[Highkin] Talked to one person who survived the (Blazers) cuts today who said it feels like they just looked at a spreadsheet of salaries and cut the highest ones without any regard for what anyone does and how important they are.
we are beyond cooked
I’m sorry man, you guys don’t deserve such a horrible owner.
Paul Allen was such a legend, it’s so sad. As a Blazers/Seahawks fan, I’m so damn scared for the sale of the Seahawks
And his business cards were immaculate. That subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. It even has a watermark.
what they make the business cards out of, chuck
STICKY NOTES, SHAQ
TRY GETTING A RESERVATION AT DORSIA NOW YOU STUPID FREAKING BAD MAN
GREAT sea urchin ceviche
Really hoping Jodi Allen is somehow angling to keep the Seahawks with the sale price/lack of interest that’s been rumored.
The lack of interest is exaggerated as there aren’t many people who can afford them. They are still expected to be the most expensive team ever sold. I believe there are 2 groups already publicly wanting to buy the hawks
Not really up on my NFL — why would the Seahawks be the most expensive team ever sold? Is it just the scarcity of NFL teams for sale, or is the twelfth man especially desirable, or something else?
Edit: Nvm, it’s probably the Super Bowl win. I am dum.
Probably another combo of things but in general NFL teams arent sold very often so when one does get sold, valuations are usually way higher than when the last sale happened too. Washington was 3 years ago for 6 billion.
It’s the Super Bowl, secure stadium and the fact that it’s been a few years since the last public sale of a team.
Basically any time a franchise is sold in the NFL it breaks the record for highest sale price, and that number is inevitably the starting price point for the next franchise that comes available. Bidding wars push it from there. It’s getting so bad the NFL has had to change rules on what constitutes a majority stakeholder, and has semi-recently added in the ability for ownership groups to buy teams. We’re not far from private equity firms/entire countries being the only thing that can afford to own a team.
e: just read that there was, for a time, something in the will mandating 10% of proceeds going directly to the state of Washington upon the sale. That mandate recently expired. It may explain the timing of the sale more than the SB win tbh.
Could be wrong but think it was passed down to her after Paul’s passing so that she would eventually sell it. It was never supposed to be Jodi’s team until she dies
Yeah she’s mandated by his will to sell the assets off. She delayed putting both teams up for sale for some time already, it can’t be an indefinite thing.
It feels like the NFL vets its potential owners much better than the NBA does
They do, and they have more stringent ownership requirements
People saying I’ve been dooming about the Seahawks sale cause I’m worried about us getting a shitty owner. Then I look across at the Trailblazers and see how that been going for them….
Monkey paw moment for their fan base who wanted Jody Allen to sell for awhile now.
The grass isn’t always greener.
That wasn’t about a want. She was required to do so by her brother’s will.
Sure to a degree but I definitely saw posts for years from Blazers fans wanting her out.
Jody Allen was a below average owner. She never spoke publicly or did any media appearances and gave long leashes to people who didn’t deserve them (Neil Olshey and Billups).
Most Blazer fans wanted Jody gone because she was in the 20-25 range in terms of NBA owners due to not knowing how to run a team like your typical team owner.
Dundon, on the other hand, is an actively terrible owner. He looks like he might be 30. By a wide margin.
I mean some of it was just wanting to rip off the band aid and get the inevitable over with. At least I got to see them win a championship again before they slip into a potential era of darkness.
Nah can’t you see now you’re now even more efficient with all that waste and fraud gone!! Department of Blazers Efficiency or something
This is what half our sub is saying, verbatim and unironically.
What a weird perspective. It’s not like it’s the fans’ money and it’s pretty clear that savings isn’t going into the roster.
The savings can’t really go into the roster, which makes this so transparently just a way for the owner to keep his money. And of course, the staff that was cut probably doesn’t even add up to the minimum salary for a rookie.
Not printing playoff t-shirts was the canary in the coal mine lmao. Everyone ignored it but it was a clear sign that the new owner is cheap as hell.
