Pablo Torre Shows Us How Big His **** Has Gotten | Hour 1

0:00Football season is officially back, which means my weekends no longer belong to me. Saturdays for college football, the second I wake up. Sunday, we do it all over again with the NFL, and somewhere in there, I'll probably convince myself I need one more TV. This is what we've been waiting for, right? Getting friends together, having the games on all day, arguing about teams, we barely watched, and worked up opinions over. Having a cold Miller Light in my hand? That's what makes it legendary folks. That's a legendary game day for me. Miller Light is my go-to because it's crisp, refreshing, and has a clean finish. Miller Light cools my body down. Sometimes I hold that beautiful white can right to the forehead instantly. The temperature drops, and the vibes go up. Make game day legendary. Go to MillerLight.com slash day and find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Light pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Anytime is Miller time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 96 calories, and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

1:07According to my reporting, according to the reporting, what I'm able to report now, based on my reporting, according to my reporting, according to my reporting, as well as the Swakhtel report, we stand by our reporting. This annoying podcast continues to report. This episode of the Dan Labatard show is presented by Draft King Sports Draft Kings, the Crown is yours. Pablo! At this point, honestly, I expect when Pablo is at home talking to Liz and Violet, it's like, how delicious is this pudding, according to my reporting? He's saying it's... I love you, according to my reporting. You...even better, yes. I want to talk to Pablo about some of what it is that we were talking about here before, and I want the audience to know that, beyond obviously, being the most journalistically sound sports podcast going, it's also endlessly interesting because he's following his curiosity.

2:10So today, it's about customer tennis, and here in Miami, not surprisingly, here in Miami, the billionaires get to Hobnob as college boosters with professional tennis players, and so Pablo is covering the expensive world of tennis, and the idea that a 59-year-old billionaire ended up playing in an actual tennis match, because he's incredibly rich. But before we get to that story, Pablo, this thing with Don Van Nadeau, we respect Don Van Nadeau, and I make the argument that he's, by resume, the single best journalist in the history of ESPN. Are there many rebuttals to that? I think it just depends on how you measure awards. He's been a part of three Pulitzer Prize winning teams. He was previously a guest on PTFO. I know Don pretty well. I have reported the same stories at various points in our overlapping careers as Don. Yeah, did not see this coming. Broadly speaking, and there are many other great journalists who worked for ESPN and

3:11elsewhere in sports media, but his resume in terms of the decoration of the awards and prizes is hard to beat. It's hard to beat. Stan, how distracting is that super long mic that Pablo is using? You have a boom mic. Long and half a square. Normal mic. No, no. Take that full shot. Very normal. Yeah, each caller. It's a huge caller. Has it gone to his head? He's buying mic. Is his microphone bigger now because he won the Pulitzer? Oh, shit. Well, it's a foul. Maybe a camera angle tends to zoom out more now to get a full scope of the mic that's always been here. Maybe that's a metaphor as well. It's a full long. I don't like the angle out of Tad either. I believe this is almost literally him showing us how big his bleep has gotten. Like just by making his microphone bigger because I'd be embarrassed showing that mic to everyone. No, you wouldn't. To get this size of your mic. This is a different one. Guys, let me just tell you this. This is a generous angle. It's even longer than it looks. Oh, make it longer. Yeah. You want to see? Yeah. You want to see?

4:12Yes. Oh, you're going to regret giving the internet that you have meme now. All right. So the back story on this, though, because he came out with a 500 word statement and I just I want to get your thoughts on this. But I also Pablo, please walk me through. I have this theory that this ESPN story while it ends up making that report come out. I have a theory that that story made everything here worse for Steve Balmer and the Clippers, but that Don Van Nade might be thinking that his sources were telling him what they thought was right at the time and he believed his sources that this isn't a matter of ego and a journalist doubling down on ego. It's that he really thinks that his reporting at the time was right. Well, I think based on what I have known based on what I've reported, based on what has come out, based on what the Clippers posted from their official Twitter account within like minutes, within the same hour that the ESPN story came out.

