I see. I guess that can be helpful. I am a little skeptical of it benefiting anyone other than the 2-way players but I have not really been paying attention to how other teams use it.
Phil Knight lives wherever he wants to but he owns Eugene for the most part. Built a state of the art basketball arena as well. Everything is here already including a huge student population..better than the Boise Idaho Stampede as far as ticket sales I'm sure. He donated half a billion dollars to the U of O....I'd say he's pretty invested here.
And much like the "Idaho Stampede", our G-League team could be named after the state instead of the city. The Oregon Explorers (or something much, much better).
It's been good for young coaches to learn the ropes too. Right now if the Blazers send someone down they're playing for another organization that has no reason to develop someone else's players and you also can't force them to work specifically on certain areas. Take Greg Brown for example, if they had their own G-League team every day with him down there they'd have custom coaching/workouts to improve certain areas instead of just randomly playing on someone else's team. I do think they're headed towards making each team have a minor league G-League team, I'm surprised they haven't yet since Portland is one of the only holdouts to it. With that would come a different set of rules most likely, including expanding the draft. I think it would really help bolster the G-League if it was more like "look at all this young talent Orlando has on their G-League squad" or whatever. I'd definitely pay attention more.
Hopefully this will help quell the outrage of never being able to ask these questions outside of a free agent press conference...
He has a place here outside of Redmond also. They could play in the Pavilion at the Fairgrounds. The Blazers use to play preseason games there.
At least until the Sonics come back, a G-League team in Tacoma makes a lot of sense. They have an arena the Blazers have used before and it's easy to get back and forth. Eugene also works, assuming they could use Matthew Knight Arena. The airport there is big enough to fly in and out and the commute isn't bad if you have to drive it.
Also in the winter you don't have the black ice or weather you get further north down here in Eugene....having the largest university in the state is also good for ticket sales. I think Eugene is perfect...Bend doesn't have the population in my view and students turn up in Eugene for sports. I would want the revenue in state if it were my choice and Eugene and Corvalis are within 45 miles of each other so you'd get students from both the big schools. I'm completely biased because I would become a season ticket holder if they move to Eugene...takes me half an hour to drive to Mathew Knight Arena.
As a Duck fan, I am not sure I want it in Eugene. I want the local residents to actually go to the U of O men's BB games first. And the students are not going to spend money/time to go to a professional game when they barely go to their school's game. (Although the women's team has a decent following) Tacoma does not make long-term sense if the Sonics are coming back. Boise to me seems to be a smarter long-term move based on market size. Make this growing city Blazer fans instead of Jazz fans. It is a short flight
NBA expanding g-league to include 18yos as well would help to regain market share regarding prospects as well or something along those lines