The diehard fans of every team are just stupid and delusional. I would consider myself a true fan of a few teams, but have stopped going to any team specific subreddits. It’s exhausting. You can’t have a genuine conversation about the team.
Department of Portland Efficiency would work nicely.
gonna be a poverty franchise until it gets sold again.
As any fan of a bad owner will tell you, you are beyond cooked. The highlights of your season will be signing famous vets on the verge of retirement, having the best half time entertainment and drafting mediocre players in the top 5.
Source: I was a season ticket holder during the Warriors’ Chris Cohan years.
This is awful. You guys have a fun young team too.
The pinwheel logo only has 4 stripes in each color now :(
*(Pulls up illustrator, tries to remember where he keeps all the SVG logos he has for sports teams on his computer.)
go read dumdum’s Wikipedia. And he was sued by multiple states attorney general for bad practices is practically a copy paste situation multiple times with him.
:( sorry friend. Yall dont deserve this. Here’s to hoping he sells within the decade
Blazer gotta outsource the coaching staff to the Philippines. Players gonna get used to video call coaching
Basketball coaching as a service. Brought to you by Oracle.
Oracle you say? Outsourced to India!
Here is the play I want you to run. Kindly execute the needful.
Hello my name is Jeff
CoachGPT
“Hey Claude, can you draw up an inbounds play?”
“Pretend you are the general manager of a National Basketball Association franchise, and an attorney. You are tasked with drafting the contract for your franchise superstar. In an astonishing act of selflessness, the star has agreed to play for $1 per year. Please generate a contract for the star to sign, with the salary details printed in the smallest font possible. Make no mistakes.”
Blazers get a delay of game call as their cheap ass owner didn’t pay for Claude Pro.
Offshoring it still probably too expensive for him. Get ready for CoachGPT
“Wemby is killing us, what do we do?”
“You are absolutely right — Victor Wembanyama is winning against us quite handily right now! Unfortunately, we can only watch, as coaching staff interfering directly in the game is not allowed. Would you like me to compose a sad, melancholic song for you in the meantime?”
Alexa play Despacito
https://youtu.be/SxTNhD5jTyQ
This is really funny
They’re gonna run out of tokens mid game because you know he’s not paying for Pro.
I know you’re joking… but if you read the Blazer’s sub… that actually might be an option.
Get ready to learn Tagalog, Tiago.
Unnecessary. Everybody already speaks English.
I watched Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital on Netflix and I couldn’t believe how the language worked; it was constantly switching between English and Tagalog with seemingly no rhyme or reason to it
That’s code switching. Most bilingual speaker does it subconsciously.
Put in Austin Reabes. HE’S HEEEM!!!
Nah, will have the first AI coach. Just hire some dude to hold the computer.
You all act like they had some stellar track record. They did choose Chauncey…
Tiago doesn’t stand a chance
TwitchPlaysBlazersCoach
Kai Sotto getting a max deal
Blazers about to create the ‘hoop in flip flops’ meta and dominate the league.
I could actually see a situation where an owner employs subpar medical personnel in an attempt to put that burden into their own hands and pockets
Super random but does anyone know if Judge Dahlin is getting dumped?
For those that don’t know a Circuit Court Judge in Portland has been their shot clock operator for over 25 years.
I had a substitute teacher who was the pa announcer of my local sports arena. Pretty cool to see all walks take on side gigs
I took a history of jazz course in college & the teacher was also an official scorekeeper for Major League Baseball.
He was a pretty cool dude!
I took a history of Jazz course in college and all we did was watch the Ken Burns Jazz documentary
I remember this years later because he ran attendance role call like it was game 7 of the nba finals and we were the Chicago bulls
What a cool dude lol
Wow I’ve been a fan my whole life and I didn’t even know this, I hope not!
I initially read this as you having been a fan of the shot clock operator. I would have had a few questions
I like the idea of the judge being fired & going on a revenge mission against a billionaire.
