He wants to move them. He’s just another Clay Bennett. I hope my city doesn’t give that poor ass billionaire a single  fucking cent.

Portland also doesn’t have as many competing teams (no NFL/MLB/NHL), so their fans have really rallied around what they do have.

The stupid thing is, there’s no shortage of buyers if an NBA team went up for sale. Silver shouldn’t need to put up with bullshit owners.

Same with the Portland Timbers. That city is passionate about its sports.

Getting the Sonics back just to lose the Blazers would be tragic

Yep. Fk this owner. The NBA should take back the team, somehow.

And have every email and text subject to public records? Lol

It’s simple, if you want the public to pay for 50% of the stadium, they get 50% of ownership. Requests would end immediately.

How would that work for team decisions? Trades by popular vote?

Is there anything in the NBA bylaws that doesn’t allow them to bid on a team? Pay the billions and your city can buy a team.

The Democratic People’s Basketball Republic

The Trailblazers sold it to the city for 1$ two years ago so they wouldn’t have to pay 1.2 million a year in property tax, and so that the city would be on the hook for future renovations.

The current lease gives the city 0\( in naming rights, 0\) in rent, 0\( share for revenue for non-Trail Blazers events, 0\) in concessions, and the 6% sales tax on tickets and parking revenue the city does collect has to be used on arena features the trailblazers decide on. It’s a lease where the city can not legally make any money, they can only lose money.

It’s a grift.

Only as of August 2024

The Trailblazers sold it to the city for 1$ two years ago so they wouldn’t have to pay 1.2 million a year in property tax, and so that the city would be on the hook for future renovations.

The current lease gives the city 0\( in naming rights, 0\) in rent, 0\( share for revenue for non-Trail Blazers events, 0\) in concessions, and the 6% sales tax on tickets and parking revenue the city does collect has to be used on arena features the trailblazers decide on. It’s a lease where the city can not legally make any money, they can only lose money.

It’s a grift.

He’s the same clown that put his wife and kids names on the Stanley Cup instead of an equipment manager who’s been with the hockey franchise for decades

He couldn’t afford to buy the team, not even close, he had to pool together his money with a bunch of other rich assholes and these leeches are now trying to steal taxpayer money and/or the team from the city.

These are not the NBA owners of 20 yeats ago, though. The old guys who had bought up NBA teams in the 1980s to keep them in business where they were out of civic duty are gone. The new American billionaire class now own the NBA, and they have absolutely no shame because not only do they not need to show any kind of morality, but because showing any shame or morality now would actually scare the markets and shareholders. If another venal billionaire scumbag wants to screw over some regular chumps to make a few more dollars, the other billionaires will be right there cheering him on.

The other thing is that the public sentiment is more or less willing to support 100% funding the renovations because the city owns the stadium and a vast majority are deferred maintenance. The sticking point seems to be that Dundon wants the city to fund the renovations while he gets complete control of what they are with no oversight from the city. The state and county offered a vast majority of the funds and basically relied the city to do due diligence before giving final approval, and everyone froze when the city started to try and define what the renovations would be because the city doesn’t want to spend \(600 million, then have to spend another \)250 million on maintenance items within 5 years. The city also doesn’t want to spend \(600 million and be on the hook for \)150 million is cost overruns if Dundon’s remodel plan goes over budget.

FWIW I don’t think Bennett ever intended to keep the Sonics in Seattle.

It was just posturing so he could claim to have “tried”.

As a Thunder fan, Bennett was never keeping the Sonics in Seattle

Bennett played hardball over the arena issue in Seattle and has had a very successful franchise in OKC.

Clay Bennett never for a second considered keeping the team in Seattle .

I don’t follow the Hurricanes closely but the NHL has a hard salary cap and floor. Probably easier to run your team Moneyball style. It also helps when you find a great coach that apparently took less money so the rest of staff could get paid better.

NHL fans have been bagging him for putting his children on the cup and leaving off longtime staff members

The Maloof dork brothers tried this exact same approach and were forced to sell the team. The only people, outside of Trump, able to bankrupt a casino.

The Nuggets and Pacers are cheap and have been successful.

Because, like our situation when the Kings nearly relocated, he is not arguing in good faith. He is a piece of shit.

He wants to move. I don’t understand how people don’t see this.

It seems like Dundon might be trying to manufacture a contentious situation. The city called their bluff with the term sheet and now they are whining about that. They are asking for $600M in public money (most of it has been approved) but won’t share what their plans for the renovations are.

Most venture capitalism move 

Please, sub-prime

People always act like the Twin Cities are some tiny town. It’s one of the larger metro areas in the League!

Memphis, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Utah, and Indianapolis are the 5 smallest markets.

Also California has around 9 times Oregon’s population. The Bay Area and LA are both way bigger than the entire state of Oregon (even if you split LA in half), and even the Sacramento metro is bigger than the Portland metro

Louisiana is also bigger than Oregon

None of that means Portland should lose their team though

It’s funny that people still don’t realize that Silver is just a glorified press secretary for the owners.

Owners will allow it to happen because it will be a nice threat to use next time they’re looking for public money.

Hell, just start watching Aussie Rules. Far more sick mullets than the NBL.

Zero chance Hornets, Grizzlies, and Magic let the first 3 happen. KC and STL are not upgrades over Portland.

No way bro really just said Tampa lmao. Nashville literally can’t happen because of Memphis’ media deals too. And KC AND stl won’t get teams. And KC won’t subsidize an arena.

Not gonna make any friends saying this but St Louis is such a ghost town and doesn’t peg me as a basketball town outside of their pickup scene

So nothing but a lateral move or a step down

STL won’t get an NBA team. We already have the Blues and I don’t see us forking over any public dollars to court a team.

PK offered about half of what it sold for. It wasn’t a serious offer.

I fucken hate our new owner, the issue is the city owns the stadium. We’re gonna have to upkeep it anyways if we don’t want to tear it down, then what do we do with the Fire? All the concerts?

I’m just like… Moda is a nice place. I can’t see a thing wrong with it and I e been in stadiums all over the country. To demand changes because you bought one of the teams that plays there is a huge fuck you to everyone.

I can’t stress about this every day. I’ll stress out about this in 2030 or something. If a vote comes to update Moda, and it’s reasonable, I’m saying yes. Moda is important to the city.

It’s the their market so they could block it

San Diego doesn’t have a quality arena and California is just as unwilling to build free shit for billionaires as Oregon is.

The best play would be an area with a new-ish or nice arena already there and ready to move in. Tampa, Raleigh, Nashville, KC, St. Louis, maybe Louisville.

Seattle and Vegas have better odds than San Diego

converting lakers fans is not going to happen. the fan base will take a decades to be built up

San Diego doesn’t have an arena and isn’t going to publicly fund one for an NBA team. I’m also not sure the Lakers and Clippers would allow it. They stopped the Kings from moving to Anaheim a decade ago.

My guess is he and his partners have already baked the relocation fees into the price they paid for the team. He hasn’t done one thing to endear himself to the city, it’s obvious Portland has never been in the long term plans.

Bullshit. Stern saved the Kings.