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American billionaire Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft Corp. chief executive who owns the Los Angeles Clippers, spent a year threatening to sue the journalist whose reporting led to his suspension from the National Basketball Association, the reporter said.
Pablo Torre, host of the podcast "Pablo Torre Finds Out," said in an interview with television host Maury Povich, published on Nov. 10, that Ballmer's camp passed the threats around the league. "He was telling, via his various representatives, that he was gonna sue me," Torre said. "For a year, this was being communicated all around the NBA."
Torre dismissed the threats as bluster. "Intense wealth does not equate to intense competence," he said. "Sometimes they can be idiots."
The Kawhi Leonard case
Torre reported in 2025 that the Clippers' star forward Kawhi Leonard had a $28 million endorsement deal with Aspiration, a climate-focused financial company in which Ballmer had invested, and that Leonard did little work for the money. The reporting raised questions over whether the arrangement was a way to pay Leonard beyond the NBA's salary cap.
Aspiration later collapsed, and its co-founder, Joe Sanberg, pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges tied to the company. Ballmer has said he was among the investors misled by Sanberg.
In early September, the NBA suspended Ballmer for one year, fined the Clippers $30 million and fined Leonard $700,000 after an investigation found the team had circumvented the salary cap. Ballmer has denied wrongdoing throughout. The Clippers said the league's public findings did not match what they had been told privately and that they intend to challenge the punishment.
Torre has said Ballmer chose to fight rather than accept a settlement in which he would admit wrongdoing. The league has settled with Leonard and the players' union.
Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban has defended Ballmer and said on his own show that Torre was wrong.
One of the world's richest men
Ballmer, 70, joined Microsoft in 1980 as its 30th employee and succeeded co-founder Bill Gates as CEO in 2000, running the company until 2014. He bought the Clippers that year for $2 billion and later built the team's $2 billion Intuit Dome arena in Inglewood, California, which opened in 2024.
Most of his fortune comes from his roughly 4% stake in Microsoft, which he kept after leaving the company. Forbes estimates his net worth at about $165 billion, placing him among the 10 richest people in the world.
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