Blazers are officially for sale

tester551 · Post #1 » by **tester551** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:11 pm

Read on Twitter

mighty_duck · Post #2 » by **mighty_duck** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:20 pm

"Only" took 7 years to get here. I expect a lot more feet dragging throughout the process.

Walton1one · Post #3 » by **Walton1one** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:26 pm

Oh happy day

zzaj · Post #4 » by **zzaj** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:29 pm

Wow! I'm genuinely surprised. I do wonder if the timing of this has anything to do with dropping in the lotto. I wonder if it would have changed anything for the sell if the Blazers move up into the Top 4.

oldfishermen · Post #5 » by **oldfishermen** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:30 pm

Dance party!
https://youtu.be/0p9o7sjjVJY?si=9J2bLf8gwsTo0XWf

red_power · Post #6 » by **red_power** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:31 pm

JESUS LORD THANK YOU VERY MUCH THIS IS THE BEST NEWS IN A DECADE

DusterBuster · Post #7 » by **DusterBuster** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:32 pm

Wow. I mean, wow.

I guess if anyone needed a distraction from the lottery, this is it.

DusterBuster · Post #8 » by **DusterBuster** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:37 pm

zzaj wrote:Wow! I'm genuinely surprised. I do wonder if the timing of this has anything to do with dropping in the lotto. I wonder if it would have changed anything for the sell if the Blazers move up into the Top 4.

The timing is suspect. I think this news was probably coming out regardless this summer, but maybe date upped due to disappointing lottery results.

That said, I'm not ready to jump for total joy yet... Lets see who the team gets sold to first...

If it's Phil Knight and Nike... than yeah... LFG. But if it's some no-name group with a disinterested majority owner from a VC or Hedge Fund group that is just using it to print money... then my excitement will be tempered.

PDXKnight · Post #9 » by **PDXKnight** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:49 pm

Woohoo!!

This is the one piece of news that is better than winning the lotto yesterday. Now I feel at peace especially if we get a good owner. We need a knight sell the team to pk!

Post #10 » by **DeBlazerRiddem** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:49 pm

DusterBuster wrote:That said, I'm not ready to jump for total joy yet... Lets see who the team gets sold to first...

If it's Phil Knight and Nike... than yeah... LFG. But if it's some no-name group with a disinterested majority owner from a VC or Hedge Fund group that is just using it to print money... then my excitement will be tempered.

Exactly.. could be an out of the frying pan into the fire type situation. Especially if new owners aren't too invested in keeping the team in the Portland market. I'm not sure what the current contract is with moda center but it is not at all beyond the realm of possibility that new owners would have an eye on moving the team.

PDXKnight · Post #11 » by **PDXKnight** » Tue May 13, 2025 5:56 pm

DeBlazerRiddem wrote:
DusterBuster wrote:That said, I'm not ready to jump for total joy yet... Lets see who the team gets sold to first...

If it's Phil Knight and Nike... than yeah... LFG. But if it's some no-name group with a disinterested majority owner from a VC or Hedge Fund group that is just using it to print money... then my excitement will be tempered.

Exactly.. could be an out of the frying pan into the fire type situation. Especially if new owners aren't too invested in keeping the team in the Portland market. I'm not sure what the current contract is with moda center but it is not at all beyond the realm of possibility that new owners would have an eye on moving the team.

Im optimistic here. The nba seems high on the Portland market and I think this market would be motivated to build a new arena if the Blazers were on the line. They've come through for baseball.

Also I think knight will pony up. This feels like his team to lose he's gotta be considered the front runner here

Clipsz 4 Life · Post #12 » by **Tim Lehrbach** » Tue May 13, 2025 6:04 pm

Why would the Blazers need a new arena? If they do, they can pay for it.

Also curious why people want Phil Knight to buy the team. What makes him a good NBA governor?

DusterBuster · Post #13 » by **DusterBuster** » Tue May 13, 2025 6:18 pm

Tim Lehrbach wrote:Why would the Blazers need a new arena? If they do, they can pay for it.

Also curious why people want Phil Knight to buy the team. What makes him a good NBA governor?

I mean, we can ask this same question for nearly everyone. What makes ARod a good NBA governor for the Timberwolves? No one knows what really makes a great "owner" for a NBA franchise. Micky Arison is a awful cheap owner, he's also got titles and reloads the Heat all the time (largely because his team is in Miami).