5:17This was almost without, I mean, let's just say according my reporting, we can remove the almost. This was from the Clippers and the NBA thinks that I think that the Clippers PR statement indicates that I have found no evidence that this is not exactly what was most beneficial to the Clippers. In fact, according to my reporting, Fed from the Clippers to ESPN. So that's okay, by the way. It's okay to report the story from the side that won't cooperate or rather give information or comment at this point in the timeline to us. PTFO, we stopped getting responses to requests for comment, even acknowledgements, even as we gave detailed lists of what we were asking and going to say in the episode. So what does this say about like what changed your Dan? I think the first thing number one is that it led to the publishing of the Wachtel report. I was told before this Eastbyn story came out in no uncertain terms, do not expect the

6:17report after ESPN story comes out and the NBA comes out and says significant and numerous inaccuracies. Suddenly now we have the 35 to 36 pages with a cover sheet report. Now of course, the other part of this that's really interesting is how was this in some key way messed up on ESPN's part and the framing of the story as well as the specific paragraphs in the story. It's not just a matter of like we were right, but the framing was bad. It's there were many things like no evidence of funneling money through Clipper's sponsors that by any reasonable measure was wrong. And so my reporting says that the Clippers Fed, ESPN, a version of their legal defense and sold it as the facts that the NBA obtained. And in that very distinction, right, this is a legal defense premistana certain set of facts. You can find the disagreement that might make you want to defend yourself. So walk me through David, stop laughing. Get out, get out, get out, stop laughing.

7:19Just get out. It's unprofessional. Jesus Christ. Please show yourself out. How pissed off was the NBA about that ESPN story because I really do think Pablo and you need to correct me because you're the one who's doing the reporting. I really think that what happened is as soon as that report came out throughout all of those owners with all of that money, it was a giant. Hey, Balmer, all right, fuck you. Watch, watch this. They were fighting. They were fighting. And it was fighting about whether Balmer would even want to negotiate a settlement. And it was fighting about all of it. And so yes, this is a rare thing. That I said at the time for Mike Bass, the chief comms guy to put his name on a statement that is that bold. It demands that you back up what you meant. And now we know they don't release the walk tell report if ESPN story does not come out is what I personally believe. That's crazy. That's why it is that we got the deep Pablo. That's crazy. What you're saying there is crazy. It's it's wild. It is an acme cartoon bit of TNT that was meant to explode one thing and blew up in the

8:24face of the person operating it. It is unbelievably funny. And also in that way cartoonish. We just don't see this happen in this clear acquence as we've now described. So this is what I'm telling you though and the audience, okay? You got a three time Pulitzer winner thinking his information is correct. Still arguing that is reporting at the time that was coming from the clippers that he's right. I don't think that he thinks he got it wrong. He wasn't writing something. He thought was a lie and false. But it looks like the clippers use DSPN as a propaganda arm. You're sitting here telling me that we never get the details. We got a three paragraph statement. What does that statement look like? In your opinion, if that ESPN story doesn't exist and you never see and we never see this 3536 page report. All of it is premised on a negotiated settlement which would have brought the penalties lower. So the NBA has no interest in doing this. One of the big reasons the NBA did not want to release that report is because they didn't want me to do more podcasts about it.

9:24Let's just be very blunt about what this is. We have been annoying. We have been a thorn in the side of people who want this story to be smaller. That is the clippers. That is the NBA. They have been aligned until that ESPN story in terms of the public view on we would like these podcasts to stop and we would like this story to go away. So what I was told is that there would be something akin to a summary page in which there were an announcement or a set of announcements of what the penalties were as well as the basic scope of what the findings would have been. And yet now we get multiples beyond that. But Dan, I just want to say this. I am happy to not assume the worst of competitors and colleagues. What I just want to point out is that the first paragraph of the ESPN report, what it said was the NBA has found no evidence showing L.A. Clipper's owner, Steve Balmer, funneled money through team sponsors to pay Kawaii Leonard in order to circumvent the salary cap, according to three people with knowledge of discussions between the two sides in recent days. So just let's just stick with paragraph one. That is wrong, not just one way, but four ways.

