{"id":458298,"date":"2026-02-09T14:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/458298\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T14:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:37:07","slug":"i-hope-im-wrong-but-this-is-why-i-fear-the-trail-blazers-could-be-as-good-as-gone-bill-oram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/458298\/","title":{"rendered":"I hope I\u2019m wrong, but this is why I fear the Trail Blazers could be as good as gone | Bill Oram"},"content":{"rendered":"

Multnomah County is bickering with<\/a> the Trail Blazers. The city of Portland is warring from within<\/a> over clean energy dollars. Sounds like the labor unions are unhappy, too, with what they\u2019ve heard about a forthcoming bill.<\/p>\n

About that bill… <\/p>\n

Nobody seems to have seen it. <\/p>\n

And the only person who benefits from all of the hiccups in this Moda Center boondoggle is the overleveraged incoming owner<\/a> who knows his new team\u2019s greatest value lies in his ability to move it.<\/p>\n

The NBA would never let another Seattle happen?<\/p>\n

Look around. It\u2019s already happening.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s too late to save the Trail Blazers, to permanently anchor them in the city that birthed them, that hoisted Jack Ramsay on its shoulders amid a parade down Broadway, but it\u2019s going to take a more unified effort than we have seen so far.<\/p>\n

It is going to be a test of our leaders\u2019 collective pain tolerance.<\/p>\n

This needs to be a question not of policy, but of philosophy.<\/p>\n

Is Portland a major league city? Can it act like it? Because major league cities prioritize sports and invest in them in ways that Portland never has.<\/p>\n

The time has come.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s front-facing leaders are all saying and doing the right things. If you follow official statements<\/a> only you\u2019d think it\u2019s all smooth sailing. But like ducks on a pond, the real work is being done beneath the surface. It has been far from smooth.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers in Salem are expecting a bill to drop early this week to be considered within the winnowing time frame of their short session. There are whispers that Damian Lillard will make an appearance in the State Capitol as part of the launch. Leaders at all levels of government need to recognize that, yes, they are getting squeezed, but that the alternative is far worse.<\/p>\n

Why doesn\u2019t the billionaire pay for his own building? Because he doesn\u2019t have to. Not when he knows that if local governments here fall short, they surely will step up in Nashville or Kansas City or St. Louis or Louisville or Vancouver.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m getting Clay Bennett vibes,\u201d one government source told me recently.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am nervous,\u201d said another official.<\/p>\n

Dundon is turning the screws and will continue to until he gets his way or our collective pressure point becomes an eject button. I hope elected officials are treating this like the emergency it is.<\/p>\n

Economists will tell you that the Trail Blazers leaving would set Portland\u2019s economy back by a generation. Maybe two. It would be a guaranteed knockout punch to the spirit of the city and state.<\/p>\n

Portland without the Blazers would be like Pittsburgh without steel, Orlando without the Mouse.<\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019ll call me a cynic for saying all of this. An alarmist. A doomsdayer.<\/p>\n

Maybe you think I\u2019ve just drank the \u201cFundin\u2019 for Dundon\u201d Kool-Aid.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all fine.<\/p>\n

What you won\u2019t be able to say is that I was complicit in the Blazers\u2019 exit because I didn\u2019t speak up.<\/p>\n

I would much rather be Chicken Little and suffer the relatively minor cranium-bonk from overreacting than watch this city be crushed under the weight of another town stealing our greatest jewel.<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s something I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever written: I hope I am wrong. I hope this column ages like milk and lands on Old Takes Exposed. I\u2019ve been wrong before, after all. It comes with the territory. <\/p>\n

I predicted the Blazers wouldn\u2019t re-sign Damian Lillard<\/a>. Wrong. Said Trent Bray was the right man<\/a> to lead Oregon State football. Wrong. That Portland was a lock to get a WNBA team<\/a>. Wrong… but then right!<\/p>\n

But this time I fear I\u2019m not wrong.<\/p>\n

The out-of-towner Dundon is playing this exactly the way any smart businessperson would. Heck, I grew up here and have boxes full of Blazers\u2019 memorabilia I\u2019ll never part with. If I had bought the team? I\u2019d be doing the same thing.<\/p>\n

By taking an aggressive, some might say unreasonable, tack, Dundon is clearing path toward throwing up his hands and exploring his options.<\/p>\n

This is straight out of the playbook of how to move a team. One that Dundon knows well. <\/p>\n

Did you read my colleague Joe Freeman\u2019s story this weekend about Dundon\u2019s deal to keep the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh<\/a>? The attorney who represented local government in that affair said this: \u201cThe negotiations were hard. We cussed at each other. We called each other bad names. I wake up from time to time and think, \u2018Gosh, I can\u2019t believe we got things done.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t necessarily think Dundon bought the Blazers explicitly so he could move the team. He doesn\u2019t have a natural landing spot queued up like Bennett did when he stole the SuperSonics from Seattle and staked them in Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n

The vibe I get is that on the matter of location, he is agnostic.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers and local leaders need to be honest with themselves. The Trail Blazers are not our birthright, though it feels that. Portland is an NBA city primarily by virtue of Harry Glickman\u2019s guile and force of personality. If you were to reset the NBA and redistribute its 30 franchises to the most-deserving cities, the Rose City would not get one of them.<\/p>\n

Portland is the 22nd largest media market, you might say. And I\u2019d counter with this: Do we have the Trail Blazers because we are No. 22? Or are we No. 22 because we have the Blazers? <\/p>\n

The region is not flush with sponsorship dollars. Tax regulations make doing business here difficult. Corporations are moving out. There is a fierce and loyal fanbase, but the Blazers are still heavily subsidized by the revenue of the league\u2019s top franchises.<\/p>\n

It is harder for an NBA owner to make money here, full stop.<\/p>\n

Poor leadership has put us in this position. There should have been a long-range vision for the Moda Center 20 years ago. That the city\u2019s only resource for renovating its own building is its voter-backed climate fund shows just how little foresight city leaders had. So, too does the fact that Multnomah County is essentially being asked to pony up just as much for the renovation as the city despite the fact that it doesn\u2019t own the building and operates with less than half of the budget of the city.<\/p>\n

But the county also can\u2019t claim it does not benefit from Moda Center only because it does not have a direct revenue stream, the way the city and state do. The county collects a tax on all hotel nights. Just how many hotel rooms will be booked at jacked-up rates for the 2030 Women\u2019s Final Four?<\/p>\n

And how many hotel rooms will sit empty when major concert tours bypass Portland? That is to say nothing about the livability of the cities that make up Multnomah County if Moda Center is no longer a destination.<\/p>\n

There are reasonable policy discussions to be had around the texture of a bill once we have it. And about ensuring good jobs for the renovation and arena workers moving forward. And about whether a fund designed to combat climate change should serve as the city\u2019s go-to slush fund.<\/p>\n

But we cannot be so precious about our ideals that in 10 years we are watching a documentary about how Portland lost the team that once made it a major league city.<\/p>\n

In terms adhering to newspaper standards, this feels like the definition of fool around and find out.<\/p>\n

Dundon wins no matter what happens. He gets the team.<\/p>\n

Portland can\u2019t afford to lose it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Multnomah County is bickering with the Trail Blazers. The city of Portland is warring from within over clean…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[214113,355,1063,99],"class_list":["post-458298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-blazers-logo","tag-nba","tag-nba-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}