The NBA’s long-expected expansion push is starting to cast a shadow over Portland, and Tom Dundon seems ready to use that uncertainty however he can.
Since Dundon bought the Trail Blazers, the run of bad news has been hard to miss: mass layoffs, two-way players kept from traveling with the team for the postseason, early hotel checkouts, a trimmed broadcast crew, and even the strange episode of hiring and firing a would-be play-by-play broadcaster within a few hours. That backdrop has done little to warm Portland to its new owner.
Now the bigger league picture is coming into focus. ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that the NBA is expected to select the winning bid for the Las Vegas expansion team in “the very near future.” ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne added that several ownership-level sources believe “the most interesting fallout” from the Vegas deal is what it means for Portland.
That’s where Dundon’s current standoff with the city comes in. Portland is still negotiating renovations to the Moda Center, and Shelburne reported that, according to multiple ownership and industry sources, Dundon “has used the expansion process and the threat of relocation for leverage in recent discussions with other owners and city officials.”
It’s a bold move, and not exactly a subtle one. It also seems designed to push every possible button at once: pressure the city, test the league, and keep relocation chatter alive while the arena talks drag on.
But the math around expansion is hard to ignore. If Seattle and Vegas combine to generate $15-18 billion in expansion fees, each owner could come away with roughly $500-600 million before the 2028-29 season.
That kind of payout makes relocation look like a far less attractive route for the rest of the league. As Shelburne noted, owners would likely prefer the expansion windfall over letting a new owner move a team to Seattle, Vegas, or some other city willing to fund an arena deal.
Commissioner Adam Silver has already said relocating the Blazers would be “a failure,” which makes Dundon’s leverage play look more like posturing than a real threat. Still, as long as Seattle and Vegas remain in the expansion conversation and the Moda Center dispute stays unresolved, he can keep using that angle. Whether it actually changes anything is another matter entirely.
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