Sounds like the premise for a streaming comedy miniseries.
In that case he’s probably doing it for free?
Maybe they’ll try and fill all of their other positions with volunteers.
Side tangent but in hockey the Toronto maple leafs were recently revealed to charge families $1000 for their kid to wave a flag on ice at games
Just straight robbery
Eh, only extremely rich privileged ppl can do it so I’m not too upset
From the blue sky thread, seemed like they just went down the spreadsheet and cut the top expensive salaries. I assume a shot clock operator would be spared in that case.
Hell yeah, classic min/max business mentality. Everywhere I’ve ever worked that treats people like this is out of business.
Yeahhh nba teams aren’t exactly normal businesses. He has already made it clear if fans and local government aren’t happy he will just relocate us. And wherever they go will just be happy to have a team. It’s effectively impossible for an nba team to go under
Yeah man, I’m not saying the blazers are gonna close shop. It’s just that short-sighted, major cost cutting usually results in long-term detriment to the company.
It’s so funny to read two people’s conversation and judge it.
Your initial comment implied exactly this. Not that the Blazers would go out of business but if there were a way to bankrupt an NBA which should essentially be impossible this would be a great starting step to doing so.
But the person responding to you clearly is very precise in their language they use and ran with that angle in their reply.
I think NBA teams overhead vary wildly by organization but its correlation with team success is mixed at best. Ballmer is probably spending way more than everyone else and the clippers are, well, the clipper
Success is not only winning a chip man. Clips have had amazing success every year with Steve.
NBA revenue is unreal. You can do all bad business decisions and even legal trouble and still come with profit. Look at Donald Sterling.
An owner can’t just move a team whenever or wherever they want
It’s such a phenomenally stupid idea for a major sports team, especially an NBA team. The talent pool is so scarce that the players have a ton of leverage. It might work if players never ever talked to each other about their experiences playing for other teams or if free agency didn’t exist, but that’s not the case.
They’re gonna spend way more money overpaying vets to come play there than they would spend on having a good front office.
Just gonna link that player survey article to support your point as well:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7270363/2026/05/18/giannis-anonymous-player-poll-2026/?unlocked_article_code=1.jVA.2iCF.GrCZMdRzU4lu&source=athletic_user_shared_gift_article_copylink&smid=url-share-ta
“What do the smartest teams spend money on beyond player contracts” and an overwhelming 85.9% (128 out of 149 voters) put “Player comfort: Staff, facilities, etc.” as the top option. Players definitely notice and talk about these things and I just feel bad for Blazer fans man.
He is just keeping the costs low so when he sells 10+ years down the line for 3 times what he spent he’ll look like a genius to the other business psychos. Sure it’ll leave the Blazers as a worn out husk and their fans completely apathetic but you need to remember the billionaire’s feelings are most important.
He made his money building one of the largest sub prime auto lenders in the country.
That should be a sort of telling sign of how he looks at people.
RIP Blazers fans lol.
That happens at a lot of companies. Replace the more experienced (and more expensive) employees with cheaper options.
To who’s benefit?
In this case, the owner, who saves money. In the corporate world, it’s the executives and shareholders.
My issue is that the long term stability is destroyed. Key holders to knowledge are now gone. The bottom line looks better at the expense of culture, knowledge and a good product.
Sure but that little line in the stock exchange must go up forever
That’s the problem with cheap ownership. They can get away with it because the TV license fees will keep rolling in and that’s where the real money is.
Basically the only way to lose money owning an NBA team right now is if you go deep into the repeater tax, which most owners have shown an unwillingness to do if they’re not outright avoiding it.
Unfortunately it never stopped anyone since the board just looks at short term benefits and gains; the people that survive the layoffs are the ones to suffer.
Both suffer, I guess one group still keeps their paychecks though
Pretty obvious this is a clear house, culture shift situation even before today.
It’s absurd to me that these corporate types never think of protecting the quality of the product as part of protecting their bottom line.
