Tom Dundon is the Trail Blazers' new owner, and he's already negotiating the door he wants to walk out of.
Here's what's on the table right now. Portland and Oregon have lined up public money to renovate the Moda Center, roughly $600 million of arena work. The city council approved its share. Some of that funding is tied to a deadline for Dundon to sign a new lease. The public money comes with a long-term lease commitment attached. Dundon wants a shorter buyout option.
That's a strange ask. He's asking a city to hand him hundreds of millions in public help to fix his building, and he wants the right to leave well before the lease term runs out. That's the kind of clause owners build in when they might sell the team down the line.
Then there's how he's handled the money fight. When the relocation fee, north of a billion dollars, came up, Dundon pushed back hard before returning to the table.
Dundon has said keeping the team in Portland is the priority, and a Blazers executive stood at media day and called the team committed to the city. Talk is cheap. The lease in front of him would cost him something, which is exactly why he's haggling to shorten it.
Call the shorter buyout leverage if you want. An owner actually planning to flee wouldn't telegraph it with lease clauses, he'd just line up a city and go. Maybe. But leverage and intent amount to the same thing here: a shorter exit keeps relocation on the table. Fans are the collateral either way. A man worth a fortune is refusing to fund his own arena while dangling Seattle or Vegas over a loyal fanbase. The league just voted to explore expansion in exactly those two cities, which does nothing to calm anyone down.
This is where Adam Silver earns the office. The NBA has shown it can push an owner out when it decides he's a problem. It forced Donald Sterling to sell the Clippers. Nobody is saying Dundon is Sterling. But the commissioner doesn't have to sit and watch a new owner treat one of the league's proudest fanbases as a poker chip. Silver can say plainly that relocation is off the table and the only move left is to sign in Portland.
Dundon bought a city's team. He should act like he wants to keep it.
