As the NBA enters a busy offseason, Ron Wyden has tough words for any moneyed interests looking to take the Portland Trail Blazers out of Rip City: “Nobody takes the Blazers team out of town unless they stomp all over me in broad daylight,” the Oregon senator tells Rolling Stone.
The Trail Blazers are up for sale, at a moment when NBA franchises are fetching astonishing valuations. In March, the Boston Celtics changed hands for $6 billion; the Lakers agreed to be sold for $10 billion earlier this month. The sale announcement for the Blazers, made in May, is making locals nervous, because the most-obvious potential local buyer, Nike billionaire Phil Knight, has announced he won’t be bidding on the team.
The Blazers have been in Portland since joining the NBA as an expansion franchise in 1970, winning a championship later that decade with Bill Walton at center in 1977. The team has a storied place in NBA lore — from Clyde-the-Glide to the Jailblazers to Dame Time — and has shaped the city’s identity. A play-by-play announcer’s spontaneous coinage of “rip city” — to describe a tough game-tying shot — has morphed to become a Portland moniker akin to “The Big Apple” to describe New York City.
The Blazers are owned by the estate of the late Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen. When Allen died in 2018, he left instructions that his sports holdings, which also include the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, should be sold and the proceeds be directed to charity. Allen’s sister Jody is the executor of the estate, but she has been in no hurry to unload the franchises, maintaining that the “complexity” of the estate means it could take 20 years to unwind. In an open letter in 2022, she wrote: “There is no pre-ordained timeline by which the teams must be sold.”
In the case of the Blazers, Jody Allen has reportedly spurned multiple offers in recent years from Knight to buy the team. Knight’s iconic sports company is based in the Portland suburb of Beaverton, and Nike’s brand is deeply linked to NBA athletes — starting with Michael Jordan. Knight is now 87 and insists he’s no longer in the running to own the team: “Five years ago, when I was a younger man, I had a great interest in being a part of the Portland Trail Blazers franchise,” he said in a statement. “However, at my current age, I can confirm that I no longer have interest in acquiring the team.”
The league has made clear that this season’s NBA offseason meetings are going to include talks about expansion. Western cities that have been vying for franchises include Las Vegas and Seattle — which lost its Sonics franchise in a move in 2008 to Oklahoma City, where the Thunder just won this year’s championship. Absent expansion, the economic incentives for smaller-market franchises to relocate is exacerbated. (Las Vegas, for example, recently enticed major league baseball’s Athletics to ditch Oakland for The Strip.)
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The Oregon public is antsy about a potential Blazers departure, and the state legislature introduced a resolution in recent days highlighting the team’s economic importance to the local economy and urging the NBA and the franchise “to make a lasting commitment to keep the team based in Oregon for generations to come.”
Local fans have a fierce advocate in Wyden, a one-time collegiate basketball player who just so happens to be a pal of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, in addition to being the powerful ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. The Oregon senator recalled to Rolling Stone how he and Silver met in Washington 40 years ago when Wyden was a “kid Congress-critter” recently elected to the House, and Silver was an intern for then-Rep. Les AuCoin (D-Ore.). Wyden and Silver became fast friends and still speak regularly.
When the sale of the team was first announced, Wyden wrote a tactful open letter to the NBA insisting there’s “no place in America with a deeper base of hoops support than in Portland.” He added: “I stand ready to contribute however I can to continuing the long-established and successful partnership between Portland and the NBA.”
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In his interview with Rolling Stone, Wyden was far more emphatic. “Nobody moves Portland, unless they move it over my dead soul,” he said.
When this reporter reacted with surprise at the senator’s intensity, Wyden doubled down: “You may think that’s a little bit ‘stark.’ I think it’s understated. We’re keeping our team in Portland. Period. End of discussion, for Tim and anybody who asks.”