Canzano: Careful, it's a cut-throat world out there
Trail Blazers sale is rife with complications.
I met with Paul Allen once in a large storage closet at what is now Moda Center. His security team ushered the billionaire owner of the Trail Blazers to me for a 1-on-1 meeting. He’d just thrown the home arena into bankruptcy as part of a financial strategy and was frustrated that his tactic wasn’t being publicly understood.
Allen told me he didn’t want to move the Blazers.
He just wanted a better deal on the arena debt.
Bill Gates taught Allen how to play a cut-throat game when they were setting up Microsoft. Gates negotiated a 65-35 split for himself when the two were still counting revenue in the thousands, not billions. They eventually parted ways in the early 1980s, with Allen skipping away from the company as the third-richest man in the world.
Gates stayed behind to run Microsoft. Allen bought a 300-foot yacht named Tatoosh, a submarine as an accessory, and an Italian villa that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie later borrowed. He traveled the world, partied with models, and bought a handful of professional sports teams.
Gates worked.
Allen played.