[Game Over with Max Kellerman and Rich Paul] Blazers owner Tom Dundon defends hotel room decision: “I would do it again… If that’s too hard for people, (then) I’m not right for them. I want that culture”
Lol, good luck signing free agents with that attitude.
I can see this guy dismantling any team capable of contending if it means avoiding the tax.
That’s funny because in this same interview (that OP didn’t include) he says he’s more than willing to go into the tax several times, and actually points out the Hurricanes have gone over the cap several times, so idk it seems like OP cherry picked this clip to get upvotes…
Did you watch the video? 😂
I said this when the story broke about the g-leaguers. Nobody is losing free agents because the owner make the g league players stay home. Now people think the training staff actually having to work for 45 minutes is gonna make a player turn down a max contract
Did you watch the video? They didn’t work. He made them sit in the conference room and wait.
I don’t think it’s about anyone having to work for 45 minutes.
It’s about the ridiculousness of counting pennies at the absolute worst time.
You’ve put your people up in hotels 50+ times during the season/pre-season. It’s now the most important games of the year. You’re looking at what - say 30 staff at \(300 a room = \)9k.
And that’s where you decide to draw the line/be frugal? Over $9k?
A billionaire makes more money in the time it takes to say the decision out loud. Just pay it and move on.
What culture ya fucking dork
Yeah I’m not convinced he knows what culture means
Cruelty
Culture of the bottom line
Penny pinching for his sake
Yep. Donald Sterling business model. Clippers weren’t cursed. Their team owner wasn’t trying to win.
What about now
They’ve been a normal reasonably successful team that can’t win a title lol. You see they aren’t legendary bottom dwellers anymore. Tickets used to be 3 for the price of one
The culture of Donald Sterlingball. Keep costs down and milk the franchise for money at every turn. Competing just means spending money.
Check out is at 11! We’re not going to inconvenience the fine women of the housekeeping staff just so we can be rested for a game! We will have a culture of self-sacrifice and politeness to a fault! That’s the culture I want to culturate! CULTIRE!
cheap AF
if the Carolina hurricanes win the Cup, im gonna vomit
“I’m a cheap fuck and I want the fans and players to know that. I want that culture.” - a person who needs their dick taxed into the dirt
Also, I want the culture where I bitch for a new arena paid for by taxpayers or else I’m leaving.
Time to nuke these bastards.
Don’t threaten him with a good time
Sacramento are going to have company in the basement.
What he say fuck me for
Do you disagree?
U a homeless man calling another homeless dude broke
He would know best wouldn’t be? Real recognize real.
Get off your knees defending billionaires.
It’s a meme goofy catch up
Pipe down
We built this hell ourselves, get your own suffering
At least Vivek seems to be willing to open the checkbook
Nah we actually like our players unless they are Lavine.
tbh the way he describes it, it seems normal to me. but it might look bad if the other 29 teams don’t operate that way.
lol you might be the only one in this entire thread to have actually listened to the clip. It doesn’t sound that bad at all when you hear him explain it.
Culture of working and getting hotel rooms for after are two different things.
Mind you the hotel rooms here would have only been needed for literally 45 minutes….
Then it should be for everyone. He created a class structure of who is important for this “45 minutes” that will create friction in any organization.
He sounds like a bit of a dumbass, but he honestly sounds like he’s listening and trying to understand the differences between the NBA and NHL.
I painfully listened to the whole segment, and despite max and rich gassing him up for being cheap, he seemed to push back a bit and say its a fault of his and he’s trying to do better.
How much do you think it would have been for an extra night for those people? Seriously, how much?
Do you think a guy who just spent 4 billion couldn’t have footed the bill for that?
So no, it isn’t normal. it’s cheap, it’s insulting and it shows you don’t give about the people that keep your organization running.
You gotta figure it was like ten rooms at most, so what? A couple grand?
Honestly it’s worth the money so you don’t come off as cheap. Imagine they lose a free agent because he has a reputation of being cheap due to shit like this.
I don’t think it was for an extra night it was paying just so they could check out at like 2 instead of 10 or whatever he demanded. I reserve the right to be completely wrong
Its this actually
You can tell no one’s watching the clip because they’re talking about signing free agents and players hating it…but this was staff not players or coaches.
The staff that rather importantly *treats the players.*
Yeah if you actually listen to the entire interview he says several times that he’s still learning and specifically the 2 way guys not traveling was a mistake on his part because he didn’t understand it’s common, which is why they traveled down there for game 5.
Yup. I’d probably be canned at my job for even asking for late check out lol
But you’re not also being asked to do work for the team out of the room, like giving massages
“You motherfuckers better be glad it wasn’t a hotel in Memphis!”
No kidding!
