Rip City Forever says full court press is needed to keep the Blazers in Portland

The Trail Blazers are up for sale for the first time in 37 years. And there’s a real fear among fans — and elected officials — that if Portland doesn’t play its cards right, the new owner could move the team to another city.

Gov. Tina Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson sent a letter recently to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver stating their emphatic support for keeping the team here.

Marshall Glickman, whose father founded the team and served as the president of the organization, along with former player and gubernatorial candidate Chris Dudley, are among those who created Rip City Forever to advocate for doing whatever it takes to keep the Blazers in Portland. Specifically, the team will need a new or upgraded arena.

Glickman and Dudley join us to tell us how they hope to help the city avoid losing the economic boost and civic pride that the Blazers bring.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. A lot of things are going well for the Portland Trail Blazers right now. Their young players showed spunk and defensive prowess as the season came to a close. They drafted a potential game changer in center Yang Hansen from China, and Damian Lillard, the most beloved player in a generation, is coming back to the fold. There is just one problem: there’s a real fear among fans – and elected officials – that the Portland Trail Blazers could cease to exist. The team is up for sale for the first time in 37 years. And a new owner could move the team to another city, maybe even (gasp) Seattle. What would it mean to you to lose the Blazers? And how much public money are you prepared to see Oregon spend to prevent that from happening?

I’m joined now by two people with deep ties to the Blazers who are doing what they can to keep the team in Portland. Marshall Glickman served as the president of the organization. His father, Harry, founded the team. Chris Dudley played center for the Blazers in the mid ‘90s. He finished his career in Portland in the early 2000s. He ran for Oregon governor in 2010. Glickman and Dudley are two of the people behind the advocacy group Rip City Forever, and they join me now. Welcome to Think Out Loud.

Chris Dudley: Thanks, Dave.

Marshall Glickman: Thank you, Dave.

Miller: I want to start with a voicemail. This is Amy from Portland.

Amy [voicemail]: We are big basketball fans and we’re so excited to get to watch the Blazers and share in the joy of basketball with our 5-year-old son. He has autism and just having the routine of the game really, really excites him. He’s really grown to love it. It’s become a tradition to go to opening day and the final day of the season. I sprinkle in a few games throughout the year, for birthdays and such.

But gosh, when I found out that the team was up for sale – my husband actually told me – I immediately was like, “What is going on?” I got really worried and would be really sad if they left. It’s really become such a part of our family, going to the games, and I know the city will be devastated as much as we would be if they left. So please don’t go.

Miller: Marshall, for a lot of Blazers fans, the Seattle SuperSonics story is the cautionary tale that’s top of mind now or for the last couple of months. So remind us what happened in 2008?

Glickman: What happened is that a local Seattleite, the famous Howard Schultz – as in Starbucks – who I think was trying to do the right thing by Seattle to keep the team there and help it grow and thrive, was not able to find any agreement with either the city or the state of Washington. He finally had to move on. So he sold the team to a guy named Clay Bennett, who happened to be from Oklahoma City. Clay came to town, had a press conference and said, “I love Seattle.” The next press conference was, “But we need a new arena.” The next press conference was, “It doesn’t look like we’re gonna get a new arena.” And the next thing that happened is the moving vans came and moved the team out of town in the middle of the night.

Miller: The Sonics were gone. The Thunder were born.

Glickman: That’s correct.

Miller: So what do you see as potential similarities between that situation and what the Blazers could be facing?

Glickman: I think the NBA and the sports world at large loves Portland as a sports market. But the reality is that a bridge agreement was executed between the city and the Blazers, just over a year ago. It extended the obligation of the Blazers to stay in Portland only through the 2029-30 season. And frankly, I think Chris and I were both kind of surprised by that because, by definition, it means the team is portable. Then shortly thereafter, it was announced the team would be for sale.

So the reality is a new owner coming into Portland is gonna have extraordinary leverage, number one, with the city and the state, as it pertains to either a renovation of Moda Center or building a new arena. And that leverage comes from the threat, which may be spoken or it may not be spoken, but the portability of the team that it could leave.

Miller: Chris, what do you see as the most likely recipients of the Blazers franchise? If the Blazers were to move, where do you think they might end up?

