The Moda Center on Oct. 22, 2025 in Portland, Ore.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
Portland city officials are rapidly approaching the Aug. 12 deadline to begin negotiations for a Moda Center deal.
With both city officials and Trail Blazers management firm in their stance, the threat of a Trail Blazers relocation has crept into NBA discourse.
NBA reporters Mike Vorkunov and Yaron Weitzman join us to discuss the possibility of a Blazers relocation, and what cities may be attractive suitors for the franchise.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. It has been nearly five months since the Oregon Legislature pledged $365 million in state bonds to renovate the Moda Center. Since that time, officials at the City of Portland and Multnomah County have been talking about kicking in their own pots of public money, $120 and $100 million respectively. But the finger pointing and sniping between local officials and Trail Blazers representatives has become so public that the specter of the Blazers leaving Portland has returned. As Portland City Council President Jamie Dunphy told The Athletic just yesterday, “It looks like the team is either disinterested in transparency and accountability with public dollars, or they’re going to run out the clock and wait for the government to give them an excuse to move.”
But how would that actually work and where might the Blazers move to? Mike Vorkunov is a national NBA and business reporter for The Athletic and the host of “The Business Decision” podcast. Yaron Weitzman is an NBA writer and the author of two books. His latest is called “A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers.” They both join me now. Mike and Yaron, welcome to the show.
Mike Vorkunov: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Yaron Weitzman: How’s it going?
Miller: Doing great. Thanks very much for joining us. So Mike, first, did you expect the Blazers to be one of the big stories of the NBA this offseason?
Vorkunov: Maybe if Tom Dundon had continued to do what he’d been doing in his first few months as owner, I thought maybe that’s how they could keep their names in the headlines, but maybe not like this.
Miller: So the possibility that the Blazers would leave Portland has been the subject of a ton of statewide interest this year. But it seemed to really break back into the national conversation for the first time a few weeks ago, after some comments by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. He was asked about the Blazers’ future in Portland and said that he had spent time with new owner Tom Dundon and his team officials. And then he added this:
Adam Silver [on tape]: What we are most focused on right now, the league office, is the deal that we discussed when we were in Portland in March. I was hoping more progress would have been made by now on that agreement and it seems to have gone off track in various ways. And so I have a colleague Joe Masco who’s day to day on it, but we’re working with both sides to ensure that the Trail Blazers can have a long term future in Portland. But there are several open issues that still need to be resolved.
Miller: Yaron, what went through your mind when you heard that?
Weitzman: It’s funny, actually Mike and I were both in attendance at that press conference in Las Vegas at the NBA Summer League. I think I texted Mike, as soon as he said it, “That didn’t sound good. Sounds like Portland’s got a problem.” To me, one of the things to pay attention to is Adam Silver is somebody who when he talks about things in public … or you can look at expansion, which I’m sure we’ll get to, right? He’s been talking about expansion. Frequently and many years it’s been talked about, and “we’re not there yet, we’re not there yet”’ It doesn’t get put to a vote until he feels confident.
So I bring that up to say, you don’t have many examples of Adam Silver putting his neck out there and then things not being completed. He usually has the background information to know. So when he went there, whenever it was, March, and talks to reporters and says, “we think we’re getting a deal done,” you can tell in these recent comments that he is surprised. I think [of] that as publicly annoyed. Mike can maybe disagree with you, but that’s as annoyed as you’ll hear Adam Silver get in public, saying, I thought we had an agreement in place and we have not made progress the way to the extent that I think we would have. To me, that was interesting, and the way I read that was basically, Tom Dundon is proving to be more difficult than I expected.
Miller: So Mike, to follow up on that, this is a very gentle kind of annoyance because Adam Silver is a very careful political person. But to the extent that he’s annoyed and not explicitly saying who he’s annoyed with, you agree that it’s Tom Dundon here and not city officials who’ve been bending over backwards, even though many of them don’t want to, to come up with some version of public money?
Vorkunov: The interesting part is how that question was asked to lead to his answer. It was asked by Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report, who covers the Blazers here in Portland. He asked them, if the local government gives him all the money that he’s looking for, the $575 million that they had discussed, would that be enough to keep the Blazers in Portland and to get his name on a lease. That’s what Adam Silver could not answer definitively, which makes me think that there’s some annoyance at the Blazers side of things, as much as there is the inability to finish this deal off, let alone on the Portland and Oregon government side of things. Because the state legislature has approved $365 million…
Miller: It’s $365 million, pending the local money from the city and the county.
