Canzano: Drilling into the Trail Blazers mess
A candid conversation with Brian Berger.
The saga involving the Trail Blazers is sucking up a lot of oxygen.
City officials in Portland say Tom Dundon isn’t engaged in negotiations to extend the team’s lease at Moda Center. Meanwhile, city and state leaders haven’t yet unlocked $600 million in funds aimed at arena improvements.
Fans are understandably anxious that the Blazers will leave Portland. Is Dundon aiming to take the team to Nashville? Is he on a slow walk out of town?
Will he agree to a long-term lease for the NBA franchise? And will NBA Commissioner Adam Silver step in at some point?
I dedicated Wednesday’s episode of “Bald Faced Truth: Unfiltered” on YouTube to the soap opera involving Dundon’s group, the Trail Blazers, city leaders, NBA owners, and a short-term arena lease that is melting in the summer sun.
I don’t let Jody Allen off the hook, either.
She engineered the sale to a group that had no ties to Portland.
The episode is worth your time:
Brian Berger, the host of Sports Business Radio, joined me for a candid conversation about the chess game being played. He believes Dundon is already dug into his position.
Said Berger: “He’s going to want most, if not all, of the revenues. He’s going to want property development around the arena. He is going to want all the money, and if you’re the city, can you look yourself in the mirror, can you go to taxpayers and say, ‘This is the deal I made, and this is why it’s a good deal for taxpayers’? There are two hurdles here, and I don’t think we’re going to clear both of those hurdles.”
Berger said that Silver, the NBA commissioner, is in a tricky position. Would Silver step in, mediate the dispute, or require Dundon to sell the team to an owner who wants to stay in Portland?
“I think the only way that Dundon will stay in Portland is if the league makes him stay in Portland or makes him sell to an owner that wants to stay,” Berger said.
Silver said this week that he is monitoring the negotiations between the city and Dundon’s group. Said Silver: “I was hoping more progress would have been made by now on that agreement. It seems to have gone off track in various ways.”
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What’s the ACTUAL cost of losing the team versus the cost of paying for the arena and making whatever other accommodations Dundon will require to keep it in Portland? That data should be relatively straightforward and available. Report on that and I’ll be interested in this saga; otherwise, it seems like lots of unnecessary gum rattling and hand-wringing.
R.I.P. City??