Pablo Torre says Clippers may have fed ESPN misleading story about NBA investigation

The questions surrounding ESPN’s reporting on the Clippers investigation aren’t going away.

Now Pablo Torre is offering a theory about how the network ended up with its controversial story in the first place.

“What ESPN had done, according to my reporting, is they were fed a story by the Clippers that the Clippers may have known was not true,” Torre said Thursday on The Dan Patrick Show, via Awful Announcing.

That’s quite an allegation. ESPN reported in mid-August that the NBA had found no evidence Clippers owner Steve Ballmer funneled money through team sponsors to Kawhi Leonard to circumvent the salary cap.

The NBA immediately pushed back, saying the story contained “numerous and significant inaccuracies.” Then came Wednesday’s findings, with the league determining the Clippers had committed multiple salary-cap circumvention violations and imposing a $30 million fine, five forfeited first-round picks and multiple suspensions.

As we noted Wednesday, ESPN’s specific assertion about Ballmer personally funneling money wasn’t necessarily disproven by the NBA’s findings. But the overall framing of the story certainly didn’t age well.

Torre also told Dan Patrick that ESPN offered him an opportunity to respond after its story was published, since it was widely viewed as undermining his reporting. He said ESPN ultimately didn’t include his statement.

“I don’t expect an apology,” Torre said. “I don’t expect anything.”

Still, Torre said his reporting leads him to believe ESPN “got fed a story by people who were lying to everybody this whole time.”

ESPN declined comment to Awful Announcing on Wednesday regarding its original report.

Again, that’s Torre’s version of how this happened. But considering how dramatically ESPN’s portrayal of the investigation differed from what the NBA ultimately announced, it’s certainly a version worth hearing.