Does it really matter that much when thousands will still happily fork over money to them?
The executives and shareholders are the owners…
A-hole executives get bonuses for saving money, never mind that it often ends up being a net loss for the company
For about a month, the shareholders.
Short term profits before the knowledge gap causes problems then the CEO moves on to the next company to destroy it
They do it and then gradually figure out person x did a hell of a lot more than they thought and they end up screwed.
Then they have an all hands meeting where they try to inspire the middle and lower ranks to work harder and emphasize this company is set to grow and needs the young and hungry with innovative ideas (AI).
This was exactly what happened at my company. Laid off experienced people without fully understanding their role, left all the teams to figure out a plan, and then schedule an all hands to tell everyone how difficult this time is for the organization. And replace them with incompetent consultants who make their own hours.
Mine too. Dead on. Im sure there are thousands with the same experience. I forgot to add the consulting firm, like you said, that comes in, eats an 1⁄8 of the budget and runs their dumb evals and accessments, only to implement the changes everyone knew should have happened a decade ago but upper didn’t want to cut into their bonuses.
In some cases they aren’t replaced at all. I worked somewhere that was bought out by private equity and many people were laid off because they were deemed “redundant”(meaning they shared job titles with another person) as part of downsizing
I remember Circuit City did this, got a nice stock boost.
Problem was they lost money on TVs but made it up on Extended Warranties for every 10 TVs or whatever.
People will buy electronics from teenagers, but not bull unless you have an experienced adult salesman.
You would think executives would know their own business model but they probably got stock options readjusted for guaranteed profits regardless
They about to ask their coach to be paid in exposure and networking opportunities.
X deals 😂
You get two drink tickets for every game coached.
I mean if they don’t bring back Spitter that’s essentially his compensation for the hear lol
Gotta lay off the players too. The rule says you only need 5 guys on the floor, everyone else is redundant. If you get rid of the bench you can sell more front row seats it’s a win-win
Players association saw this one coming.
Players association hates this one weird trick
Dame about to get traded for cash considerations
That is Jerry Reinsdorf’s corner. No way he voted for this fucker if he knew he was gunning for his favorite contract.
Increase revenue while cutting expenses you say?!
Hey, Magic ownership moving up the rankings!
I do not like the DeVos family.
All my homies hate the DeVos family
I question the moral decency of anyone who doesn’t hate the DeVos family.
I don’t question it. I know they lack moral decency. One giant red flag.
Hey our basketball CEO just got inducted into the magic hall of fame!
Participation Trophy Ass HOF
At least the Bulls are lazy cheap. Portland is becoming weaponized cheap.
What a complete ass of an owner.
All the Denver teams are basically Walmart employees, the only part time Wally World employees that get benefits
this is about the Blazers lol
How did they get an owner cheaper than our’s? HOW?
Our war criminal owner is not looking too shabby (as far as this one exact thing goes)
He was smart and decided to just stfu and let it go away with the news cycle.
It’s so sad too because Paul Allen, from my understanding, had no problem spending $$$ to give his team everything they needed. Correct me if I’m wrong, Blazers fans. I can’t imagine the whiplash they must be feeling as fans.
Support staff cost nothing in comparison to the money earned in a stadium built by tax dollars and the cost of any NBA player. They are also the only institutional knowledge so getting rid of them means you are losing 20+ years of knowledge on how the NBA works, how to deal with weird problems, etc. Whatever newbie replaces them will have to relearn these pieces of institutional knowledge, perhaps at the cost of a star player with a difficult injury. Good luck with that, in 10 years the Blazers staff will be experienced enough to handle a spiral fracture, when a 30 year vet in that job has seen multiple.
Other NBA teams ought to find the persons fired and hire them. They instantly come with knowledge on how the NBA works, how to handle X/Y/Z scenarios, and you know they are always going to do a good job if it means the Blazers lose, so if you are in division, that’s nothing spent vs gained.