If he’s telling the whole truth about this, I don’t think it’s a big deal by itself. The thing tho is that he’s cheap in a bunch of other ways too, so it doesn’t really save him from cheapness allegations in general.
Cheap ass owners, try signing free agents then
If you watched the video and he is telling the truth this didn’t have anything to do with the players and coach
You think players might want their massage therapists to have a room to treat them in?
Not sure what every team does but I know it’s common on the road to rent out the hotel ballrooms and set up stations to do this stuff. I’ll be honest I didn’t look into what the claim was about the massage therapist. Only was commenting on what he says in the video about the staff who complained about early check out
Yang Hansen is gonna beat his ass
Yang HandsSon
Cheap asshole
They’re cooked
The culture is gonna be wasting a reasonably solid young roster’s potential by making it impossible to bring in pieces via FA
Old school owner in the mold before the ABA merger. Those guys went extinct like the dinosaurs for a reason
Someone explain what the problem is, I haven’t heard this story
Except the as he states in this interview, they couldn’t get late checkout because the hotel said either buy another night or check out on time. So the staff and extras got out on time and players and coaches got the 2nd night. Everyone ended up in the conference room to eat and work together until the bus left. What a nothing burger the media made sound so bad. Don’t know who he pissed off but every outlet shit on him.
He probably didn’t particularly piss anyone off in the immediate term, but it makes for a great tweet which is easy to blow out of proportion and run with it.
Now the OTHER stories about his coaching search and being cheap in various other areas sound less reasonable.
Ya I agree. But now if feels like how much of the Tiago drama was overblown?
Blazers personnel had to check out of their rooms before noon in order to avoid a late check out fee. The buses would not leave for another couple of hours.
thats it? A group of people had to chill in the lobby a couple of hours while getting paid? The injustice.
The team masseuse was supposedly also using the rooms to provide coverage to the players, and had to stop.
I mean, when most all the other teams just cut a blank check, it’s not a good look for free agents.
He didnt want to pay for late checkout so the team had to wait in the lobby several hours before heading to airport. That is what I remeber
not the team. just the service staff. it’s an important distinction depending on how your morals lean.
Same lol
Blazers team was playing in Phoenix in March (which is a busy season in Phoenix)
Normally hotels grant the team late checkout, but this hotel at this time was going to charge them an entire extra night
Blazers owner agreed to pay the extra night charge for all players and coaches, but didn’t for all other staff (undisclosed who or how many)
He said they all stayed in a big banquet room they already had rented out and setup to work, with food from earlier in the day. They were there for 45 mins waiting for the bus, while all players and coaches got to remain in their rooms
New Blazers owner cheap af billionaire who wouldn’t pay for team staff to stay in hotel rooms; more importantly, also threatening to move team. Probably the worst NBA owner rn tbh
Not saying this guy is doing a great job as a new owner or anything. But this is how stories just blow out of proportion.
The non essential team staff all checked out at 11am instead of a late checkout, and continued to work as a group in the ballroom space that the hotel provided for the team
In this podcast he gets directly asked about moving the team and said “I didn’t buy the Blazers just to move the team” and he’s focused on getting the arena renovations done (which is almost locked in, but just like adam silver did, they technically have to dance around the idea of relocation during negotiations)
That’s fair but your second point is why Dundon’s being scrutinized for being cheap. Also, he’s agreed to Moda renovations and not a new arena?? Because I thought that was the real conflict, or at least from what I’ve been seeing
He’s agreed to new arena renovations, the city has agreed to new renovations mostly taxpayer funded (city owns the lease, controversial but its what we’ve got), and I think its passed the house + governor signed it in a week or two ago.
Unsure what the final hurdles are, but I believe there’s one or two more pieces and it’s done.
The deal also includes verbiage about the team staying long term iirc.
He does not have the reputation to be saying things like this without coming off like a hard-headed jackass.
more hard-headed than the mods on here
Cheap isn’t a culture
Does everyone just read a selectively edited headline and draw conclusions off of it? What he said is fine lol
Title’s disingenuous
NBA allowing this guy to buy the team tells you all you need to know about the association
Guess I’ll go against the grain here but if all this is true it doesn’t sound unreasonable at all to me. It’s interesting how society in general has (rightfully) an axe to grind with wealthy privilege but a logically sound frugal decision like this in sports is instead framed as a cheap scummy move when it would be completely normal and expected in 99.5% of the world.
I think there’s other things to point to that probably indicate a trend of savings being taken a little too far at the expense of the fan/staff experience but this, in isolation, sounds fine to me.
Feel like he’s trying to tank the team to move them with this attitude.
how was this goober allowed to buy a nba franchise lmao
How did this guy get the green light to buy a team?