For weeks now, there have been back and forth in which city leaders, including the mayor, say that they’re waiting on important design information and clarity about what the team wants. The team said, in various ways in various venues, hey, we’ve given you everything we can at this point, and we’ve given you more information than lawmakers had when they agreed to spend that bond money. So just give us the money basically, and then we’ll tell you how we will spend it. I’m paraphrasing, but that is a version of what they’ve said.
Yaron, how would you describe what we’ve now seen to be Tom Dundon’s negotiating style?
Weitzman: What’s the opposite, we don’t negotiate with terrorists? [Laughs] Basically, I’m gonna hold my line, and not budge, and force you to do what I want. So it’s funny. One of the reasons I’m here is because I’ve done a little reporting, talked to some people at ownership level around the league and got their read on things. Most people not from Portland were of the belief that Tom Dundon is not going to move the Blazers. There’s nowhere for him to go. Expansion’s gonna happen, so we can’t take any of those new markets and there’s nowhere else for him to go, right? It costs money.
I do think there’s a world though where, to answer your question, maybe it’s a 4D chess type of thing where [Dundon’s position is], I’m gonna hold strong and I’m gonna get it to a point where the Portland local officials basically react in a way where they go to war with me, and they don’t offer any funding, and they take all that off the table. Then the math tilts into favor where then I can go to my board of governors, my partners and say, “Hey, there’s not even a deal for me here. I guess the math checks out. Let me go to a different city.”
I guess to answer your question, the negotiating strategy is, I have no ties to Portland. I don’t care about the community. I mean, he’s been very clear about that, right? He hasn’t come out and said, “I want to stay in Portland.” So it’s basically meet me at this number or I’m going to figure out a way to get out of here. That’s what he wants them to believe.
Miller: Mike, what actually has to happen for an NBA team to move?
Vorkunov: Well, it’s a long, fun, complicated journey through the NBA constitution. Basically, they have to make an application to relocate with the league. They have to do it by March 1 of the preceding season of when they wanna do it. So, hypothetically, let’s say they wanna move next season – and I’m not saying that’s the case, but just for timeline purposes – they would have to put this application in by March 1 of this season. Then the league and the commissioner appoints a relocation committee who looks into this. [They] look at the application, look at what’s possible, get a view of the landscape both in Portland and the proposed city that they would try to relocate to.
Then the NBA and all the team owners would have to take a vote on it. Unlike many things in the NBA which need a three-quarters approval from the owners, this one needs a majority vote for a team to be able to relocate and to move. So that, at least, is hypothetically in the Blazers’ favor here because it’s a lower bar to succeed.
But I think the hard part – and this is the part that we can’t all account for – is that they have to weigh how good it is for the NBA as a whole. That’s one of the written conditions that this relocation committee and the owners have to consider. What is the benefit of this to the NBA as a whole? Portland might be a smaller market, but it’s still, in terms of a media market, top 25 in the country and has a long history of supporting a basketball team. Obviously, then the question also is where would that new city be? So these are all things that the league, the commissioner and the other owners would have to think about in order to approve a relocation.
Miller: We’ll get to the expansion piece of this in just a second. But Yaron, if we’re talking about, say, 15 other owners who would need to vote yes to make this happen, how might a relocation to, let’s say Austin or Raleigh, North Carolina, affect the other owners?
Weitzman: There’s the overall bottom line. I guess the case that Dundon would be making is [for] more revenue in the NBA, let revenue be split between owners in different areas. So the case would be more revenue for me, equals more revenue for all of us. What do you have to fight? Austin’s an interesting one, because Austin is sort of in the Spurs’ backyard. I don’t think that’s official, but the Spurs have attempted to make that one of their hometowns or make that a fan base of theirs.
An example of how these things work – the Spurs have a powerful ownership group that’s been involved and in the NBA many years, and ingrained with league office, and close with Adam Silver for many years. So there are all these backroom political dealings that could impact how people vote. All these things that we don’t do. It’s sort of like the cliched rich men in backrooms coming to decisions we can’t see. We don’t see how they argue about it, but we see the decisions. You’d have that sort of play out.
So Dundon would have to make the case, both on a league-wide scale that would be helpful for everyone, meaning we’re going to make more revenue … Mike makes the point about the fan base. [In] Portland, the “business community” might not be as strong as in other cities. But you have a strong fan base and you don’t have that in many other places. I live in New York. The New Jersey Nets moved to Brooklyn. I don’t know what their sponsorship situation is. There are no Brooklyn fans. There are no Brooklyn Nets fans. It kills everything about the team. It kills the arena. It kills tickets. It kills the vibes, all of that.