10:26There were four companies that they did this with and you can debate what funneling means and I don't actually want to do that. But I think the question is, what were you trying to say and who was happy that you were saying it? And then the question then becomes, okay, what else were you calling? And what else were you doing to try and make sure that this was not a legal defense, but rather a set of findings? And that is something that as somebody who is not hosting a show called Pablo Torre is right. But it's hosting a show called Pablo Torre finds out in which I spent a year trying to obsessively get to every angle possible. I'm not here to say in a victory lap sort of fashion, I am always right and they are wrong. Do not trust them. Trust me. I am saying this story here, if this was how I did not intend it to be, I would be absolutely furious at my sources. Okay, but this is in the weird time we're in journalism working perfectly because it's not just you, them getting the other side of the story out gets everybody all of the information. Like what happened here? What you're saying?

11:26That's what he's saying is crazy. We never get what you see all over America now. Bomber, wrong, wrong, wrong, shame, shame, shame, clear and obvious, clear and obvious, we never get that report. I don't think if not for the clippers trying to get their story out there and it's not just good journalism working. If you think what he has been did was bad journalism, you're still getting the most complete story because everybody was trying to do journalism. Well, and so Pablo, like doesn't this ultimately come down to this is a man, Steve Balmer, who always gets what he wants. That's what that is. That is the cause. That's what we just saw. That's the effect. It doesn't want to settle and he has never just characteristically. When you ran Microsoft and was the federal government and antitrust, he did not want to bend the knee. In this case, he is being asked elsewhere as a member of the MBA's audit committee, which is a perfect detail about the board of governors. He is on the audit committee, Steve Balmer is. He's being asked to also fund and be a Europe and all these other projects, I am sure, that

12:27Adam Silver would like. He is somebody who is asked on various levels, can you help fund this? So when there is this sort of a story in which, generously, he thinks he's done nothing wrong and less generously, he doesn't care if he did something wrong. He deserves to do it because he's paying for all of this stuff. You have a guy who has behaved this way with $174 billion in his bank account because that's what Microsoft stock is at today, or at least it was when I refreshed the Bloomberg billionaire index. It is a sum of money that is incomprehensible, even to people who find it very hard. I am one of these people knowing how much money a billion dollars is is hard to imagine. $174 billion is that much. But more insight. Pablo and David, I want to bring you in on this because they both won their Pulitzer's for this reporting and I want people to understand something about this that I'm just finding fascinating right now. Everybody who had power in the NBA, who it was an ownership with great deal of money,

13:28didn't want what ended up happening, which is all of this is out in public. They were afraid of Balmer's money. They were afraid of this. They didn't want it to get to the nuclear option of we're going to tell everybody everything and now we're going to piss him off for real. I have to stop you though and share that new 49ers defensive coordinator, Rahim Morris, used to be the Rams defensive coordinator. So he knows what Stafford is capable of and when he was the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons last year, Stafford had one of the worst games of his career guys forced three Stafford interceptions. We like this under. We like this on Mike. Did you count count that he missed his birthday on the travel? So let one day so he's mad. He's mad. He's even surly or than usual. Yeah. The fall season is back Jack and there are certain games you must experience in person. I've had games where I thought I waited too long and I was going to miss out and I opened

14:29game time and I found tickets right before kickoff. That's why game time is my go to when I need to be in the building. I can see a panoramic view from my seat before I buy and the price shown includes all fees. So there are no surprises. I check out what you see is what you pay period. I also love zone deals. You choose a section, game time chooses a seats and you save money. Plus every purchase is backed by the game time guarantee including on time ticket delivery and their lowest price guarantee. Get your friends together, get your tickets and tell them it's game time. Download the game time app, create an account and use code Dan for $20 off your first purchase. The game is back, again create an account and use code Dan for $20 off. Mobland from the underworld of Guy Richie hits Paramount Plus September 18th. The herrogans are back betting it all on black with a reckless, uncivil war, dangerous odds and fractured loyalties put their criminal fortune all on the line with enemies on all