Dudley: That’s hard to say. It obviously depends on who buys the team. I think when you’re talking about the Seattle situation, the similarities are striking, in a bad way – most likely the new owner will be from out of state. We do need a new arena, either renovated or a new arena, so that causes the worry. As far as where it would go, there’s a lot of cities that are actively looking for teams, including Seattle and Las Vegas, which thought they were getting expansion teams, but that’s been pushed back with the Portland sale. And part of that’s just because you don’t want to flood the market with three West Coast teams at the same time. So the NBA has pushed that back. But that will make people in Seattle a little less patient.

Miller: Because there had been thinking that there would be, instead of transferring a team, a new team would be added and maybe Seattle will get that, maybe taking some of the fear out of some Portlanders’ hearts. Although then the team could still go to some other city, even if Seattle had its own team.

Dudley: Yeah, exactly, and that was the thought. When Marshall and I first started talking about this years ago, the thought was that Seattle would have had an expansion team by now actually, and it just keeps getting pushed back. So that’s out there. Then there’s other teams from San Diego to Austin, Texas to Nashville. You go down the list and it’s the usual suspects of upcoming good cities that Portland may have to compete with.

Miller: So I’m curious about something you just mentioned almost in passing, when you said when you and Marshall started talking about this years ago. So how long have you been talking seriously, maybe if less publicly than writing op-eds in The Oregonian, about the possibility of the Blazers leaving?

Dudley: I think it was after Paul died. Paul passed away in 2018, I believe.

Miller: Paul Allen?

Dudley: Paul Allen, the longtime owner and the owner that I played for while I was there, and a great owner, great from a player perspective.

Miller: And that was in 2018, I think he died?

Dudley: I believe so.

Miller: And it went to the trust, which really I guess, means his sister?

Dudley: His sister. But in the trusts’ mandate, as far as we know, what we’ve been told is to sell the team for maximum value, the assets are going to charity. So they’re going to a great cause. It’s going to charity. But what’s scary about that is you don’t have a situation, like Milwaukee for example, where the previous owner was Senator Kohl. Herb Kohl put in, as a stipulation of the sale, that the team had to remain in Milwaukee. There’s nothing about that in this auction process. It’s purely about what’s the highest bid and that’s what scares us.

Miller: Let’s listen to another voicemail. This is Mary from Forest Grove.

Mary [voicemail]: I have been watching carefully Portland’s progress and problems, through the last 42 years that I’ve lived in Forest Grove. I love the Blazers. I don’t get to attend many games, but I can’t imagine Portland without the Blazers. We just had a return of a famous player, and he was very kind and thoughtful in his remarks about Portland. And I want to see the Blazers succeed in Portland. Thank you.

Miller: And let’s listen now to one more voicemail who actually talks about that famous player more specifically. This is Pam Williams who also called in from Portland.

Pam Williams [voicemail]: In the NBA world, the uniqueness of Damian Lillard has long been recognized, because of his play, of course, but also because of his remarkable and unusual loyalty to our city. And now, with Damien’s return to the Blazers, I’m reminded again of his allegiance, but even more impressively, I am blown away by the praiseworthy loyalty coming from the Trail Blazer organization, the coach, the general manager and the deluge of fans.

Loyalty counts in our city. Remember the record breaking number of sold out basketball games in our past, for instance? I believe love for the Blazers brings out the very best in Portland. I am proud of our city’s sincerity. I can’t even think of the team’s possible departure without heartbreak.

Dudley: And yeah, Mary and Pam hit it. That’s what we hear everywhere across the state, not just Portland. I mean the Blazers truly are Oregon’s team. And that bond is what attracted me, as a free agent, when I came in ’93, that connection between the fans, the team and the community. The Blazers are so important, so integral to our identity here. And that’s kind of what we’ve been saying. Instead of treating this as a crisis, let’s use this as an opportunity. An opportunity for Portland to step up, meet the challenge, and say, “No this is our team. The team stays here.” Let’s do great things and use this once in a generation opportunity – that only happens every 30 years or so where a team changes hands – to really revitalize Portland.

Miller: Marshall, Chris, Willamette Week had a cover story about this issue last week with quotes from both of you and a bunch of other folks. Their sort of back-of-the-envelope projection was that the team might sell – it’s an auction, so who knows – for around $4.5 billion. Is that in the neighborhood of what you’re expecting? You’ve been in the sports business for a long time now.

