He says it’s mostly saber rattling from billionaire boy to get the city to pay for the stadium.

Yeah Windy is making zero sense here and I honestly don’t even think he’s super up to date with stuff that’s happened the past few days either. The team is finally attending a city council working session to discuss the term sheet this Thursday.

The OP poorly used the quote without the appropriate “…” like you should normally do when breaking up someone’s quote. Windhorst’s full last sentence was something like “it’s a lot of saber rattling. But the bottom line is it’s not a good development if you’re a Blazers fan”. He was just wrapping up his response.

A STL billionaire bought stake into the blazers with him. That same guy tried to buy the Vancouver grizzlies to bring them to Saint Louis, but the league was still pissed over the STL Spirits situation from the merger.

I don’t want a NBA team if it means stealing from another city. I’d take whatever he says seriously because I 100% believe Chaifetz is in Dudons ear about relocation.

Edit: another thing that makes me uneasy is the STL Blues need a new stadium so I can see the city buying into it for them unfortunately.

It helps Blazers fans but doesn’t take away from the fact that the new owner seemingly isn’t committed to Portland. I’m sure Seattle fans never expected they would lose their team to Oklahoma City but somehow that happened. You just never know

My guess is that by saying those 2 cities are off the table, a couple of billionaires or PE in those cities may say “oh we don’t want to lose this opportunity” and build an arena themselves, hence locking down the move

No, because there’s always a city that would take a team. When Seattle moved, it’s not like everyone had pegged Oklahoma City as a real choice. Also, if he leaves, the amount of money that would pour into the Seattle bid would make the expansion easier. Vegas has the money. Seattle is a tougher sell, unless there’s no competition for an entire region of the country

Agree with you in spirit, and pro sports should be different, but companies moving to different states for tax incentives / gov subsidies is absolutely a thing in other industries

This is absolutely a thing lol

So many businesses big and small get government subsidies in various ways. The US federal government gave intel \(8.5 billion to build a chips factory, Nevada gave Tesla \)1.2 billion in tax breaks to the giga factory, Washington state gave Boeing a $9 billion incentive to build the 777 line in the state.

At least those subsidies result in factories employing lots of people making real things. The economic benefits are real.

Publicly funded sports stadiums are a scam.

It’s pretty common for that or worse really. The state can even take away your land and give it to another private entity if they believe it’s “beneficial for the community”, there was a whole Supreme Court case about it.

Wait until you find out it is a thing in every other business in the world

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again we need national bans on taxpayers funding arenas/stadiums.

At least whatever % of the stadium is funded by the taxpayers that same % of revenue goes back to the taxpayers. So the owner can take as much money as they want, but they’re minimizing their profits then.

Lmao. This is happening for data centers right now as we speak

Lol, are you 12?

I mean this is definitely a thing outside of sports

This happens a lot in real estate.

You mean the automobile business?

It’s been a thing for like forever lol

This does happen all the time in business

I mean, that’s roughly what private equity does. They buy a company, strip it to the bones to turn a profit, while simultaneously ruining the product the original company produced. It’s not 1 for 1 here, but it’s close lol

Well its the public’s building! The landlord pays for renovations. Can the landlord find a new tenant without renovations?

Called negotiating

Companies extort business by threatening to move to other states all the time sadly. But this Blazers business is very messy. I know the Blazers have a few more years to go on their lease but a few years isn’t much time in these types of negotiations

this is an extremely regular thing

Have you paid your servers wages lately?

There’s nothing more American than corporations holding public interest hostage so the government will help make them richer.

Sports are not unique in this regard

Hurricanes fan here: Did you see how many of his family members he had inscribed on the Cup, and above any of the coaches and players and key staff?

Dundon is also a crook. Most of his businesses seem to get investigated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Dundon?wprov=sfti1

dude going for a world record speed run for most hated owner in the league

Watch the clip. The OP is to blame for quoting it incorrectly.

I suspect he’s bluffing about trying to move the team to Raleigh. He already has an arena that’s being renovated to his specifications there and arguing that he can convince NC State to build their on-campus own arena to pave way for a lease.

