Sometimes, it turns out, people want me to just answer some questions.

Such as:

• Did ESPN get sold fake news?

• How much did Steve Ballmer lie?

• What did Kawhi Leonard really know?

• And what’s not in the NBA’s report?

And so this episode is a punch-drunk, cynicism-calibrating conversation with my friend and former NBA editor at ESPN: TrueHoop’s .

PLUS: The Windhole, honoring the webinar... and journalism in the shower.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

A mysterious billionaire sold the Lakers, as the feds closed in.

But how Mark Walter bought the Dodgers — while enriching himself with the money of everyday Americans, and his own entities — reveals why franchises got so valuable. (Even if it means that the sports bubble may be about to pop.)

We call up insiders, Hunterbrook Media’s Sam Koppelman sniffs out fishy documents... and a Hall-of-Famer has some explaining to do.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

I Love LA,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

If you’ve been following our (ongoing) investigation into the Clippers and Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard, you know we’ve been waiting for this day for a year.

We published Part I on September 3rd, 2025.

This, Part 15, we streamed, live, last night — on September 2nd, 2026 — roughly 90 minutes after the NBA announced its punishment and the league’s outside counsel, Wachtell Lipton, dropped a detailed 35-page report.

Accountability for the wealthiest people on Earth is hard to come by.

Thank you for believing in the power of independent reporting to accomplish it.

(And, yes, more to come.)

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

🍔,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

HELLO, FRIENDS.

It’s been two weeks since I sent you a newsletter update, and for very good reason: the PTFO staff was on our annual summer vacation.

Which means we’re about to get into a bunch of strange, special projects we’ve been excited to show you this fall.

But first up is a guest that I’ve been trying to book for a long time.

If you’re wondering why a man with a Bugs Bunny avatar has been a PTFO target for more than two years now… there are many reasons, it turns out.

All of which are squarely in the wheelhouse of this program.

And my childhood.

P.S. I taped an episode of The Daily (!) over the break. In case you missed it:

(More on this subject very soon.)

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Meep Meep,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

When it comes to NBA business, it’s been a busy day in Los Angeles.

And if you want a quick overview of the mess, now spilling out into public view, between the Clippers, ESPN, and the league office: here you go!

But as you consider what constitutes “evidence” here — and whether Steve Ballmer’s team was merely making innocent “introductions” between Kawhi Leonard and Clippers partners — our latest Daktronics episode happens to be a fantastic place to dive in.

P.S. We stand by our (ongoing) reporting.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

This has been a particularly chaotic offseason for the San Francisco 49ers.

But even before their latest wave of employees got hurt — including their head coach, Kyle Shanahan, in a Tesla-involved car accident — we had been looking into a wildly viral question:

Is a mysterious substation — looming over their NFL practice facility “like The Eye of Sauron” — really causing a wave of injuries?

And to answer it, once and for all: we spent months teaming up with Wendy Zuckerman of the excellent Science Vs podcast to map the actual electric waves, explain the cancer research, and pore over the football data, to determine why the grass is always browner... on the other side of a deep story.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

Jordon Hudson was one thing.

Now, as the greatest football coach of all time attempts to salvage his final act, the University of North Carolina is investigating the program’s general manager, Michael Lombardi — aka Bill’s Guy.

The highest-paid GM in college football.

Bruce Feldman of The Athletic helps explain how an old-school consigliere stepped on campus, in the middle of an already slimy era of college sports, and left Belichick a laughingstock. (And why legal representation is worth noting.)

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

Sophie Cunningham welcomed the Riley Gaines School of Victimhood (as previously investigated) to the WNBA. And then attempted to walk it back.

But not before protests, counter-protests, and all the social-media engagement that hate can buy.

Somehow allowing Fox News host Jesse Watters (previously seen here) to emerge as a bizarre voice of relative sanity.

Also: our old friends Katie Nolan (of Casuals) and Michael Cruz Kayne (of But Also with Michael and Asher) react to a troubling and unbelievable map of the United States.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

If you haven’t listened to this episode yet…

I strongly encourage you to stop reading this newsletter and press play, before going any further.

