Bill Simmons and Pablo Torre were rivals for a brief period of time, but now it seems as though the latter has completely won over the former with his reporting skills.
The latest episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out saw the reporter/podcaster/content creator take a deep dive into suspicious payments given to Kawhi Leonard by a company called Aspiration that just so happened to be supported by Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. Leonard was paid tens of millions of dollars for no-show promotional work, and it sure gives the impression that it was to circumvent the salary cap. Torre even had human sources from Aspiration that connected those dots as well.
If anything, Torre’s incredible reporting this year has given him the benefit of the doubt. And that includes from one of the godfathers of sports podcasting, Bill Simmons, who was once one of his biggest doubters. Simmons applauded Torre’s scoop, saying that it lined up with a lot of what he has heard over the years about secret dealings between owners and players outside the traditional NBA compensation structure.
“All of this that was laid out was the sloppiest s— I’ve ever seen.”@BillSimmons and @HousefromDC react to Pablo Torre’s investigation of Steve Ballmer, Kawhi Leonard, and Leonard’s deal with the Clippers. pic.twitter.com/udiHpov2XP
— The Ringer (@ringer) September 5, 2025
“He journalisted it up,” Simmons said. “This was a great story by him. He really did, good job by him.”
“It confirmed a lot of stuff that we’ve always felt was going on, both anecdotally and whisper stuff, and just, this is a whole world of the NBA that they would rather we didn’t talk about. I’ve talked about it anecdotally on my podcast a few times about star players being allowed to use the team plane for their own purposes or being allowed to stay at an owner’s beach place for two weeks with a bunch of their friends. There’s a lot of nooks and crannies in the CBA and the league just does this, they’re like ‘we don’t want to know. We don’t want to know.”
It’s a far cry from Simmons’ critiques of Torre’s reporting into Jordon Hudson and Bill Belichick. Torre went on Simmons’ podcast to address it head on and emerged a decisive victor as he had an answer for everything that The Sports Guy threw at him. Apparently that was enough to win Simmons over as a believer.
Bill Simmons also turned an eye to Steve Ballmer himself in his comments. In the wake of the bombshell, Ballmer quickly ran to SportsCenter to play the victim card and say that he was swindled by the company and a sponsorship deal gone wrong. And it’s a defense that has left observers questioning that explanation.
“Everything I know about Ballmer, how shrewd of a businessman he is, how thoughtful he is about everything. Like, even how they did the Intuit Dome. Every piece of that place he put so much thought into. He’s not like a cut corners old billionaire who just f—– does whatever. He’s really on it. And all of this that was laid out was the sloppiest s— I’ve ever seen. And I’m just like, I just can’t believe he was this dumb. And maybe he was this dumb,” Simmons added.
Given Pablo Torre has thousands of pages of documents and human sources, it’s going to be an uphill battle for the Clippers owner to combat the public perception of what happened with Kawhi Leonard. And if the defense of one of the richest and most successful businessmen in American history is “I was this dumb,” then it’s going to be even more challenging.