None of us have any idea of what he wants for this franchise or what's been worked out. If you have anything that suggests otherwise, please post it.
He keeps them there because it's L.A and you don't just give up on being in a big market if you're an NBA owner. Being a Seattle native, It would be easier for him to move the Blazers from Portland to Seattle because the move is less risky in terms of franchise value.
I'd love the Blazers to stay, but if they move, I'd free up so much more time......and money, for that matter. The ONLY reason I watch the NBA is for the Blazers. The league itself is unwatchable. What upsets me more is what this does to a potential NHL franchise in Portland.
Tried to read this but it's just a little to soon for me to come up with what could happen. I'm gonna let the dust settle and see what comes out of this. Blazers got a game Thursday. This thread did give some insight into peoples thoughts about the issue. Obviously it will be a hot button issue for a while.
Making moves on this team will probably be halted until a new owner is in place. There will at least one or 2 offers from former big time players like Kobe and Shaq and past Blazers like Porter and Clyde. I see the next buyer being a group not one individual buyer.
That's good enough to get the attention of the national media and commercial giants as well as players such as Chris Paul,Kawai,Butler etc.
The NHL is going to Seattle. They aren't going to have a team in both Seattle and Portland anytime soon. So you're upset about something that has nothing to do with this.
He says it for a few reasons, most notably being that he knows it will get noticed and that's what he gets his jollies off on saying edgy/unpopular/anti-hipster things (basically, he's the john canzano of s2). One thing fans seem to be forgetting (purposely or just out of ignorance) is that the NBA ownership landscape has changed in the last 5 years due to the globalization of the game, and the current TV contract the league signed with ABC/TNT Sports. It used to be that the teams were sold for hundreds of millions of dollars, and that it made sense that the teams would "dump" salaries to "save money". But A: that rarely actually happened, and B: it's more prevalent (and easier, due to no salary cap) in baseball than it is in any other sport. Also, like you said, the potential buyers of the franchise HAVE to be billionaires. To assume that they're so cheap that they're going to demand that certain players contracts are traded prior to them agreeing to purchase the team or that certain contracts will be dumped right after they purchase the team, shows a severe lack of understanding just how things are currently. When the salary cap was 50 million, it made more sense to get rid of bloated salaries. But now that the teams salary caps are over 100 million, the NBA has a very lucrative TV contract and (healthy) teams are worth 1 to 1.5 billion dollars? That's not to say that a new owner might be against the idea of paying into the lux tax, but I'm betting that a potential owner of one of the healthier franchise bases, isn't going to be someone who can just barely make the payments for the team in the first place.
Shaq already owns part of the Kings, and the only way Porter or Drexler are "part" of the group that would own the team would be as a talking head. Neither one of them has near enough money to be a viable part of the group. You guys act like there aren't billionaires out there who want to be part of the NBA.
Seriously, did you guys watch Canzano in this? He made me so angry. I said I wanted to punch him in the face last night, but feel even more angry today. He talks about how Paul's passing might be a good thing for the team because Paul's interests were so divergent and he wasn't able to give the team his undivided attention-- and thus the new ownership group (whomever that might be) will better serve the city. It takes an evil, mean spirited idiot to utter such a thing. Not only due to the lack of compassion, but it's just flat out wrong. Paul, if anything, was too involved in the day to day and so heavily invested in the team emotionally and financially. God how the hell does this guy not get more hate? Why has nobody run him out of town yet?