Both because this story — Part 13 (!) of our ongoing series into the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard — is one of my favorites that we’ve ever reported on the show. And also because I’m about to bullet-point a few of the newsier takeaways, in case anyone needs to consult a written record in the future (absent the structure we painstakingly set up, for Amin Elhassan, in the episode itself)…

SPOILER ALERT:

In this episode, sources tell us about Kawhi Leonard’s hidden, multi-million-dollar “sponsorship” deal with the Clippers’ scoreboard manufacturer at Intuit Dome. The sources — in addition to our investigation’s encounters with South Dakota-based Daktronics and its crisis-communications firm — directly tie allegations of salary-cap circumvention with a second team partner beyond Aspiration, representing an important public development amidst the NBA’s own inquiry.

For instance:

• One of the high-level sources familiar with the relationship between the Clippers and Daktronics, who was under contract for the Clippers’ Intuit Dome project for years, goes on tape with us to say, “It was 1,000% a way to circumvent the salary cap.” The source adds: “People at Daktronics, people within the Clippers’ organization themselves, had told me about this multimillion-dollar deal with Kawhi and Daktronics — they’re not a company that you would see a celebrity endorser for — that it wasn’t coming out of their end, that the Clippers were technically kind of funding it, and that it was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to Kawhi.”

• Another source — a former high-level Clippers official — tells us: “I know Kawhi had a sponsorship with Daktronics.” (The Athletic recently reported that the NBA’s inquiry had expanded to examine a Leonard endorsement deal with another company but did not include further details.)

• Hunterbrook Media’s Sam Koppelman, who has previously collaborated with PTFO on episodes about the owners of the Phoenix Suns and Memphis Grizzlies (as well as Phil Mickelson and athlete brainwaves), encounters a crisis-communications firm hired by Daktronics that says, “Daktronics doesn’t have a deal with Kawhi right now.” When pressed, the firm voluntarily brought up the NBA’s inquiry but did not share any examples of services Leonard may have provided for its client. (We also cite three sources who told us that the firm’s founder worked for Clippers owner Steve Ballmer during a controversy over the arena’s buildout, which led the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office to rebuke an LLC registered to Ballmer for being “used intentionally to obfuscate the identity” of the richest owner in American sports.)

• Daktronics has no public history of using celebrity endorsers. The company writes in annual reports: “Other competitors use sponsorships as a way to win business.” As one former Daktronics employee tells PTFO and Hunterbrook: “I remember asking early on why we didn’t do more traditional advertising and promotion to increase brand recognition. I was told since it’s B2B and not a consumer product, it didn’t make sense to advertise that way.“

In other words: more to come.

Aspirationally,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

The World Cup was a $15 billion jackpot.

Then FIFA president Gianni Infantino overplayed his hand, with a secret plot to allegedly enrich the extended Trump family — and himself.

The Athletic’s Adam Crafton returns to explain the NFL-inspired motives, political naïveté, and potential downfall of the man who would be king of sport.

And we get to the heart of what this latest narrative twist is really about.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

The search is on for a “smoking gun” in the Kawhi Leonard scandal.

And simultaneously: Portland is desperately hoping that the new Trail Blazers owner, Tom Dundon, won’t move the team.

So we figured we should ask TrueHoop founder — the skeptic-in-chief of NBA insiders and “the pope of Blazers fans” — to stop by for a reality check on the state of truth, big money and basketball scandal:

Should you believe a “weak” commissioner and his lawyers, who all answer to the 0.1 percent?

Who gets to be in the most exclusive club in sports?

And did an owner really have a threesome with the Larry O’Brien trophy?

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Publicly,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

I love local news.

And one of my favorite dimensions of this episode — Part 12 (!) of our endless series about the Los Angeles Clippers, Kawhi Leonard, and the NBA’s reportedly expanding investigation into salary-cap circumvention — is our months-long collaboration with the fearless investigative journalists at WPRI.

WPRI, in case you didn’t know, is an award-winning TV station in the state of Rhode Island: the smallest state in the union.

And a state that is grappling — like so much of the United States — with a profound, deepening crisis in affordable housing.

Which may seem to you, now, like a very strange place for this investigation to go.