15:33sides. Harry the Fixer leaves nothing to chance to make the family hold, starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosden and Helen Mirren. Let chaos reign, stream Mobland season 2 September 18th on Paramount Plus. You ever look at a bill you've been paying for ever and ever and suddenly realize, uh uh hold on now, why am I spending this much? That's how a lot of businesses are with shipping. I ship through ship station because it helps me stay in control and keep everything in one place. It's an all in one shipping platform that handles everything from orders to returns so I'm not bouncing between a bunch of different systems all day and every time I ship something, ship station automatically compares rates across UPS, FedEx and USPS to help me save money with savings of up to 90%. I don't know about you but I don't want to spend my day playing shipping coordinator. I want to focus on the business. Ship station handles the shipping side of things, helps me save time and keeps everything

16:36organized so I can focus on growing the business. Over 1 million businesses have leveled up their shipping game with ship station. The sooner you switch, the sooner you start saving time and money. Get started with ship station today and get 60 days free at shipstation.com with cold Dan. That's shipstation.com cold DAN. Shipstation.com cold Dan. Taxes and fees apply. Dan Lebertar. The first. Jeremy Touchy. Why hands? Uh oh. This is the Dan Lebertar show. Dan, you have something wrong and I just, I know you're passionate and emotional about this but it's not Steve Vommer and the money that the other owners are afraid of. What they're afraid of is they'll have to do what he did. It's not about whether the report was ever released and Pablo and I may disagree about this. It's about in order to compete because this is how owners think and presidents think.

17:36I don't want to have to compete with someone who's willing to do what he did in order to get a player. And Pablo and I were at a show once and someone actually said to us something very similar from another team, which was what worries me the most is I'm going to have to look my owner in the face and say, Hey, if you want this player, you're going to have to circumvent the salary cap. That's what the owners were trying to avoid. Well, not fighting. It was, it was, it was a bit more pointed. It was something along the lines of if they don't get punished for this, I'm going to have to learn how to do money laundering. That was the quote in some former fashion. It was a bit more extreme than we're going to have to sign a side deal, David, but it makes your point even more boldly is my point. And I would say as it regards Pablo, though, and what it is that's happening here, the frenzy of billionaires fighting each other is almost why Pablo is in business chasing the money down with the journalism, the way that he is just trying to get at the facts of in an impossible age where America doesn't trust its institutions and corruption is rampant

18:40everywhere. What you have happening right now in public because of the reporting on all sides on this and in some future incarnation, there's not going to be ESPN even bothering with doing the other side of this story. No one will be competing with Pablo on, let's chase down the billionaires. But now you have the billionaires fighting in public because there are next steps. Bomber can't just go away quietly here, even though there are civil suits and everything else. If he's been this ego rich until now, now he's going to put down his sword. Well, this is what we're testing. I should say that like the NBA, Dan, we, you said something and I understand why you said it because it seems now like we might know everything given that we got 36 pages. We don't. And I've said this a lot on PTFO, I will say it again. It's just that the timeline that Wachtel takes us through is 2022. Kawai signs an extension in 24. The personal investments of Steve Balmer which now are put into the context that the report told us which was a lot. Wachtel did a phenomenally meticulous job in giving us this much. It makes clear that Steve Balmer was aware that Joe Sandberg was making demands very clearly

19:43that the clippers found insane and even my interpretation would be that of a scammer saying I'm going to tell Kawai about the secret deal that we have. If you don't, it's all in that money funneling insane sort of thing where you must wonder to yourself what was Steve Balmer thinking as he was informed directly what the co-founder of aspiration was now demanding an exchange for cooperation in the scheme to deceive the NBA. Because after that, Balmer puts in $10 million more. Dennis Wong comes in with almost $2 million and Kawai mysteriously finally gets paid. It is a story of his personal money intermingling with the team's money which he owns 99% of Dennis Wong owns the 1%. So there's a lot more actually. The NBA did not want to get into and the NBA to your point would have liked to get into none of this. Now we're testing whether Steve Balmer is going to sue them, sue Adam Silver, sue a law firm, Wachtel Lipton in real life court. And that is an unfolding experiment.

