When Tom Dundon paid $4.25 billion for the Portland Trail Blazers earlier this month, the assumption was that the money he had would translate into a well-resourced organization.
You know what they say about assuming…
OregonLive‘s Bill Oram first reported, and The Athletic has since corroborated, that for both the play-in game in Phoenix and the first-round series in San Antonio, the Blazers reduced their traveling party to the point of leaving behind the team’s digital reporter, Casey Holdahl, and its award-winning team photographer, Bruce Ely. Those are the people responsible for documenting a franchise’s postseason run and putting it in front of fans who aren’t in the building, and Portland kept them home for the organization’s first playoff trip — at least on the road — since the 2020-21 season.
It’s all part of a broader pattern that multiple outlets have been piecing together since the NBA Board of Governors officially approved the sale of the franchise to Dundon last month.
The Rose Garden Report‘s Sean Highkin reported that the Blazers also left their three two-way players — Caleb Love, Chris Youngblood, and Jayson Kent — at home rather than bring them to San Antonio, something Highkin confirmed no other road playoff team did this weekend. Sports Illustrated‘s Chris Mannix, meanwhile, reported that staff members were asked to vacate their Phoenix hotel rooms mid-afternoon to avoid late-checkout fees. Oram added that the team decided against offering a T-shirt giveaway to fans when the series returns to Portland, and that the Blazers skipped sending a scout to the Minnesota-Denver series despite potentially facing the winner in the second round.
Oram, who Awful Announcing covered back in February when he was already warning that Dundon’s indifference toward keeping the team in Portland could cost the city its franchise, has been tracking these concerns since before the sale closed. The cost-cutting has extended beyond the travel party, too, with NBA insider Jake Fischer reporting that Dundon had spoken to at least 20 international and college coaches, aiming to pay no more than $1.5 million annually, well below what the market would suggest for a vacancy with playoff-caliber talent on the roster.
For a ten-figure franchise owner overseeing his team’s first playoff run in five years, the decisions being made are hard to explain as anything other than what they look like. At some point, Tom Dundon is going to have to start spending like it.
