Pablo Torre is on a generational run with his offseason reporting of the Clippers' alleged endorsement deal with Aspiration, one that Torre claims funneled millions of dollars to Kawhi Leonard outside of the NBA salary cap.

Rather than drop all his evidence and information at once, Torre has rather cleverly sprinkled pieces of his reporting week by week to counter what those in the NBA—mainly, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and NBA commissioner Adam Silver—have said about the investigation.

On Tuesday, Torre released another telling piece of evidence that pushes back against one of Silver's claims from earlier this month. Silver said in response to Torre's initial report that he had "never heard of the company Aspiration before, and I'd never heard a whiff of anything around an endorsement deal with Kawhi."

Torre found that hard to believe, and pulled up receipts that push back against Silver's know-nothing claim. Torre revealed on X (formerly Twitter) that he obtained a copy of Aspiration's "Founding Sponsorship Agreement" that dates back to 2021, when the Clippers first announced a $300 million deal with Aspiration.

Within the document, there's a clause that states the agreement "must be submitted prior to its execution for NBA’s approval and shall not be effective or enforceable until it is expressly approved by the NBA."

In light of the new evidence, Torre posed two big questions about Silver's potential involvement in the Leonard scandal:

"1) Why did Steve Ballmer’s $300M+ Aspiration partnership not reach Adam Silver's office before it was 'expressly approved'?

"2) Did no one inform Silver that Bloomberg reported on 1/18/24 that Aspiration was being investigated by the federal government?" Torre wrote.

To make matters more interesting, Silver backtracked on his previous statements in a new interview with Front Office Sports on Tuesday. Silver clarified that he had, in fact, "heard" of Aspiration shortly after Torre's latest report.

"Just to be clear," Silver said, "if I said I never heard of [Aspiration], I meant in the context of the accusations here. I mean I certainly was aware of the brand."

Talk about a spin cycle.

The NBA is currently still investigating Torre's claims. Silver notably said that "the burden is on the league if we're going to discipline a team, an owner, a player or any constituent members of the league." Given Torre's meticulous reporting so far, we'd expect the Clippers' Kawhi Leonard saga to be far from over.

More NBA on Sports Illustrated


This article was originally published on www.si.com as New Pablo Torre Report Questions Adam Silver's Claim About Clippers, Aspiration Deal.

Test hyperlink for boilerplate