Rumor Does anyone here know if Portland denied Mr. Olshey termination/severance payments he was due?

Shot in the dark - by any chance do any of the fine Trail Blazers fans here know the answer to the question above? I'm an attorney and amateur journalist who is writing about the legal implications of what the Blazers did (pasted below) and I can't find the answer to the question anywhere. There are literally 100s of articles about the Olshey termination online and none of them answer this question.

The answer to this question would be relevant to your team's future -- because if your owner did use this "independent investigation" scam to screw Mr. Olshey out of termination payments, then it might make it hard to recruit elite managers -- those with options -- to work there. You need to be able to trust your team's owner.

Thanks




O'Melveny's suspicious "independent investigation" prompts a coordinated response

One aspect of the frivolous and entertaining world of sports is that owners will occasionally fire the team’s manager. George Steinbrenner was the archetype of such an owner, firing dozens of managers over his 30+ year tenure. He once changed managers three times in a season. But they were honest firings. As far as I know, the owners didn't try to swindle the manager out of severance payments they were entitled to under their contract. Well, according to reports, O’Melveny may have come up with a scheme to change that, prompting a reaction from National Basketball Association (“NBA”) general managers.

This all started with O’Melveny commencing a “fair” and “independent" investigation for Portland Trailblazers owner Jody Allen. The investigation will determine whether General Manager Neil Olshey bullied and intimidated staff members. (Yes, O’Melveny is going to judge this -- the firm whose principals praised torture and reportedly threatened rape victims and scientists. If I could tell you all the examples of bullying and intimidation that I heard of or saw at O’Melveny . . ..) O'Melveny will "submit its findings to team owner Jody Allen shortly, and a decision on Olshey’s future will be determined soon after."

Of course, in reality, the investigation may not be fair or independent. As I explained here, these investigations violate the most fundamental precept of the legal system -- that each side be represented by their own lawyer, who argue before an independent judge. In fact, if you want to know how O'Melveny will rule in an independent investigation, you may wish to figure out who in the organization pushed to hire them, and what that person wants. You may be surprised by how often this technique predicts the conclusions in O'Melveny's report.

And the NBA's general managers figured out what was going on – that Ms. Allen seems to be looking for a way to fire Mr. Olshey “for cause,” so as to screw him out of the termination payments he is due. As reported by Adrian Wojnarowski and Ramona Shelburne, “many top team basketball executives are fearful Portland is creating a blueprint for other ownership groups to invoke firing for cause and sidestep payment on contracts.”

The general managers responded by lawyering up themselves. They "are working to finalize the formation of a professional association that would collectively support executives with access to legal defense funds, lawyer referrals and public relations professionals[.]"

So what was once a relatively gentlemanly relationship between owner and general manager is now a morass of scheming and machinations, with lawyers billing by the hour to cherry-pick and spin for their side. And O'Melveny is quite proud of what they've done here. They advertised this story on their website; presumably gratified by the new revenue stream they've helped to create (and O'Melveny is milking this for all the billable hours they can get; they've already decided that they need to expand and extend the investigation past its original due date.)

[Addendum: O'Melveny's report concluded that Mr. Olshey violated the Portland Trail Blazers' "Code of Conduct," giving Ms. Allen the justification she needed to terminate Mr. Olshey's employment. The article doesn't say whether Portland also used O'Melveny's report to deny Mr. Olshey's termination payments (but I'm guessing they did.)]

https://www.omelvenymyersethics.org...dent-investigation-portland-trailblazers.html

 

No one knows that right now but violating the code of conduct would be grounds for firing with cause and without further pay. The team isn't going to say shit about if they paid Neil or not. If Neil doesn't say anything either then I would assume that they came to some agreement that paid him a fraction of what is owed... or the investigation exposed things about Neil that he doesn't want aired out if he goes on the offensive to get more money from the team.

 

I suspect you're right. And I understand the hypothetical calculation that might going on (if I pay a law firm $150,000 for a report, and that saves me $2 million I would have otherwise had to pay Mr. Olshey, then it's worth it because I netted $1.85 million.) But it might have been penny wise pound foolish, in that it might scare away possible future hires. Who knows though I don't have a crystal ball.

Interesting legal development though.

 

I wholeheartedly suspect Olshey has been in contact with John Gruden's attorney team and is drafting the lawsuit as I type this. Neil knows where the Allen family and Vulcan's skeletons are buried and you'd be a fool not to use that as leverage.

 

^ Neil’s burner account

 

And as the OP pointed out, if this is truly a scam to get out of paying him his severance than it'll kill any chance of bringing in next-level talent to the President and GM position/s.