To be clear, that’s likely not possible unless he’s willing to give up his political capital needed to get an MLB expansion team in Raleigh. So, I don’t think it’s actually in play unless he believes the MLB chances are already zero.

he is trying to pull a Grizzlies, Sonics, Raiders, and A’s relocation. Silver just should publicly state that the Blazers are not allowed to go to Las Vegas and Seattle.

Eh—we’re in better shape than this makes it sound.

Still a lot up in the air, though.

It’s dun done

Started business dishing out predatory loans, bankrupted a sport league, and profits from healthcare.

He might run for governor or president.

In fairness to billionaires, they are all fucking assholes. Dundon is just a major one.

No lol I don’t know what the hell windy is yapping about here. He says Silver said relocation was not on the table in February and then goes on to say that Seattle and Vegas aren’t options, and then suddenly it’s bad news for Blazer fans? Insanely confusing logic

They aren’t moving. The NBA owners are forbidding it.

I don’t think so. Nobody wants that but Dundon. He’s just trying everything to squeeze some money from the public.

Well you’re gonna be pretty surprised when the county passes the funding on ⁸⁄₆ and then the city on ⁸⁄₁₂. (Source: I’ve been following all of this way too fucking closely, I’ve watched so many county and city sessions).

Hell yes

The mayor should know better! It’s like he doesn’t know his own city.

He has no authority. Only the nba board of governors (the ownership). Silver is a pawn.

Yeah I was tracking until the end

This is the part of his quote that is flabbergasting me. He just spent like 20 seconds explaining how Seattle/Vegas are off the table because of the expansion team fee then says it’s a bad development for Blazers fans. Huh? Lol.

It makes less sense for taxpayers to foot the $500M bill when all signs point to this guy moving the team in 5 years anyway

It’s not shady. Windhorst is an idiot and either does not understand the lease agreement or has not read it. I doubt you have either.

The lease is super favorable for a new owner to STAY IN PORTLAND. The team pays zero rent, staffs all events at the arena, and gets a cost sharing agreement for renovations that is incredibly favorable. Ownership will be on the hook for like 1/5th of a $600 million dollar renovation and then will reap all of the financial benefits of those renovations for every event at the arena, not just blazer games.

Dundon is using as his opening pitch in negotiations a flagrant violation of the lease’s cost sharing clause. He is saying to the city ‘I want to violate just this one clause of this lease’ but wants to maintain all of the other benefits (no rents, staffing agreement, etc).

He worded that poorly, but essentially, there’s no “poison pill” written in the lease agreement to de-incentivize the blazers from leaving. Since the city owns the land, they could have included a clause that the blazers would have to pay back “x” amount for lost future revenue if they move, or some equivalent protectionary measure, but they didn’t. It gives Dundon more leverage to move the team once the 5 year is up. Not sure why the lease was so lenient, but it was, and here we are.

I don’t think he wants to move, he just wants a free new stadium like every other Billionaire has gotten

I work in a field where I deal with a lot of people who maybe arent RICH rich. But are definitely wealthier than most and my experience has been the richer they are the cheaper and/or quicker to spend someone else’s money than their own they are.

It’s not a terrible stadium at all. But infrastructure, especially heavily used infrastructure, is always going to need maintenance. Some of it has been deferred for the stadium, and much of the city’s estimate is that deferred maintenance. It’s also older, and there’s a lot of small updates they’re looking to do to modernize it.

Dundon to my knowledge has never explained where his number comes from, or where all the public money he’s asking for would go. The general opinion is he wants more luxury boxes and other highly profitable renovations done, which aren’t necessary at all, but would net him more money.

On top of this, currently the City owns the property, but Dundon gets almost all the money from operating the building, pays $1 in rent a year, and all the money the city gets from the building is required to be put back into the stadium. He already has a complete sweetheart deal, so trying to browbeat more money from a city actively going through a budget crisis, just so he can be even richer, is drawing a lot of animosity.

It hasn’t been renovated since it opened in the 90s and it’s the oldest arena in the NBA. Dundon isn’t being that unreasonable tbh. The city owns the arena not him, so they are responsible for renovations.