Pablo Torre says he spent a year hearing the same message circulate around the NBA: Steve Ballmer was going to sue him over his reporting on the Clippers.
It never happened. But Torre says the threat itself became part of the story.
Speaking with Maury Povich at the University of Maryland, Torre said the idea reached him through other people rather than through a direct confrontation with the Clippers owner.
“One of the things I was told is that he was telling via his various representatives that he was gonna sue me,” Torre said, via Matt Yoder of Awful Announcing. “For a year, this was being communicated all around the NBA.”
Torre’s reporting centered on the Clippers, Kawhi Leonard and Aspiration, with a focus on salary-cap circumvention. The NBA later handed down penalties that included a one-year suspension for Ballmer.
Torre was careful to frame his comments around what he heard, not around any lawsuit that was actually filed. He said he did not have a direct exchange with Ballmer.
Still, the episode clearly left an impression on him, and he used the interview to draw a broader conclusion about power and competence.
“One of the core tenets of what my show has found out is that intense wealth does not equate to intense competence,” Torre told Povich in the interview.
“I simply mean that there is a confusion between how rich someone is and how good they are at telling the truth or even pulling off a scheme in which the truth is meant to be obscured.”
Torre also said his dealings with billionaires had uncovered “an underrated comedy in the lives of the richest people in the world.”
When Povich asked him to explain, Torre kept it blunt: “Sometimes they can be idiots.”
For Torre, the lawsuit talk stayed in the realm of rumor. But his answer to it is now public.
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