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Pablo Torre is still peeling back the layers behind the Los Angeles Clippers’ alleged “salary cap circumvention” tactics involving superstar forward Kawhi Leonard. In his initial story, Torre built a case on Pablo Torre Finds Out that Leonard’s sponsorship deal with Aspiration was a cover to pay the two-time Finals MVP tens of millions of dollars to sign with the Clippers.
The initial story sent shockwaves through the NBA and led to Clippers owner Steve Ballmer doing damage control on SportsCenter. Torre asserted that the NBA’s investigation into the matter, which he sees as a clear attack on the league’s integrity, would be one of the biggest challenges of Adam Silver’s tenure as NBA commissioner.
That investigation, which is being carried out by a law firm hand-selected by the NBA, remains ongoing and has halted a trade of Leonard to the Toronto Raptors, as Toronto remains unwilling to accept any liability for punishment imposed involving Leonard. The Raptors continue to wait for the league’s investigation to wrap, but progress has been slow.
Last month, Torre asserted that the pace is due to the league attempting to do damage control on what its investigation has unearthed.
“This is a business hiring a law firm to try and control a problem in which the public may never know the depths of whatever they discovered, because of course it’s bad for business if this thing keeps on expanding,” he said on The Dan LeBatard Show.
In light of that damage control, Torre has taken it upon himself to expand things himself. He now reports that Daktronics, “the worldwide leader, arguably, in jumbotron manufacturing,” also had a sponsorship deal with Leonard to circumvent the salary cap through a “multi-million dollar deal.”
“This was talked about just openly within the organization and from people working on the project that Kawhi was a spokesperson for Daktronics,” Torre’s anonymous source said. “And it was just the biggest thing. It was just openly joked about within people working on the project that knew about this, as it was 1000% a way to circumvent the salary cap.”
“They’re not a company that you would see a celebrity endorser for, you know,” the source added, “and then it wasn’t coming out of their end, that the Clippers were technically kind of funding it, you know, and that it was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to Kawhi.”
After reaching out to Daktronics for comments, the company’s counsel responded that it’s unclear “what the company wants to say or can say” given the NBA’s ongoing investigation.
Torre has stepped further than most journalists in advocating for punishment for the malpractice he has allegedly uncovered, and as he seemingly brings more and more to light, he may be on the brink of what he wants in forcing Silver’s hand.
The post Pablo Torre drops bombshell episode pointing to another Kawhi Leonard salary cap circumvention deal appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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