Nets Owner Calls Out ‘Despicable’ Racist Attack on Pablo Torre for Investigating LeBron James

Six weeks ago, Pablo Torre's reporting helped bring down one of the heaviest penalties the NBA has ever handed an owner. Steve Ballmer was suspended for a year, and the Clippers lost five first-round picks over the Kawhi Leonard probe. Now the journalist who started that chain is taking a very different kind of heat, after he said he is looking into LeBron James' helicopter arrangement with the 76ers.

The abuse that followed was bad enough to pull in an NBA owner.

Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai publicly defended Torre after an X account called Locker Room sent him a racist message.

"@PabloTorre is a proud Asian-American and an excellent journalist. He has done extraordinary work reporting on the NBA," Tsai wrote. Addressing the account directly, he added: "I don't know who you are but this blatant racism is despicable and you should be called out for who you are."

The post that set it off told Torre, "I just saw your click bait story on my goat LeBron James," and went on to mock him with stereotypes about Chinese people, a Jeremy Lin reference and a racial slur, before calling him "poor."

Torre answered with three words: "I'm Filipino." Tsai's reply followed, and Torre's response, posted roughly four hours after the original message, has drawn more than 900,000 views.

The reaction makes sense given how fast Torre's work on James has spread. Speaking on Front Office Sports' "Tuned In," Torre said he noticed a Fanatics logo on the helicopter James has used to travel between Manhattan and the Sixers' practice facility in Camden, New Jersey. He said his team is "looking into all the ways" the arrangement could matter, and that NBA owners have been in touch. "We're also getting tips from NBA owners, who are sending me your story, being like, 'What is this?'" Torre said.

Front Office Sports reported that the travel falls under a long-term Fanatics deal James signed in January 2024, well before he joined Philadelphia. A one-way charter on that route typically costs $4,000 to $10,000. Fanatics said such perks appear in many of its biggest athlete deals.

No league finding against James, the Fanatics or the Sixers has been reported, and the helicopter alone does not establish that any rule was broken.

Why Torre’s LeBron James Reporting Is Drawing So Much Heat

The interest in the helicopter comes from who is attached to it. Fanatics founder Michael Rubin is a former minority owner of the 76ers, and Torre has framed the question as one that could matter to the league, including whether benefits like this could be viewed as an indirect way around the salary cap.

That is the same type of question that sat at the center of the Clippers case, where the NBA found that off-court deals were used to help Leonard, and it explains why Torre's name is now tied to James' in the same sentence.

Whatever Torre ends up finding about the helicopter, and he has said the reporting is ongoing, the disagreement is about business facts that can be checked. Racism has no place in that argument, and Tsai made that point while the clip was still circulating on social media.

Torre has not announced any findings, and James has not been accused of breaking a rule. For now, the most concrete outcome of the week is an NBA owner telling a journalist, in public, that the abuse aimed at him was indefensible.