So, to give up a fan base that’s committed to a team, you better be pretty sure and certain, and you better present a really strong case to your fellow owners as to why that would be a strong move.
Miller: Mike, how did the announcement of Seattle and Las Vegas as expansion cities as opposed to relocation, so new franchises, complicated the possibility of a Blazers move?
Vorkunov: For one, when you’re thinking about bidding on a team, you have two teams that are out there for potential bidders. I think when you’re thinking about relocation, you’re saying, are we gonna let Tom Dundon buy a team for $4.25 billion, which is almost the bottom barrel price for an NBA team, and let him move there? Which would kind of get in the way of shortcutting expansion because you’re asking other people to pay $8 billion for a new team and move it in one of these marquee cities, whereas Tom Dundon would get to buy for half that price potentially and move it to a city of his choosing. So the expansion process gets in the way in that regard.
Additionally, it takes two cities off the map. Las Vegas and Seattle would have been at the top of the list of any potential relocation sites, but the NBA probably gets a lot more benefit from just putting new teams and owners in those two markets, than letting Portland go there.
Miller: Yaron, as you noted, you’ve been talking to various folks at the ownership level around the association, around the NBA. What’s your sense for how they’re looking at Dundon at this point, separate even from all of the questions about public money for a renovated arena and the possibility of the Blazers leaving? I’m curious. He’s made a lot of local news here and probably league news in cost cutting. How is he seen as a new owner?
Weitzman: I’ll be careful here. I wanna stress my sample size. I haven’t spoken to 20 owners about Tom Dundon. So I want to stress the sample size part of that.
It’s interesting, so most of the people I speak with are a bit turned off and surprised by the way he’s come in, I’ll say, guns blazing, I guess would be the proper phrase. I hate expressing this viewpoint, but there are some who believe that there is bloat in the NBA, and it’s not bad for somebody to come in and say maybe we don’t need 40 assistant summer league coaches in Las Vegas with us, and we can do some of those things. Probably somebody’s gotta be first through the door on that one, maybe. So if he wants to take all the bullets because he doesn’t care about the PR, and we’ve clearly learned that Tom Dundon does not care what is being said about him.
A lot of times owners come in, they say that, and it turns out to not be the case. So far, God bless, that seems to be one thing we’ve learned. He’s cool with it. So I think some are kinda happy that he wants to take all the fire on there, and then we don’t have to have all these coaches, and we don’t have to give the players everything they want, and we don’t have to have all the extra meals, and all that. They’re OK with it.
But the way he came in was just strange. If you wanna wait six months and do that stuff, that’s one thing. To do it two months after buying the team, before the playoff and the playoff games … We have check-in questions about whether the guys can stay for massage therapists, can do late checkout, and two-way players can go to playoff games. It’s just strange. The thing that’s, I think, working in his favor probably and against people who are maybe on the other end of it is that fact that he just won a Stanley Cup. That sort of validates and vindicates, in his mind clearly, that the way I do things is the proper way to do it.
Miller: To cut to the chase here, Mike, when the current lease is up and the future of the Blazers that we’re talking about will have come to pass, how likely do you think it is that the Blazers will be in Portland?
Vorkunov: Call me a romantic, but I’m gonna say it’s more likely than not. I think they’ll stay.
Weitzman: Give us a number. Come on.
Vorkunov: A number? Oh man, 60%. How about that?
Miller: And Yaron, just briefly, how much do you think the departure of the Sonics to Oklahoma City from Seattle is hanging over this?
Weitzman: That’s an interesting question. Short answer, I don’t know. But I would guess that Adam Silver is very aware of how that’s sort of a blemish on the legacy of David Stern. Adam Silver strikes me as somebody who cares about his legacy. He cares about appeasing the owners more. But I would guess he’s aware of that and probably does not wanna lose the team. Especially after having said, I expect I would like the Blazers to remain in Portland. So I do think that there’s an impact there.
Miller: Yaron and Mike, thanks very much.
Weitzman: Thanks.
Vorkunov: Thank you.
Miller: Yaron Weitzman is an NBA writer, the author of two books including “A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers.” Mike Vorkunov is a national NBA and business reporter for The Athletic and the host of “The Business Decision” podcast.
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