20:44Were you pissed that you missed out on the Day Jean Love thing? I was. But if I know you the way that I think I know you, you went to your staff and you're like, let's find an even bigger Day Jean Love. So I will say that one conversation I had was like, what if we created an AI NFL player who was actually a fake person and who could we ensnare in a honeypot on Instagram? And then I realized that I think that I'm going to be a crime. I think I'm just saying. I'm committing crime. I don't for the record. According to my reporting, I don't know about that honeypot. Ooh. Pablo, you understand that with what Balmer is doing with the lawsuit that he's got to figure out a way to get quiet. So Dan thinking that he, the ego will make it so he can never be quiet. There is a time when people get quiet, whether you're a billionaire or not, there is a time when you're out of moves. Steve Balmer is out of moves right now. Steve Balmer has to get quiet and are traded. Steve Balmer has to figure out the civil suit because it doesn't matter whether he's exposed for 50 million or 100 million or 200 million where Balmer has his point of concern is when

21:52it gets to be criminal, when it gets to be government intervention where there could be a situation that really does force a sale of the clippers or force a loss of freedom. Whatever the case might be in that wouldn't be this, but it certainly could be the sale of the clippers if he's found to have done things that we have not reported or don't know about quite yet. So at some point Dan Balmer will realize that being quiet is the only movie has. And my argument is Pablo, he's there now because he sees what happens when Don Van not attrace to defend the indefensible. He sees what's really happening with the evidence that we and Wachtel and others had. There are no more moves for Steve Balmer. That is my opinion. I think that we have mile markers along the road in front of us that we can see and you mentioned some of them, the co-I trade, a civil proceeding in which 11 aspiration investors have sued him for fraud in Los Angeles months ago. And now they're amending their complaint to add in a whole tonnage of information.

22:53And look, Dan, I just think it's important to say this when the Securities and Exchange Commission opens up a probe into aspiration months ago. And now Dectronics, hours before the MBA released this ruling in this document, the CFO of Dectronics said that the SEC has asked us for information related to the co-I deal. And then hours later we got what Wachtel knew about the co-I Dectronics deal in addition to what we had reported. And there's more. There are other companies they did this with which we are continuing to investigate. And so this is not just Capsor Convention, although that might be the emotional lever on Steve Balmer's ego, perhaps the paramount one. The other stuff is the real world stuff that David is just alluding to. And his lawyers, there's a difference between rattling a saber and threatening litigation which you can do without penalty forever. There's a difference between that and what actually you got to show improve when it comes to a civil proceeding that you want to dismiss, a SEC probe that you got to answer questions from. And a co-I trade, you need process because you can't do that unilaterally.

23:54You need others in the league to actually cooperate with you. I want to bring you back Pablo to when the SEC was investigating me because of you, Dan Levittard. And I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Hold on. When I save this for PTF, you want to do this one now because I know this story. That was such a Pablo move. Did you catch that? Were you listening? Yeah, of course. I love you. I love you. You had a good idea and he wanted it on his flat. I was just joking each other off. Typically. Pablo. Hold on. Let me get this in my glib closer to the end. Dan's show. I am merely saying that my history of not getting sued, not gone wood, means that our version of the Dan's will be. I just, when you say, hey, remember the time that Dan got me sued by the SEC? I'm sort of like David can we sidebar? That is my instinct. But hey, let's go. No, look. You guys are dicks. Both of you. No, both of you. No, because he wants me sued. No, this is, he wants to get sued. This is the thing.

24:55He alleges to be my friend. He wants Balmer and he's out here trying to get the clicks of. No, I don't think he's boxed in now. He can't do anything. Yeah. By the way, the clippers were saying that to Chris Mannix, that's where it's illustrated, said the stand on his show the other day. Samson is trying to get us sued. Chris Mannix said that the clippers, what they were saying to him and other reporters all year was just wait. Pablo Torres going to get sued by Steve Balmer. He's so wrong he's about to get sued. There it is. Gold mine. Gold mine for Samson. That is five. So it's a question. Dave, if we get sued, right, as a collective company. But we win. Does that mean we win money also? No. Okay. Now we could, we could counter-sue for lawyers fees, which this company will have a ton of great lawyers fees. Right. I already got all those lawyers. Wait a second. I don't even know how to count. I know. I know. I know. So number of times they had to stop taping because David would say the wrong thing in search at clicks.