He has a lot of money
Sorry Blazers fans, you’ve got an even worse owner than Gayle Benson.
No. No one is worse than Gayle.
lol what r u on
You could give him a pass for the late checkout thing if his explanation is actually true but it doesn’t explain the Blazers being the only team to have two-way players not traveling with the team or canceling fan T-shirts during the playoffs.
He talked about that too. With the two-way players he said that hockey teams don’t bring extra players because it’s a distraction but he’s learning that the NBA lives with distractions. He sounded like he’s willing to learn about the NBA but you’d think that bringing along three guys who played on your team and helped them get to the playoffs would be a no-brainer.
He also said that the towels weren’t a financial decision, it was because in hockey they always use towels and you get a cool environment with everyone waving the towels but he got to the game and no one was waving them.
If Tom Dundon were a smart businessman, he would negotiate a corporate deal w/ the hotel/chain they stay at. Dude just sounds like another idiot who failed upward.
Even regular loyalty members get free late checkout, and somehow the blazers can’t even swing it.
Edit: blazers PR in here downvoting
If I’m on that roster I pray I’m good enough and my agent is powerfully enough to get me tf outta there
Lol, all you gotta do is have your agent ask for a 5% bump on the next contract. They’ll ship you out for a couple of vet minimums in no time.
him also doing early checkout, being with the staff, providing them lunch seems like a win-win to me.
however, looking at finances that closely for late checkout fees and slashing that seems insane and a sign of worse things to come
the culture where everyone is miserable and hates their boss because he’s a piece of shit
why’d you even buy them
dipshit
the culture of making other people suffer while you fly first class everywhere?
A billionaire being cheap to pretend he wants to establish some sort of hustle culture is honestly kind of gross. I feel bad for Blazers fans.
People in here defending him like “oh it makes sense” seem to ignore all the other reports of him being a dickhead like lowballing coaches while they’re in the playoffs, being too cheap to buy shirts for 1 game in the playoffs (their first in 5 years), and not paying for actual rostered players to go games.
in a vacuum, one decision like this is maybe forgivable or taken out of context except that he’s already demonstrated in a very short time what type of operation he’s running.
he paid 4B for the team and instead of getting people excited about the future of the organization, he’s thrown a giant wet blanket on the whole city.
so no, he’s not going to get a pass for this or any of the other miserly things he does to pinch pennies. fucking drag him and every other CEO, president or owner like him in every walk of life.
I’m sure the Blazer players are looking forward to getting bugged for autographs at the Holiday Inn Express breakfast buffet…
that’s why CJ McCollum put that hotel requirement in the CBA
lol the fact that a pro sports owner is talking about how “we couldn’t find tickets for a hotel, guess phoenix is popular in march”
HOW WAS THIS NOT ALREADY PLANNED LIKE A YEAR IN ADVANCE
this is like basic pro sports franchise stuff.
Dude must be UNBELIEVABLY CHEAP
Like good lord dude this is just penny pinching because you’re addicted at this point. Good for him he made his money but that doesn’t mean he needs to steer his entire organization that way lmao
Because he just bought the team
That’s a really bad excuse.
It’s not like the entire organization gets fired or leaves when the team gets purchased by a new owner lol
They’re still there. He’s the one making these kinds of decisions, clearly
Why u blaming the owner on mismanagement of hotel planning then. It obviously is an issue from the people who manage that part of the team when he wasn’t the owner
What a loser
This comment section is like a bunch of people who preemptively shit on this guy and are now to deep to acknowledge that, at least the way it is described here, is not a big deal at all. So they double down the hate.
Every single company in the world would do this exact same thing
Doesn’t really sounds that bad tbh its the two way players not travelling that probably needs to be explained lol
What culture LMAO the closest thing to culture in Blazers history is JAILBLAZERS. What the fuck you talking about lol
What an idiot. Won’t even spend money on a dermatologist. Good luck! Portland deserves better.
Ah yes.. the billionaires who want people to pay them to be allowed to work culture.
Now defend your fucking insane head coach choices, and threatening to relocate a great club.
What does your bedroom look like, Tom?
Hurricanes 8-0 in the playoffs btw
I really feel for Blazers fans.
Welcome to purgatory.
Honest question, what culture is he talking about? Thriftiness?
If only Adam Silver cared more about good basketball than $$$, wouldn’t have these fuckin owners.
I feel bad for Blazers fans. They are a good franchise and don’t deserve this. This and the whole Moda Centre bs does make me worried if NBA basketball is long for Portland.
This is perfectly reasonable.
Why didn’t you pay for the room and then create your fucken culture?
He put fraud on his plate
He’s trying to move them to Seattle
This just isn’t bad at all, who cares