Mark Cuban, the Mavericks’ part-owner, was one of the first major figures to publicly support Steve Ballmer amid the fraud allegations against Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers. When the sports investigator Pablo Torre invited Cuban on the ‘Pablo Torre Finds Out’ podcast, he accepted the invite and recorded a conversation with Torre that he has now uploaded on YouTube.
“Yeah, I’m good for dialogue. I don’t have a dog in the hunt, right? From a Mavs perspective, I hope they’re cheating, right? I mean, there’s no reason for me to try to defend Steve Ballmer other than for what I think is right,” said Cuban, hilariously.
While Cuban was being funny about Ballmer initially, but strongly clarified why he is standing behind Ballmer.
“So, the reason I’m on team Ballmer, right, is when I go back and I look, the deal was in 2021 before their arena opened, right? Right when Kawhi signed their new contract, it’s worth $300 million.”
“When you get a deal of that size with a new category sponsor, the NBA has to approve it. So, first of all, the NBA had to have looked into this. But that wasn’t, you know, the overwhelming thing.”
“Then they defaulted on that deal, right? They stopped doing it, and Ballmer made an announcement at some point in time saying that the deal was not moving forward, and this was several years ago.”
“But that wasn’t really the trigger for team Ballmer. The trigger for team Ballmer was in January of 2024, when it was either the SEC or CFTC said that they were under investigation. So the minute Aspiration was under investigation, I guarantee you, in the mortal words of Charles Barkley, I guarantee it that the NBA took a hard look at it.”
“And not only that, that Ballmer, if he did something illicit and under the table and tried to, you know, um, work around the salary cap, then he’s got to be sh***ing bricks, right? Because then, he’s the dumbest human being on the planet because he trusted these scammers to do something he knew was against all NBA rules.”
“A, I just don’t see that happening. B, the NBA would have found it easily. Three, and this alludes to the ‘Steve Ballmer can’t be that dumb’ thing.”
“I mean, I guess I’ve been scammed. Everybody’s scammable. But in order for this to work, in my opinion, he has to trust the whole company. And then, you know, he trusted them enough to give them an investment at some level.”
“But I don’t see how he would trust that company to keep, probably, his darkest secret as an NBA owner, so that it wouldn’t get out. I just don’t see in any way, shape, or form that all those things could happen.”
Cuban has faith that the investigation into the matter now will yield similar results to what their initial investigation must have back when Aspiration came under suspicion of fraud.
As a third party, Cuban has no bias in this matter. But from an owner’s perspective, he provides a clear understanding of why the former CEO of Microsoft would not do something so risky in such a careless manner.
