Daktronics ($DAKT) podcast mentions
This is the outer bounds of ambition and frankly of recidivism. He was punished for cap circumvention in 2015, investigated for this in 2019, comes back with the largest attempted large-scale tap circumvention operation that we've ever seen or imagined. And so magnitude-wise, this is orders beyond what anyone has ever seen that I have been told about. But I want to explain something about why it is that he is behaving this way and vehemently denying even beyond the accusation that we're all doing this. One of the companies that was implicated in my reporting, as well as now Wachtell Lipton's investigation, is a company called Daktronics. They are a scoreboard manufacturer. They've never had a celebrity endorser until, it turns out, a secret deal with Kawhi Leonard. They got $100 million to build out the beautiful Halo board at the Intuit Dome, this gleaming thing above the heads of all the players and executives. The SEC, according to their earnings call this week, has been requesting information from Daktronics because of the reporting around what has not been disclosed. So now federal agencies are asking for information in ways that the NBA can't demand and I certainly can't. From some of the principals. This is on top of an ongoing SEC probe into Aspiration, which is not yet over as their co-founder sits in prison convicted to a 14-year sentence. And so what Steve Ballmer is thinking to himself as he also faces a civil suit in LA from 11 Aspiration investors who allege fraud on the basis of not being told about the secret side deals that's happening right now in LA, he is wondering to himself quietly what else might come out that might be more damaging and even scary to me than what the NBA is doing.
Pablo Torre · Squawk Pod · What Pablo Torre Found Out & Banning Artificial Superintelligence 9/4/26 · 2026-09-04I think two things are true. One is, by degree, lots of other examples of salary cap circumvention, funneling money to players, have happened, will happen, are happening. But the other thing that's true is that in terms of the scale and ambition and the paper trail and the sort of almost just like subplots. Nothing is quite like a story in which a guy who doesn't want to do anything, who has zero discernible endorsement value even when he does something, has leverage over the richest owner in sports, who is willing to spare no expense, almost literally, to funnel money through 4 different companies. One of whom, by the way, is a public company, Daktronics, that has now acknowledged in yesterday's earnings call that their CFO, according to him, is now dealing with an SEC investigation. So there's also a civil suit happening in LA court against Steve Ballmer personally by 11 Aspiration investors about fraud. My point is there are lots of other examples about how to circumvent the cap that are, I'm sure, getting no attention, and maybe we'll get to some of them. But in terms of what this one is, the reason it's the biggest punishment is because they found stuff that is singular in terms of all of the webs that it entails, and that is Well, I just— but I'm going—
Pablo Torre · TBPN · Pablo Torre Explains the Steve Ballmer & Kawhi Leonard Scandal · 2026-09-03I think two things are true. One is, by degree, lots of other examples of salary cap circumvention, funneling money to players, have happened, will happen, are happening. Mm-hmm. But the other thing that's true is that in terms of the scale and ambition and the paper trail and the sort of almost just, like, subplots Nothing is quite like a story in which a guy who doesn't want to do anything, who has zero discernible endorsement value even when he does something, has leverage over the richest owner in sports, who is willing to spare no expense, almost literally, to funnel money through 4 different companies. One of whom, by the way, is a public company, Daktronics, that has now acknowledged in yesterday's earnings call that their CFO, according to him, is now dealing with an SEC investigation. So there's also a civil suit happening in LA court against Steve Ballmer personally by 11 Aspiration investors about fraud. My point is, there are lots of other examples about how to circumvent the cap that are, I'm sure, getting no attention, and maybe we'll get to some of them. But in terms of what this one is, the reason it's the biggest punishment is because they found stuff that is singular in terms of all of the webs that it entails, and that is Well, I just—
Pablo Torre · TBPN · Model Mayhem, NVIDIA x Hugging Face Deal, GPT-6 Astra | Pablo Torre, Mohit Aron, Akshay Narisetti, Hari Ravichandran, Matt Caldwell & Jordy Leiser, Jeff Thornburg, Charlie O’Neill, Sridhar Ramaswamy · 2026-09-03