Mar 28, 2025; Brooklyn, New York, USA; Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer leaves his court side seat after a game against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images
Mar 28, 2025; Brooklyn, New York, USA; Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer leaves his court side seat after a game against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images
Steve Ballmer had a chance to negotiate a settlement with the NBA before the Los Angeles Clippers received the harshest punishment in NBA league history. But investigative journalist Pablo Torre claims the billionaire owner had no interest in any settlement of any sort.
Speaking on Pablo Torre Finds Out, Torre explained that the NBA initially preferred resolving the salary cap circumvention scandal through negotiations rather than imposing the unprecedented penalties that eventually followed.
“This part of the article, I think, might have had the most important word in it: spirited discussions, negotiations even, around what this was. And as soon as that article came out, what you discerned was that the Clippers and the NBA are, in fact, fighting right now.”
“And so why do they handle it this way? It’s because, for the first time in public view, Henry, as I calibrate my cynicism, the Clippers and Adam Silver’s league office and Wachtell Lipton were on opposite sides of this dynamic. And their incentives were not aligned.”
“And that’s where what I’m able to report now is that, yeah, Steve Ballmer was fundamentally uninterested in settling. This is the non-settlement settlement. This is what you get when you don’t bargain. The NBA was looking forward to settling, for this to not be five first-round picks and $30 million and all these suspensions. This is what you get when you don’t settle.”
“And also, in some form or fashion, when you actively try to tell a version of events that is not what is reflected in the reality of this report, which I am told Steve Ballmer and Team Ballmer, legal team, and the Clippers, they were not told a punishment, but they were told, ‘Here’s what we got.’ And if you don’t go forward to negotiate, given that, you end up getting the biggest punishment in the history of the NBA within a scope that is so relatively narrow. There’s more.”
“And by the way, people have also asked what changed as a result of the ESPN story. Were they waiting on the public to react so that they could decide what to do? I am not going to yet wade into that. What I will simply say is that before this report came out, I was fully confident, based on my reporting, that we were not going to get 35 pages. We would just get a cover sheet, a summary of findings, a ruling. And that would come on the backs of a settlement. The whole point was to settle.”
“And after that ESPN story, in which Mike Bass comes out, chief comms guy for the NBA, and he says, ‘Numerous and significant inaccuracies,’ the question was raised by the league itself: What was significant and what was inaccurate?”
“And now we got a 35-page document. And that is why I am grateful that this played out exactly the way it did, because we got to see some of what the NBA knew. It was part of how the Clippers were defending themselves. And it was desperate in a way that the NBA ultimately rebuked with a clarity that I can’t recall. I don’t recall a fight like this happening that leads to consequences like this. Everybody preferred that this not get out there.”
Torre had previously reported that the NBA had approached Ballmer in what was considered a narrow case. It was supported by significant evidence, and it became an opportunity to accept punishment, acknowledge the wrongdoing, and move forward.
Instead, Ballmer decided to fight, and that decision ultimately increased the price the Clippers paid.
The NBA ultimately stripped the Clippers of five first-round picks between 2029 and 2033 and imposed a $30 million fine. Ballmer got a one-year suspension, while other team executives were also suspended.
Torre also revealed a fascinating detail about how the investigation was expected to conclude. Before an ESPN report came out detailing the Clippers’ defense and initially absolving them of any allegations, he was convinced the NBA would release little more than a summary because the matter would be settled privately.
Torre also linked the development to growing public backlash against the Clippers.
After the ESPN story, NBA communications chief Mike Bass disputed multiple aspects of the ESPN report as factual inaccuracies, which made the resulting report expose a level of disagreement that had existed between the NBA and its franchise.
Ballmer still continued to deny wrongdoing, leaving open the possibility that the fight is far from over.
But according to Torre, the Clippers had a chance to pivot this dispute into an opportunity. They chose not to settle, and the consequence was an unprecedented punishment that reshaped the franchise for the next decade.