Portland Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon has made quite a splash since taking over the NBA franchise in March of 2026. A series of moves beyond basketball—dismissing 70-ish franchise employees in his second month in charge and foregoing fan-appreciation t-shirts when his team made the playoffs among them—put Dundon squarely in the sights of media and the broader public. His opening weeks were less “honeymoon period” than “landlord barges into your kitchen and starts rearranging your cupboards”.
Bill
Oram of The Oregonian has stood among Dundon’s more vocal local media critics during these early months. But Oram traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina to check out the playoffs journey of the Carolina Hurricanes, the NHL franchise Dundon has owned since 2017. During that trip, Oram interviewed Dundon [subscription required], asking him about the transition into Portland.
Dundon addressed several matters in the discussion, including the critical two mentioned above.
On his approach to the Blazers (including T-shirt Gate) Dundon offers:
The fact that T-shirts and all these other things are what people tend to focus on probably means that we probably haven’t done a good job of explaining, or maybe I didn’t think we should have to, because I wouldn’t have thought people would move toward the wrong things.
Before I came in, we were talking during the trade deadline and we had a choice. You could sell off some things for (future assets) or you could try to create the culture where you win. To me, that’s way more important than the stuff that’s out there. The choice we made was to add a piece (Vit Krejci) and try to create the culture of we’re here to win.
On the recent layoffs of dozens of Trail Blazers employees:
They have twice as many people as we have in Carolina, and my experience is that less layers gives people more accountability and they do a better job…
…I’ve seen the job done really well with a lot of accountability, no drama and a lot of, honestly, happiness. People are happier when they’re busy and productive. That is the way I think things should be done. And more people just creates more problems, usually. I think Portland just had too many people. I just asked them to look at it and I think they came to the same conclusion. We didn’t run a budget or give them a goal of headcount. We just said is this being done the right way? Is it efficient? Are people as committed and able to make an impact on the business every day? And if not, let’s get it right so we don’t have to talk about it again.
In the interview, Dundon also made the divide between business decisions and basketball decisions clear:
This was mostly on the business side. The basketball, they’re two separate businesses. Taking care of the players is not… We don’t have a budget for that. It’s whatever it takes to put them in the best position to win. That’s what we’re going to do. The business I’m going to run like you run every other business.
You can read more from Portland’s owner in Oram’s full piece. Overall he seemed to minimize concerns with the changes so far, emphasizing his track record and plans for the future. We’ll see how that turns out as the months ahead roll by.