25:55Even though he knows, he knows law. Wow. Dangerous David Samson. It's it's why Pablo has him on the show. David will say anything. David will tell you the truth no matter how uncomfortable it is. He loves showing, you know, pulling up baseball skirt and showing everybody everything. Tony, you know that moment at a party or at tailgate where everything just sort of clicks. I know well. It's usually when I show up. Everybody goes crazy. You usually take all the credit for it, but it's because Tony usually walks in with Quarvel. I'm blocking my piss. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quarvel is a thing that turns hanging out into, this is the night. It has that effect on people. It does. You usually take the credit for it, but again, it's the Quarvel effect. It's like that moment in a big game where everyone in the crowd just starts standing up, hooting and hollering. Keep it, Quarvel. Keep it, Quarvel, baby. Down lebatar. I don't like strange for me, but like Mike Ryan. Oh, boy. This is the day of lebatar show. ["The Star of the World"]

27:07Pablo, that time that the SEC, when your name was at the top of Wachtel's report, it reminded me of the beautiful moment when the SEC was after me. And I had to, and the first thing they played for me during... Taken on the other three shows, so you guys will mend don't chop it up this enough. Do you recall saying this, and they played a tape of you guys on the Dan Lebatard show? And it was the craziest thing that my lawyers or I had had ever... Pablo, Pablo, I really, we run the risk. In fact, we don't run the risk. We've run laps around the risk that this sounds like a victory lap, and everything around how we discuss this is tedious to people. They're tired. They don't want the three of us winning. We're assholes. Look at us. We're obnoxious. We're unlike... According to my report, we think we're smarter than everybody. And nobody likes that in sports. They just want to talk about Wednesday and Thursday night football. Ooh! I'll say this, though. I think the thing that I was thinking when I read the ESPN

28:10or Don's defense of the ESPN reporting, and what I think is working about the show is that there are a lot of people out there who can smell bullshit, and they're desperate for someone to tell them that this, in fact, is shit that stinks. And insofar as we are ourselves, whatever, odious. So far. I have to interrupt everybody. I have to interrupt everybody. I have to clean something up. In my haste, I didn't get the stat right. So let me go over this again. Very carefully and very slowly. Because there wasn't room for you to talk with all this victory lap. No, with all the... Insofar as we were talking. Yeah, if the buccacchi of a segment is everywhere. You know about that buccacchi? Ooh! There is not multiple mics. There is jizz. That is you guys. And we're... You guys are the buccacchi. There is you. That is you. Great, so... It's you. All right. After last science game, quarterbacks who did not... This is courtesy of Club Analytics.

29:10Quarterbacks who did not take a preseason snap have gone under their team total in 35 of 50 games in week one. That's 70%. Only 19 of 50 have gone over their passing yardage prop as well. Nearly 60% of those quarterbacks went under their yardage prop by considerable amounts. We're talking 60 yards here folks. Brock Purti did play in the preseason. Matthew Stafford did not. You couple that with a Rahimoris thing. We're still locking in this under. You've got a totally opposite. That's why I had to clean it up. According to my reporting. I put the bad news. The Southeastern Conference is coming after me. Take it out. Jeremy just whispered to me. You want to repeat to the audience what you just whispered to me? Yeah, didn't think I was going to have to search buccacchi to confirm the spelling. This is... This while Roy makes that sound. We have KKK. That sounds... What? I just want you guys to know that there is a more than non-zero chance

30:16that Steve Balmer's lawyers, one of them, their job is to listen to what we just did. Oh, come on. Look. Good. Can't wait for that to be ready for it. I hope it goes visual because Pablo didn't see what you were doing. Make sure you don't do his work. It's worse than... Pablo kept talking. I hope that's the clip. I hope of all the aggregated clips. I hope the clip is Pablo saying whatever he was saying is you guys drew a dick on his microphone. Oh! The microphone is a dick. No, I drew balls on the microphone. According to my reporting, I drew balls. First time you've used the illustrator correctly. First time we've had that dumb shit for about six months. No one's used it right. I have often drawn dongs. That's... Pablo, somehow, okay, somehow... In the clipper story that everyone keeps talking about, it somehow got lost. That I thought that if everything that you reported about the Lakers is true, that if I put those two things side by side, never mind NBA punishments and stuff,

