Canzano: Phil Knight and Tom Dundon have a common opponent
How much of Blazers drama is on Portland?
When Tom Dundon’s group cobbled together the $4.25 billion offer to buy the Trail Blazers, Inc., the deal presented on paper as a less than ideal option for Adam Silver’s league.
I keep wondering why the NBA commissioner didn’t step in and try harder to usher Phil Knight into his Board of Governors room. It would have stablized the NBA’s Pacific Northwest outpost and avoided the mess currently unfolding in Portland.
Then again, I wonder if the league knew that lack of vision at the city level was part of the problem. After all, Knight’s company refuses to do business in Portland itself. It fled to the suburbs. Knight knows Dundon’s headaches, doesn’t he?
Stay with me here. Because things got ugly fast between Knight and Jody Allen. She didn’t appreciate that Knight and Alan Smolinisky, part owner of the Dodgers, leaked their lowball offer to ESPN in the summer of 2022.