Glickman: Yes, and it could go higher. I mean, it’s an auction, right? So we’ve all been to auctions before. If there’s two parties at the table, the price tends to bid up.

Miller: So when you look at that number and then you apply some of the NBA’s ownership bylaws, which we don’t need to dig super deeply into, what you find is that the smallest amount of money that someone would have to put to have a controlling stake in this is – according to Willamette Week’s math – is $900 million. Oregon has a relatively small number of billionaires compared to a bunch of other rich states and a very small number of people in the tens of billionaire category. Phil Knight is in that category and he tried to buy the team, according to a lot of reports, and was rebuffed by Jody Allen.

So how likely is it to you that some consortium of people with real local ties will be able to actually put that kind of money together?

Glickman: Well, I hope there are people with local ties that are part of a broader cap table or a syndicate. But somebody with Oregon ties who would be in a control position, that’s a different story.

Miller: You need close to a billion dollars to get that 21% …

Glickman: You literally have to write a check for a number in that vicinity. I think that’s highly unlikely. I mean, I can’t name that person.

Miller: So what does that mean to you? What I’m wondering is how important do you think that fact is in this conversation, that that most likely we’re looking at people who are going to have to be coming from out of state?

Glickman: They’re gonna have to come to Portland, fall in love with the city. They’re gonna have to know that the city and the state are ready to do business – business meaning the Moda Center. [It’s] the seventh oldest arena in the NBA. Oklahoma City is building a brand new arena, replacing an arena that is seven years younger than Moda Center. Moda Center could potentially be renovated, but the trend line nationally and globally is, in fact, new arenas.

And it was Commissioner Silver himself, at a press conference only two weeks ago, who said exactly that. He came out and said it. So I think Portland and Oregon have to be ready to talk about both options, they have to evaluate both options. A renovation is an option or a new arena is an option. In both cases, there’s gonna have to be a public/private partnership that combines and bundles both private and public financial resources in order to get that done.

Miller: Let’s take a call from Wade, who’s called in from Aloha. Wade, go ahead.

Wade [caller]: Hi. So I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m not a fan, but I know many people are and some of my clients. But my question is, this is a business enterprise. Why can’t they build their own stadium, the facilities they need to conduct their business? That’s one question. But then I just thought, sitting down, could Portland buy the Trail Blazers? Then it couldn’t move. I don’t know how much money is involved or what, but if we’re going to buy them a stadium, why don’t we just buy [the team]?

Miller: Wade, thanks for that. So let’s take those questions one at a time. The first one he put forward is one that I’ve seen in a lot of places. We’re talking about billionaires. If you could write a check for a billion dollars or $4.5 billion, if this is your oligarch play thing, then why don’t you spend your own money to also pay for the place where they’ll be playing?

Glickman: It’s not seen as a plaything. It’s seen as a business. These people who have been very successful are looking at the NBA … they’re investing in one-thirtieth of a global enterprise called the NBA. And it’s an increasingly global enterprise. And like any other business investment, they expect to have a reasonable return on their investment. So the days of people doing this as a plaything, in my opinion, are over. And that’s across the NBA, the NFL, Major League Baseball, NHL, Major League Soccer, all the sports.

Miller: And it’s also fair to say that at this point, owners have gotten used to … Because they have this ultimate trump card of being able to say, “I can pick up stakes and go somewhere else where they will pay for a stadium,” they live in a world where they can expect some kind of public money?

Glickman: I think that it’s really a question of economic viability. This is a small market. This isn’t a huge market. So it’s harder. I think any owner is prepared to put private capital to work when it’s viable to bring back a reasonable return on that private capital. So the question is, what is the maximum amount of private capital that’s economically viable in this particular market?

Typically, what we’re seeing … And we’ve got to study more carefully, which is one of the reasons we exist and have put together a big team of subject matter experts around these topics. We have to understand what is viable publicly both economically and politically, and then what is viable privately and can those two sources of capital be put together. The caller asked a fair question about why taxpayers should basically subsidize. But this is the kind of asset, a sports stadium, no different from the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall or Keller Auditorium. These are public assets that the public gets access to. The Moda Center is owned by the city of Portland.

Miller: It is now. It didn’t used to be.

