting, is they were fed a story by the Clippers that the Clippers may have known was not true,” he said. “And why do you do that? Well, perhaps it’s because that’s the available territory that you have, having been beaten on the other part of this landscape. Perhaps you really believed it, because the Clippers looked you in the eye and for months, for a year, said to you, ‘We’re telling the truth, that annoying, clout-chasing podcaster is lying to you.'”

“They were fed a story by the Clippers that the Clippers may have known was not true.” — @PabloTorre wonders why ESPN reported the story the way they did. pic.twitter.com/quDicyfS2a

— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) September 3, 2026

Torre added that he was offered a chance to provide a statement after the report on Ballmer likely escaping accountability, only for ESPN to renege.

“I was told after the story published, ‘He,  if you want to have a comment here because this was effectively refuting your whole deal here, we’ll include a statement from you,'” he explained.

“For whatever reason, ESPN did not include it. So I don’t expect an apology. I don’t expect anything, nor do I think I even need or deserve one. I’m a big boy, as they say. I just wonder why it happened like this. Because in this story, a story with no other alternate, rational explanations, it sure seems to me based on my reporting that they got fed a story by people who were lying to everybody this whole time, and I got implicated as a result of it.”

Torre said the statement would have said his show stood by its reporting, was looking forward to the NBA’s ruling, and continued to investigate Leonard and the Clippers.

When reached by Awful Announcing on Wednesday, ESPN declined comment on its original story about Ballmer.

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