It's official: Blazers Might Be for Sale

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">A fter months of paralysis, the two main protagonists in the Trail Blazers' financial disaster issued a cryptic, even arcane announcement Wednesday.

Vulcan, owner Paul Allen's management group, and Portland Arena Management proclaimed a sunny, new era, one in which they will "work together to examine ways to maximize value for their respective operations."

Thank you, Paul, for clearing everything up.

Thomas Luther of Portland Arena Management, the former creditors who now own the Rose Garden, offered this: "We see this process as potentially helping to accelerate the advancement of the Rose Garden for the benefit of our respective groups."

Covering this story must be like covering the Kremlin during the Cold War. Nothing is as it seems. Public statements are simply propaganda that must be filtered through a lens or two. The parties speak in code, a jargon purposely inscrutable for those outside the circle of trust.

So what is going on here?

The announcement would appear to indicate the franchise and Rose Garden are officially up for sale. To date, you'll remember, Allen has not said definitively that his beloved basketball team is for sale.

I'm not sure it's official just yet, but I'm sure of one thing: Allen and Portland Arena Management have agreed to set a price for the arena and the team -- even if they aren't ready to say what it is.

And it is about time. This sorry franchise has been stuck in limbo for months because of Allen's uncertainty about whether to sell. I suspect he vacillates on a daily basis about dumping the club. And I suppose it's not out of the realm that Allen might now attempt to reacquire the arena.

His best window to sell is rapidly closing. The NBA draft is three weeks away. Allen has a bit of leverage in that any new owner will want control of the draft choices and potential trades involving those choices. After the draft, however, any momentum in Allen's favor evaporates.

Two other things are clear from Wednesday's announcement.

This newfound partnership between Allen and the arena owners signals that Allen won't be putting the team into Chapter 11 bankruptcy anytime soon. If he were planning to do that -- and the team's financial losses certainly could qualify -- there is no need to forge an agreement with the arena group. If Allen were headed down that path, he would declare Chapter 11 and sell the team out of bankruptcy court, possibly to an out-of-state owner.

I'm sure the prospect of pulling the main tenant out the Rose Garden is tempting, after all of the bad blood between Allen and the arena owners. But that won't happen now.

The other thing that bodes well for Portland fans is it appears that Portland Arena Management reached an epiphany, too -- that the longer nothing happened, the more likely the team would be sold out of state.

Take Henry Samueli, for example. Samueli is the billionaire co-founder of Broadcom Corp, a computer chip maker in Irvine, Calif. Samueli, a UCLA professor and inventor, also owns the Mighty Ducks hockey team and the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim, the arena where the team plays. Samueli's biggest sports passion, however, is basketball and Anaheim has long coveted an NBA franchise.

Is this guy a viable owner? You bet, and the sort of individual owner Commissioner David Stern prefers to a consortium. </div>

Source