Glickman: That’s correct. At the time that we did the Moda Center, we did it with the maximum amount of private capital. The public came to the table as well. And it was a PPP back then as well.

Miller: Chris, as Marshall was hinting at, but one of the pieces of your effort is to get the Oregon Community Foundation involved to do some of this math so it’s not just a back of the envelope thing, but some real numbers are attached to this. What it would cost for renovation as opposed to a full rebuild. Has that work not already been done? It surprised me a little bit to think of this as a kind of a starting from scratch enterprise.

Dudley: We’re going to meet with the mayor’s office and the governor’s office, and compare notes and where we are. But we thought it important enough to ring the bell and say we can’t wait on this. We have to be prepared. If you’re a homeowner or a small business and you’re looking at a new building of your small business, it’s, “do I renovate that or do I build somewhere else?” You want all the details you can have. You want all that information. What’s the cost of renovation look like? What’s the cost of a new arena look like? What are the revenues I can expect each to do?

I fully understand and echo Wade’s (the caller’s) opinion or question: why do you subsidize? I think we, to be good stewards of the tax dollars and to have it make sense, we’ve really got to come up with a win-win solution, one that makes the team viable. No owner is gonna just buy the team to lose money to be here. That’s not gonna happen. So how do we help it to at least cover costs, break even, and have a great state of the art facility for Portland and Oregon to enjoy? To go through that process, it’s really important that we’ve done our homework in advance.

Miller: Marshall, is there an open question to you about whether or not you could actually have the Blazers, going forward, be a viable business, if you don’t do a major renovation of the Moda Center? Or is it more just that it’s become the norm that fancy new arenas are expected? I guess that has not, at all, been clear to me because I don’t really know the finances of the current Blazers organization and what it would look like going forward. But I still don’t really have a sense for the financial necessity of this versus the financial desire?

Glickman: Well, I don’t have access to the Blazers books myself, but I have a pretty good sense of NBA economics. It is not realistic to operate an NBA team in a small market, given today’s NBA economics, the salary cap, the whole way it works, off of just the revenues that you get from ticket sales, media sponsorships, those types of things. All teams, but particularly small market teams, are equally dependent on revenues flowing through the arena itself, and more and more on development adjacent to the arena itself.

Miller: The whole entertainment corridor?

Glickman: Correct. So it’s really the sum of those three parts that makes it viable, which is exactly what’s happening in Oklahoma City, and I could give you 10 other examples.

Miller: That’s a key point here. So, it’s maybe a mistake, you’re saying, to only think about this public/private partnership as being about redoing an arena or renovating an arena, as opposed to a whole area. So what is your idea of building up the surrounding neighborhood? And the I-5 project – that might be stalled – how does that interact with this?

Glickman: Well, that project is directly adjacent to the Moda Center. I think the reality is if you’re trying to develop the Rose Quarter, which is what we had in mind 30 years ago. But if you notice, nothing has happened in 30 years. It’s a very difficult site. You’ve got a massive arena, a second massive arena, a big building, three huge parking garages, huge. You’ve got Northeast Broadway – which is an important corridor – two bridgeheads, a river that has the Union Pacific Railroad, and the I-5 freeway. It’s an island. It’s boxed in. So most real estate developers would tell you that’s not an ideal place to do a mixed-use, experiential kind of development. And something, we threw out as an example, like the Lloyd Center might be a more appropriate place for that kind of development.

Miller: Just briefly, you both reached out to the mayor and the governor, and a day later, they wrote a letter to the NBA commissioner essentially reiterating their strong desire that Portland retain the Blazers. Chris, how would you rate the response you’ve seen so far from elected officials in the state, in terms of your overall goals?

Dudley: Well, I’m glad they’re engaged. I’m glad they listened, responded and reached out to the League. I think there’s a lot of work to be done. But I’m glad that they responded.

Miller: Chris Dudley and Marshall Glickman, thanks very much.

Glickman: Thank you.

Miller: Chris Dudley and Marshall Glickman are two of the folks behind Rip City Forever, which is pushing for some kind of public/private partnership to make it much more likely that the Portland Trail Blazers will stay in Portland. Marshall Glickman is the former president of the Trail Blazers. Chris Dudley played for the team for six years. He’s a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Oregon in 2010.

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