With apologies to those who have read quite enough about Tom Dundon in recent days, it can nevertheless be helpful to understand those in charge of the Portland Trail Blazers by looking at their work elsewhere.
To that point, Al Hood of Canes Country – a Carolina Hurricanes SB Nation fan site – offered their perspective on Dundon and how what we have seen so far in Portland mirrors what happened in North Carolina under Dundon’s ownership of that NHL franchise:
Billionaires do not need defending.
Let’s
start with that, because if someone has several billion dollars they really couldn’t care much about what you think about them. They just want to get your money, and they got those billions by getting your money. Sports team owner billionaires are perhaps a special level of the type that don’t need defending…
…for the most part the NBA at large has ignored a pretty sizable chunk of people that know first hand what it’s like to be involved with a team owned by Dundon.
Yes—Bill Simmons, Portland fans, and NBA fans, you need to actually talk to Hurricanes fans.
Hood goes on to suggest any number of Canes fans who know Dundon better than we as Blazers fans do could have seen what’s happened in Portland coming:
The whole broadcaster mess is nothing new… Before this season was over, Hurricanes media and fans could have told you they were about to be shipped out. Good-bye longtime radio caller Chuck Kaiton, hello TV simulcast. Good-bye veteran play-by-play man John Forslund, hello much reduced contract for Tripp Tracy, moving beloved sideline reporter and all around great guy Mike Maniscalco to the play-by-play side, and elevating an in-arena host to the role that would then be paid by the regional sports network. This was all before the Canes were consistently winning and it felt like the whole thing was still a house of cards, but few outside of the area said anything because “it’s just the Hurricanes.”
There are some similarities between the previous ownership of the Canes and the Blazers:
There are a lot of parallels from the situation in Portland pre-Dundon to the Hurricanes. The Trail Blazers were owned by someone who wanted to create a family environment, and valued loyalty. It showed in different ways between Allens and Karmanos as Peter Karmanos probably stayed too loyal to too many people for too long, and then couldn’t afford to look outside nor spend on players. The abrupt shift in style rubbed a lot of people wrong when they thought the team was a family.
It isn’t anymore, it’s a business.
And it’s not all bad. Hood writes that “Honestly, we’d also tell you [Dundon] hates empty seats,” and goes on to describe promotions Dundon initiated to get people to the arena and that he was willing to invest in the Canes:
He immediately cut checks to make sure the Hurricanes would be better on and off the ice. He did spend money on training facilities, and he’s spent to the cap basically every year except this past one—and only because that GM signed so many good deals. Someone looking to just scrimp everywhere he could would just spend to the floor, but for him it’s about winning.
As we in Portland continue trying to make sense of a request for $600M in public money for upgrades to an arena, we can only hope that at some point soon a new lease will be in view and we can all go back to having conversations about stuff that actually has to do with the game of basketball.