(We agree.)

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Rationally,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

We last had our pals Brace Belden and Liz Franczak on PTFO back in December of 2025, when they helped ease us into a subject we’ve since spent a very long time investigating:

But now the incomparable co-hosts of TrueAnon return, in person, to help me do something different:

Obtain Donald Trump’s personal cell number (and debate what to ask him).

PLUS: “FreddyLA7,” Nicholas Adamopoulos, special presidential envoys, America 250, Woke 2, Tom Brady vs. Logan Paul, Zohran Mamdani vs. The Internet, Lori Lightfoot vs. The Fridge... and whether you should autograph a bomb.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

Does Christopher Nolan make going to the movies feel like homework?

Friend of PTFO (and New York Times critic at large) Wesley Morris returns for a — relatively spoiler-free — cinematic sparring session:

What goes wrong when an auteur plays with too many Hollywood toys?

What goes right when Homeric text aligns with archetypal Damon?

Is the casting really “woke,” after all?

And why were those Greek islands so... neutered?

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Don’t Believe His Lies,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

I don’t want to spoil this episode — a genuine Mickey Duzyj classic — too much.

But I should remind our new subscribers here that one of the missions of PTFO’s sports coverage is to take stupid things seriously. And vice versa.

So it is a joy to see comments, on YouTube, like this:

I hope you enjoy watching this as much as we enjoyed making it.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Stimulaxed,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

For many content creators, the whole point of success is to sell out.

For a kid who dropped out of college to stream himself playing college football video games online, developing a business partnership with the makers of your favorite franchise — College Football 27 — would be the dream.

And for James Bordeaux, it was.

But then it wasn’t.

So we called up one of the key figures in the #CFBPlayDontPay movement — which we just broached, last week, with Friend of PTFO and “Old Stoner” Dan Soder — about why a college football content creator fomented a consumer revolt.

And how to fight the enshittification of everything.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

Welcome to Part III (!) of our investigation into Harvard’s undisclosed financial history with Jeffrey Epstein.

A whole lot has been exclusively reported, already, in collaboration with Harvard undergrad Dhruv Patel and The Crimson, my old student newspaper.

In case you missed Part I:

And in case you missed Part II:

Part III, however, focuses on the billionaire who funded Epstein — and seems to have connected him to Harvard, in the first place:

Leslie H. Wexner.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Veritas,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

A superstar held up by the salary cap.

A billionaire under the microscope.

A league inquiry hidden from public view.

Returning PTFO guest DeMaurice Smith has seen this playbook for punishment before. The former NFL union boss — and white-shoe law-firm investigator (and federal prosecutor) — returns to answer questions the NBA apparently cannot:

Who is “independent” when the league (and Steve Ballmer, in particular) pays the legal bill?

Why do salary cap rules actually matter?

How do unions play the long game?

And what obligation does a league have to its fans, if cheating can be the baseline?

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Groot,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

This is an episode for people who know a ton about video games — and people who know absolutely nothing.

Because if you, like me, went through puberty sometime in the 1990s or 2000s, you may think you have a general sense of that enormous industry.

But you would be wrong.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, a sprawling controversy — an online revolt, really — is underway, right now, around the newest edition of the best-selling video game in American history: College Football, made by EA Sports.

It is a story about private equity, sovereign wealth funds, competition, “microtransactions,” “virtual currency,” cheat codes (RIP), islands, and the question of whether we even own the products we buy, at this point.

And whether the companies that sell them do, either.

So we asked one of my favorite comics and Friends of PTFO, Dan Soder — who’s been playing video games with a future NFL coach since childhood — to explain how we got here. And where we’re headed. And why this is the story of our time.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

GameShark Forever,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

We fell in love with Jerry Saltz — the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for New York Magazine — when he visited our studio in December 2024.

What we wanted to do then was train Jerry’s eye upon modern statues of athletes:

The subject matter this time, as Earth obsesses over the World Cup?

A curated collection of some of the most lusted-after hardware in sports.

Jerry, as always, had no idea what he’d see beneath our black capes and curtains.

Neither, of course, did we.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Classically,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)