 

Not buying it. Just like the rest of the drama from this summer. But go figure, a former soap actor creating a toxic and drama filled environment and releasing his spin into the media. All this heresy and conjecture seems futile IMHO.

The league GMs were already forming this professional association long before this investigation -- not because of this investigation.

Good luck with your amateur vendetta-filled journalism career though, hopefully you earn more business from it.

 

any candidate who felt that way you wouldn't want to hire in my view...that's like saying, "I need to be able to abuse office relationships if I get hired" There's no scam in this firing in my view...just cost savings leading to solving a problem.

 

So the other NBA GMs forming a hastily put together "union" doesn't make you think this isn't on the minds of every NBA top exec out there? Many of us sign a standards document which gives our employer the right to fire us with cause. The fact that GMs around the league were categorizing our Blazer investigation as a hit job should tell you what everyone else is thinking. IF ANYTHING, this should have been a on the court reason given for his release. He should have went when Stotts did quite frankly. That argument would have been more defensible than a behind the scenes investigation with no comments to the public being made. I think this is going to get messy and will drag out a LONG time... I hope I'm wrong.

 

PA Trust

 

I don't believe the other GM's were categorizing anything about the investigation other than a suspicion that the terms used as a basis of the investigation were legal terms, like "toxic work environment". Do you have any links where another GM spoke, on the record, about this?

I'd also think that if the GM's try and form some kind of 'association' that is in any was similar to a union, the owners will have a fairly negative reaction

 

"Hastily" forming a union since last season? Lol. Every other employee group in NBA has something similar.

 

Hey all, Thanks for your replies. I do appreciate chatting with people online and learning other people's perspectives, and I hope it all works out for Portland. I remember as far back as the Drexler days and it's a solid basketball town. But apropos of my post . . . I just read that you all are probably getting Scott Perry as your new GM. See the links below re: what Knick fans thought of him, and notice that Portland did not get one of the top GMs in the league. Not saying this confirms my hypothesis but it's interesting.

https://nypost.com/2021/12/04/knicks-scott-perry-emerges-as-candidate-for-blazers-opening/

https://nypost.com/2019/12/06/knicks-also-must-fire-steve-mills-and-scott-perry/

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2111378

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/sports/basketball/scott-perry-knicks.html

Top 5 GMs in the NBA: https://www.sportskeeda.com/basketball/nba-power-rankings-listing-top-5-gms-league/2

In comparison, just recently, one of my city's teams -- USC football -- poached one of the top college football coaches, Lincoln Riley. He was under contract at Oklahoma until 2026 -- but USC opened up their wallet to not only pay him huge bucks, but also pay to get him out of his Oklahoma contract. https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nca...usc-oklahoma-coach/11a58kdcmmd6910y5lbw27wync

If indeed Portland is so cheap and scheming that they used lawyers to scam a GM out of his termination payment (again, if, I don't know that they did that) -- then they're probably never going to open up their wallet like USC did, and so I guess you all better hope to strike lightning and find a diamond in the rough somewhere.

 

Maybe when the team signs a new GM for big bucks it will stop all of the presumption that the investigation and firing for cause was a sham.

 

https://theshadowleague.com/a-union...for-lawyers-in-wake-of-neil-olshey-situation/
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id...tland-trail-blazers-investigation-sources-say
https://new.in-24.com/sport/News/293608.html

And no GM in their right mind is going to go on record individually to support this organization. That's why they're speaking as a group. Is this type of behavior pervasive in the NBA? Sure it is... not unlike every other organization in the world. Without the transparency from the Blazers regarding their findings, this doesn't pass the smell test to me.

 

You posted a link to some rando's opinion of the "top GMs in the league" (Rob Pelinka? Yeah, his reputation is really high right now...clearly the #1 GM in basketball) and noted that the Blazers didn't get one of them--despite the fact that teams rarely/never poach existing GMs, unless that GM is looking to leave his current team.

I hope your journalism is of higher quality than this, because this is fairly low-effort trolling.

 

What I meant was this was on the table for GMs for some time, but the Blazers/Olshey mess sped up the process tenfold.

 

From your own links:

While these steps originated in March and predate the organizational investigation into Portland Trail Blazers president of basketball operations Neil Olshey, that situation has further convinced front-office executives of the need for such an association, sources said.

The only fact there is that they were doing this well before any Olshey investigation. The rest is speculation, coming from an unreliable narrator, considering Wojnarowski's closeness with Olshey.