It’s just dumb business masquerading as good business. This is how you build an environment no one wants to work in and no one wants to live in. Good business is building a world where your workers and consumers want to live, that’s what produces revenue, and revenue +++ is good business. People good in business fight for their employees simply because without them they have nothing. Capital buys shit, workers produce shit. A lambo decreases in value the second you drive it, a worker who you can buy for that same amount of money will produce many lambos per year.
Sad reality is this cunt can keep doing shit like this and it won’t matter because the NBA valuation increases higher than most investments. You want to make this person feel pain? Stop buying shit they own.
“What if Elon Musk owned an NBA team?”
Please don’t give him any ideas.
Elon would never make an investment that requires him to interact with black people every day.
Apartheid mentality
It really sounds like that’s already where he got his ideas.
He could buy the entire league if he wanted to. Don’t suggest this to him btw
nah, there’s plenty of owners who’d never sell or agree to sell to him.
they tolerate but talk about Balmer behind his back already.
Elon would be hilarious though, cause he’d show up and be “involved”, but not like Jim Irsay’s daughter is now, he’d be hiring Mac McClung to teach guys how to dunk better in games or some stupid BS.
So here’s hoping he buys the Miami heat. Just for the memes.
Spo about to be replaced with Grok
he’s going to rename it to bangbros arena like 5 years after the joke was funny, as usual
He owns the hurricanes in the NHL who are very well run but it’s almost certainly because they have a great coach who takes hometowns discounts to coach there. I’d unfortunately bet the Blazers goes a lot worse.
I’ve said this before. He thinks he knows better than everyone else because he did well in hockey. NBA is a league that humbles cocky owners very quickly and very harshly.
Ishbia lmao
At least ishbia is spending though and seems to actually enjoy having the team.
We can all laugh at the beal decision but at lest hes treating owning a sports team like the dream it is.
Portland owner seems to want to cut, cut, cut just for a bottom line
I would absolutely love Ishbia instead of this asshole. No, the big 3 experiment didn’t work out (which I think is way more on Beal and his awful contract than KD) but I thought the vision was totally fair on paper and the dude clearly actually loves the Suns where Dundon seems to be going out of his way to tell us he either doesn’t give even a slight shit about the fans or actively dislikes us. Ishbia also made a value menu at the stadium for Suns fans with minimal extra cash which was a pretty cool move for a billionaire.
Tom has not even done the most perfunctory damage control, it’s just been constant bad headlines and chaos since he showed up. Right as the team is starting to feel relevant again after years of absolutely horrible tanking. Shit sucks
Yea, Ishbia is running the team like how a passionate NBA fan would run the team when he first got it. Hes definitely dialed it back and let the FO handle more of it. This guy runs it like a corporate business.
The only reason he did well in hockey is Rod doesn’t want to coach anywhere else
Yeah it sucks now but this is going to be really funny in like 6 months
They also have the best analytics GM in Carolina as well in Eric Tulsky and Brind’Amour took the pay cut to get his assistant coaches more money.
The Hurricanes gm and especially coach are criminally underpaid but the coach is a franchise legend who only wants to coach there.
Billionaires making cuts to save a penny is sad
Dude could afford to increase the budget by $20 million for the next 25 years and still not get into any real debt
These types of owners are the worst
That’s how billionaires become billionaires. They’re ruthless selfish cutthroat assholes. It’s not because they worked harder than anyone else. It’s because they knew how to exploit their workers better than others.
It’s a sickness. There’s a strong correlation with business level executives and sociopathy. They don’t view humans like most of us do.
Aka 98 percent of companies
Blazers fans have been begging for a new owner for years too, this sucks man. Unfortunately you can’t control the owner.
Sounds like DOGE did the cuts…
Sounds like a guy who made his money in the subprime mortgage business. Hey Dundon, if you’re reading this you aren’t smart, you just had the system and means to take advantage of desperate people at one of their lowest points. Your money is not a reflection of your competence
DOGE franchise.