31:16as stories, magic Johnson being ensnared in what it is that you were reporting on Friday, I thought that Laker's story is just... I can make the argument just as big as this one. I would hear that argument out. Look, the way that sports has gotten to this place, this is the guy Mark Walter, who is as responsible, if not more responsible, than anyone. He has paid record prices for, of course, the Dodgers in 2012, David. That was a key part of David's testimony on that episode. It was a key Mark Walter and his partner Todd Bulley and Guggenheim partners, paid more than $3 billion for Mike Ryan's Chelsea football club. That happened and then they paid $10 billion for the Los Angeles Lakers and then have an agreement to sell it for $12.5 another record. So this is a single stimulus package billionaire who keeps on raising the prices and the question is how does he afford this stuff? And the question leads to an answer that involves the nest eggs of America's parents and grandparents.

32:17And this is now Dan, one of those stories where you may not think this story is about you, but it is about you. It is about us. It's about what the public doesn't know and how our money is being borrowed and leveraged and used to purchase things that we think perhaps are obviously regulated in clear ways. And instead may have been hidden according to our reporter. David, please walk me through this part of it. I know the ballroom thing is a great deal of fun, hooray hooray punishment in terms of what's affecting America right now. How many more times of serious is this Laker story, given what Pablo is saying about these franchises keep going up to $10 and $12 billion. And the reporting on this Laker story would have you believe that they're just kind of using grandma's money. And one guy's given it to magic and magic, hey, you want to be a billionaire? Like that story in the macro much more meaningful than the other silly one we've been talking about for a year. Actually, the one that impacts America according to your definition would be the fraud upon the aspiration investors,

33:18of which Palmer is one of them because there were non-billionaire investors who were investing their money and they didn't have a lot of it into aspiration thinking they were making a difference in the world. And they lost their money. There's a reason why Joe Sanber is in prison for 14 years. It's not because of salary caps or convention. It's not because of Kauai Leonard. It's not for any other reason than there was harm done to America and Americans. Kauai Leonard, not harmful to Americans in any way. Mark Walter using money from insurance premiums that are paid by Americans is that harmful to them. This is what we're trying to figure out because what Mark Walter is saying, if we buy something for 10 billion and sell it for 12 and a half billion, then we're doing fine with everybody's investments. If magic Johnson's lending money to a sports network or to another individual, we lend money all the time as insurance companies, no problem, nobody's getting hurt here. What we are figuring out and what everybody's looking at is, could there be a time when people actually are getting hurt?

34:23Because it's not about the sports bubble or the Lakers being worth 12 and a half billion or not. It's about Mark Walter not disclosing publicly to people what he was doing. Because that's all you have to do. You combine cell teams, you can do all sorts of things. You have to disclose what you're doing and he did not. So please walk us through the details of this story that are most offensive. We have a right to know as a public and that right to know is embodied in securities law and that sounds boring. I want to jump in on that and say that sounds boring immediately. But it really means you can't just do whatever you want with your self financially and not disclose it. A ledge self-dealing is one of the crimes being alleged here by the federal government that DOJ and the SEC are investigating. They're probing whether alleged self-dealing has actually occurred. And the reason that's troublesome is because of what David said before about how we got to disclose it. But there is this other part of it that I think takes us back to Miami actually.

35:26When Sam Beckman freed was doing all that stuff with FTX, right? And he has of course gone to prison and people lost their money. Sam Beckman freed's argument was actually look at how much money I put in to AI. Look at what I did with Anthropic. I had a huge stake. What does this mean? It means that you guys, if you just let me keep investing, I would have made everybody's money back. This is a parallel statement to what Bernie Madoff's self-defense had been. I just was about to do it. I was about to pay everybody back, but I couldn't because you guys stopped me in my grand long-term investing scheme. So the question is, not that is the sports bubble gonna pop, although I think that is absolutely integral to my understanding of the risk of the investment. It's also, why should we let people do this without telling us? And that is at the core, Dan, of what Brenda the show Adam McKay depicted in the big short.

