They care more about maximizing immediate profits rather than building long-term sustainable success.

Portland shouldn’t be worried about their team leaving. The NBA needs to make sure of that. Can’t get another Supersonics situation.

These billionaires wouldn’t like being told what they can and can’t do with their franchises, so they won’t get in the way when Dundon wants to move out of P{ortland, regardless of how shitty that would be for the city and NBA fans in general.

The faster people wake up and realize just how horrible billionaires are the better. I don’t care who they are. You have taken advantage of hundreds of thousands or even millionas of people along they way. 

Private equity billionaires don’t care. *

Problem is that in disputes over arenas the city has no leverage. You either pay what the owner wants which sucks or you lose the team which sucks.

Want me to save you some time?

Narrator: “the fans found out…”

The commissioner who said he idolizes Henry Kissinger and that fans can watch the highlights in response to concerns games are too expensive to watch?

Adam Silver is undoubtedly the worst commissioner in American sports, is completely sold out on every level, and while every commissioner ultimately works for the owners, Silver continues to look for ways to fuck over the fans.

I think this is the kind of thing Silver does care about. The primary threat facing the league is getting LIV Golf’d. Having strong, storied franchises and rich ass owners (see: Ballmer) is the main defense against that.

Adam Silver has nothing to do with this. This is the purview of the other owners, and they’ve always just been billionaire playthings, Stern or Silver.

you that silver works for the billionaires and not the other way around, right?

I wouldn’t hold your breath for the other 29 owners to do anything, all it would take is one good PowerPoint slide with a graph that says they’ll make more money by moving the team to Fairbanks and they’ll all be on board.

Portland is not some tiny place I don’t get why people keep acting like us having sports teams is absurd. We have more people in our metro area than:

Sacramento. Pittsburgh. Las Vegas. Cincinnati. Kansas City. Indianapolis. Nashville. Cleveland. Jacksonville. Raleigh. Milwaukie. Oklahoma City. Memphis. Salt Lake City. Buffalo.

All these cities have pro sports teams. Many of these cities have more than one pro sport team. We are a large market that the NBA currently has exclusive access to major pro sports wise. They’d just be stupid to move the Blazers. It’s not a smart business move. We provide them more value than a third of their other teams despite the fact that the team has been mediocre at best for decades.

I dont think the billionaire owners are generally in favor of voting for a precedent that would limit their ability to do whatever they fuck they want.

I refuse to believe that Seattle is getting a team again until either a) Silver is dead (since the Owners won’t get him out of office) or b) they’re literally playing their first game.

Everything Adam Silver says is two-faced. Vegas getting a team is guaranteed, probably even the Blazers. That’s probably his whole plan.

Then after that he’ll go “hmm we can’t add a team to Seattle, it needs to be an Eastern conference team blah” and then fuckin’ Baltimore gets a team.

The other 29 owners in fact are thinking that if the move happens it’s great leverage for the next billions of giveaways or else “we will be forced to move” and the threat is more real.

If you have a billion dollars accountability does not exist for you. If this clown wants to move them to another city he will do it. None of those owners wants to set the standard that other owners can dictate their behavior.

The other owners don’t want to set the precedent that the owners can get together and stop a team from moving. It removes their leverage to hold local governments hostage to force taxpayers to pay for billionaire vanity projects (new stadiums and renovations)

Expansion fees are 5-8 billion, which is split with the owners.

They aren’t going to move a team to Vegas and lose out on \(166,000,000 to \)266,000,000 of free money.

They will expand and they will do it with two teams and the owners will all pocket hundreds of millions per expansion team.

Doesn’t mean Portland won’t move, but Portland moving won’t stop expansion.

Vegas is such a soulless shell of a city too. So many sports franchises already.

Honestly, maybe I’m in the minority but I think there’s more than enough depth of talent in the league to warrant expansion

So many guys sitting at the back of a rotation somewhere who could shine in larger roles. Even plenty of bad teams have a roster full of decent-quality guys, but are just lacking top-end talent (or coaching/chemistry etc).

All the sentiment I’ve seen online is that this is an NBA/new owner problem.

The fine folks of Portland have supported this team well for decades. They don’t deserve to lose their team

It’s an American sports problem.

In the last ~100 years of English soccer, this has happened (as far as I know) once, in 2003, when Wimbledon FC was moved by the owners and became MK Dons. And 20+ years later, people still hate and trash talk MK Dons about it like they still have the stink on them.