I follow the NHL way closer than the NBA these days, so it’s pretty amusing to see Dundon do his thing. Sorry Blazers fans. Dude is a certified piece of shit.
Anyone that has ever been apart of a company that changed ownership/bought out by a bigger corporation knows this feeling all too well
Yup! And it’s bonkers to me that it’d be done to a sports team. I’m not sure I’d be willing to play for that guy if my body is on the line and he’s hiring temu staff.
Tom Dundon: just replace them all with AI
Unpaid intern: okay!
*a confused Allen Iverson is now president of the Blazers*
Somehow, Doc Rivers returned.
Why the fuck would you buy an NBA team if you don’t plan to actually spend and get a competitive advantage. Millions of better ways to make money, you’re literally just paying for the ability to ruin people’s lives if you’re gonna actively do shit like this and be a slum-lord owner.
1 is the owner’s special: fresh off the loans and transactions clearing is the need to cut costs show they are making place to promote their own people from other places where an NBA jobs is a level up.
Welcome to the newly revamped lottery Portland
Welcome? We’ve been a lottery team last five years. We just grinded up the play in games this year.
As a kings fan I love this, might not have the worst owner in the conference anymore! Whoot!
At least Vivek gives a shit. This guy is basically just treating the team as an investment that will continue to accrue value regardless of the quality of the product. Unfortunately, he’s probably right.
Blazers gonna bring back the coach/gm since you cut a position that way
Player/coach/gm you mean. You have to have a minimum player salary, so just double up on their jobs!
This is truly the strongest indictment of Adam Silver’s leadership, not the officiating.
How is it the Blazer’s worst player is the owner? Gotta be rough.
Yep just how it is these days. I’m sure they’re thinking how can AI help and why are people being paid highly? Can younger less paid people with AI do about 80% of work? If so, fire them.
They’re gonna have a single ipad with chatgpt free account for coach
Wow, never thought I’d see vulture capitalism applied to an NBA franchise. Blazers are gonna be perpetual cellar dwellers if they don’t change owners.
Well at least y’all can start rooting for the Sonics soon
i’d sooner give up on the nba than root for seattle sports
Normally, new ownership isn’t this transparent with them desecrating the team they acquired
I, for one, am SHOCKED that a man who made his fortune in subprime auto lending is conducting himself in such a manner. Who could have predicted such a disastrous outcome in so little time?
Blazers fans, get ready for all your 2nd round picks to be traded for “cash considerations”
Sooner or later we will all read at any random game in the official team’s sheet:
DNP: Salary Cap Reasons
You read it here before.
I’ve made the comparison a lot lately but this is actually a lot worse than Bengals-level cheapskatery lmao
The contrast between this and then Gilbert sending 25 buses full of fans to Detroit for game 7 is crazy
This is a classic tale of an old rich guy who’s never heard no his entire life. Hes gonna run the blazers like a fortune 500 company or some shit and look at everybody as expendable to maximize profit. The franchise is gonna run into the ground until he realizes thats not how it works with sports teams. They made the playoffs and did fairly well against a team in the conference finals, yet he’s blowing it up. Truly mind boggling
Garbage human, garbage owner, garbage thing to do.
“Claude draw up a play to counter Wemby, make no mistakes”
The classic hedge fund/PE firm model bro. Happened at wife’s company, three of my old companies. Whenever these ppl need to show profit, they let go of the most expensive people and say “look at how profitable we are” and now everyone pick up the slack. “But now I’m doing more work can I get a raise?” “No we’re not profitable” 🫠
ah yes, hit em with the DOGE move
It’s like private equity in healthcare or DOGE
Is this guy relatively broke or something?
They got doge’d
Honest question, does the new owner want to move the team? This seems like purposeful degrading of the product to induce a move.
Lakers are hiring a bunch of staff rn. Give us some of the good employees
We’ll also buy all your draft picks new cheap owner
at least they get to build their team around an IDF war criminal foul merchant