36:26This is the story of America. People with lots of money doing things that jeopardize us because they think they know better. And the whole point of journalism is to say, we have a right. The public has a right to know the truth. And that sounds boring, but it's also unbelievably important. And interesting, once you meet all of the characters who say, just trust me, I'm gonna protect you. Well, the whole point of the law actually is bigger than journalism. And I don't want to say that law is more important than journalism because journalism is sort of the check. But the law is the boundary. And what executives are doing like Mark Walters, Steve Balmers, they're not as focused on what your report is or what our shows are. They are definitely focused though on what the law is and whether or not they can stretch it and how they can use the law to their advantage. So what Mark Walters simply did is something that many, many people would do. When we were told that insurance money was being used to buy the Dodgers, we didn't think twice. When we're in the room voting for that approved transaction, we didn't think, oh, maybe it didn't disclose it.

37:28Maybe it's not allowed. No, what we said is 2.15 billion hell yeah, we will approve that deal. So to me, I'm much more focused on the legal side of this where Mark Walters, the problems that he's trying to fix by selling the Lakers, are simply the problems of trying to get out of his legal trouble, not his PR trouble. Pablo, if America needs to know one thing about that Lakers episode, I think the thing they'd be most interested in is what kind of trouble is magic in? Yeah, I mean, Magic Johnson is a key character in all of it. He was sold, some have told me gifted effectively an entire private insurance company. Mark Walters, according to the reporting, war magic Johnson, kind of like a costume into the world of sports to build credibility in LA and beyond. And then when he needs to do deals with himself, his way, according to the timeline of perhaps achieving that, is by selling one of the companies that he's going to borrow from to loan money to himself, I'm going to give that to magic so that it's not me.

38:32And it's magic Johnson, the beloved, you know, teddy bear, who happens to be one of the most decorated athletes of all time. And so I'm now realizing what's happening to Zaz. Pablo, Pablo, sorry. The first time you've ever seen a public comment, and the latest episode, okay, because he's doing the serious stuff really, really well. But he's just following billionaires around now, and he's going to get us in trouble. And one of these people, like a lot of people are already telling, I'm not even joking about this when I say it, because I'm worried about it. A lot of people are telling you, hey, Pablo, you better get protection, right? Because these are powerful people you're screwing with, and today's episode is a harmless one. Of all billionaires just want to be boosters with the tennis guys. Yeah, I mean, there are the billionaire story of today, which just happened. I didn't start the show to just be the guy taking down billionaires. We do lots of other things. I should say that we used to have a reputation for doing fun things actually.

39:33So, so annoyingly that people were like, you're not serious enough, and now we're too serious. I'm trying to just, I'm kind of goldy-locks what this is. But Bill Ackman, that story is hilarious, because he's the dude who played in a professional tennis match, and he's 59 years old and a hedgehog manager. And it's the most embarrassing tennis match anyone's ever seen. And the question was, why, and how? And the answer is, oh, he's funding American tennis to a degree that is kind of the thing that explains why it is that tennis is in the way it is. That's just meaning we got finalists at the US Open, Americans, and we also got a US Open that feels like there is a Delta Sky Club for the rich people, and everyone else is in steer-ridge waiting in line. You can get into the quarterfiance, Pablo, for $92. The ticket prices were so low for the women's quarters, it's not exclusive at all. So, I don't know why you say that, but there's always good seats. It's like saying just because there's first class, doesn't mean there's no coach. But the larger thing Pablo's doing here, you guys are laughing at this, right? This make-a-wish thing with the billionaires. It's Elon Musk launching things at the moon, because he can, because money doesn't mean anything anymore, and these clowns want to be college boosters and tennis, and they want to not respect anybody and just steal Kawaii Leonard.

40:43You have a convertible. Well, hold on. Yeah, that doesn't make me a billionaire. I do want to say this. Journalism should not be a vow of poverty. I think key to the whole thing is that like you incentivize people, hey, do work so the ecosystem remains in check, so perhaps. Okay. I have a convertible. I have a convertible. You want a debt-resuad? Like you want your dick to be funny? It's not fucking funny. I'm terrified all the time. It's extremely rare for a team as bad as the Raiders to be favored in week one. Their win total is only five and a half. They will be only the third team in the last 25 years to be favored in week one with such a low win total. The other two instances, both favorites lost outright. Raiders in 07 lost by 15 and Titans in 06 lost by 7. The dolphins are a live dog. Okay, okay, okay.