Because English soccer is an open system, the fans of Wimbledon started their own team that climbed up the English league system and frequently does better than MK Dons.

It’s a US sports model problem TBH

I’ll tell you this: the owners who support salary caps in the name of competitive balance had better not be the same owners who are willing to let teams be relocated for a few extra billion dollars.

You may be on to something. I’m starting to believe they are bad aliens that are here disguised as people to ruin what real people worked so hard for. We never see this billionaires in public like at a Wienerschnitzel ordering a chili dog or at a GAP store looking for overalls.

1. 20 fucking years. At that point it’s enough you that it’s emotionally difficult to do

Some were surprised Paul Allen didn’t have a decree about not selling the Blazers in his will. Also surprising his estate didn’t make a clause in the sale agreement. Plenty of selling owners have put in clauses about moving the team.

I’m of the opinion that teams really should never move. Like in Europe, they don’t really move teams ever

It’s been well studied taxpayer money for sports teams are not worth it.

Most of us?? You absolutely do not speak for most of us. Yall are the small vocal minority, I get wanting to stick it to the evil billionaire but at what fucking cost? I barely have any but I am going to do everything in my power to keep this team in this city, I’ve been writing to the city and county like crazy the past few weeks, my ticket reps too. I probably won’t make a difference but I’m not going to throw my hands up.

Given the choice I’d much rather invest the money in a baseball team and an ownership group actually committed to the city of Portland. I know it’s still up in the air whether the MLB will take our bid but if I was the mayor I’d be on the phone with them right now asking if they want all the money we set aside for that conman Dundon lol.

Like Seattl… shit.

Paul Allen’s sister was contractually obliged to sell the team to the highest bidder, so you’re correct that the league should have stepped in or at least vetted this guy.

   I presume would’ve had to outline his plan for the franchise in order to buy it, so either a) the NBA was on board with this or b) they didn’t require that, and therefore vet these owners less than I get vetted to get a drivers license.

Nailed it. With Rip City’s transfer of the arena to the city as part of the Bridge Lease in 2024-2030, they must have been able to see the looming issue. I think they’re okay with Dundon making a run at the coffers basically. We’ll see if they allow relocation still.

Portland already has plenty of socialists lol

Are you unaware of what Portland has been for like, many decades?

Paul Allen was a great steward of the Blazers for many years. An ethical owner who poured his own money to build a stadium and pay for rosters.

And especially in this case because Dundon got rich off of predatory loans.

I usually go 2x a year for the Kings games and maybe to a few other games for community events but don’t want to support this clown at all. When I moved here the team was in “fix it” mode post Jailblazers and continuously did nice things to win fans back, great deals, food, free tickets sometimes even with club privileges. Those days are probably long gone in the modern NBA but I won’t forget them and this shitheel has wiped that out.

I think you meant child slavery.

The city’s website lists like \(400 million in maintenance that needs to be done to the Moda center to keep it functioning the same way it currently is. They also list the maintenance over the next twenty years as being about \)300-400 million. So we either pay to renovate the stadium and keep the Blazers, or we lose the Blazers and pay to maintain the stadium anyway

Apparently it’s their new business model. I recall seeing an article on the topic a while back.

The state has already committed a huge chunk of the money. It’s up to Portland city councilors to fund the rest (God help us).

Almost certainly not, given that North Carolina already has an NBA team. 

The virginia beach area is lovely and a very large metro area. I think the largest without a sports team

I think even most of Peacock gets it at this point. The mayor and governor are on board. Dumbdumb is just a POS who never had any interest in Portland. Complete vetting failure by the Allen family and NBA that this guy wouldn’t pull a hostage scam here. I don’t even know what he has in mind probably auctioning to the highest bidder if allowed to proceed with an exit.

One would hope the other owners would block this but they might be curious to see what all they can get from their cities threatening a similar stunt. Seems like someone does this every 15-20 years when the public/private partnership isn’t feeling “public” enough. And the new class of professional sport team owners seem particularly less interested in altruism in any form than ever before.

Feel bad for the fans. But Portland is homeless drug infested city that’s been on the decline for quite some time. It’s also a super small market team. There is always another OKC that will roll out the red carpet somewhere else. I am sure Nashville, Kansas City, St. Louis and quite a few others would love to poach a franchise.