The "hope" (which is all we have when discussing new owners) is that he can do what he did with the Ducks and make Oregon a destination franchise for players. He would have to do what Paul Allen did originally in the 90's with the Blazers, and what he also did in Eugene for the Ducks, namely... which is dump ungodly amounts of money into player experience. Top of the line travel experience, practice facilities, etc... all the things that make players lives easier outside of the game itself. That's how you get players' attention when you're not in a destination city.

Phil and his family also have very strong Portland roots and moving the team would likely never even cross their mind.

DusterBuster · Post #14 » by **DusterBuster** » Tue May 13, 2025 6:21 pm

PDXKnight wrote:
DeBlazerRiddem wrote:
DusterBuster wrote:That said, I'm not ready to jump for total joy yet... Lets see who the team gets sold to first...

If it's Phil Knight and Nike... than yeah... LFG. But if it's some no-name group with a disinterested majority owner from a VC or Hedge Fund group that is just using it to print money... then my excitement will be tempered.

Exactly.. could be an out of the frying pan into the fire type situation. Especially if new owners aren't too invested in keeping the team in the Portland market. I'm not sure what the current contract is with moda center but it is not at all beyond the realm of possibility that new owners would have an eye on moving the team.

Im optimistic here. The nba seems high on the Portland market and I think this market would be motivated to build a new arena if the Blazers were on the line. They've come through for baseball.

Also I think knight will pony up. This feels like his team to lose he's gotta be considered the front runner here

Yes, but there's also some strange bad blood between Vulcan's and Nike. Maybe that can be overcome when the primary stakeholders leave the negotiations and the lawyers for both sides do the leg-work, but there's no question that Knight and Nike pissed off the Vulcan's when they made a very public pitch to buy the Blazers in 2023... but money talks in the end of the day.

Wizenheimer · Post #15 » by **Wizenheimer** » Tue May 13, 2025 6:23 pm

* about the team moving: the odds of that are small...tiny....about equal to the 1.8% odds of Dallas winning the lottery

* the NBA has already started the process of expansion to 32 teams with the primary candidates being Las Vegas and Seattle. That's two western conference teams-in-waiting with OKC and Memphis being the expected teams to move to the EC. Seattle to the NW division; Las Vegas to the Southwest division.

* I'm not sure if Phil Knight is still inerested. Maybe. But I know somebody who knows somebody and the scuttlebutt was that Jody Allen and Bert Kolde really ticked-off PK with the way they responded to his two semi-formal offers to buy the Blazers

* not a coincidence, IMO, that this news comes the day after the lottery. I'd wonder how much the sale price would have increased if Portland had the #1 pick....500M?

* Seattle mothership had to know about this for months. Kind of makes the Cronin/Billups extensions look like rewards for being good soldiers. A new owner may clean house of management

DusterBuster · Post #16 » by **DusterBuster** » Tue May 13, 2025 6:24 pm

The worst possible outcome of a sale for an owner imo is they get Maverick'd. Meaning they get sold to some rich VC/Hedge fund group and the main stakeholder of the VC just lets his clueless son who's watched a few basketball games run the team. We should all be holding our breath that doesn't happen.

The hope is you get a ownership group in here who has some sort of sports, preferably basketball, background to come in. Again, another notch in the belt for Nike and Phil.

DusterBuster · Post #17 » by **DusterBuster** » Tue May 13, 2025 6:27 pm

Wizenheimer wrote:* I'm not sure if Phil Knight is still interested. Maybe. But I know somebody who knows somebody and the scuttlebutt was that Jody Allen and Bert Kolde really ticked-off PK with the way they responded to his two semi-formal offers to buy the Blazers

Yeah, this would be disappointing if it's the case... my gut would say even with him getting pissed off, I'm not sure that would be enough to make him write off the idea completely. It was also 2 years ago now that those overtures were made, a decent amount of time to hold a grudge, but I'm also not PK, so who knows...

Wizenheimer · Post #18 » by **Wizenheimer** » Tue May 13, 2025 6:35 pm

DusterBuster wrote:
Wizenheimer wrote:* I'm not sure if Phil Knight is still interested. Maybe. But I know somebody who knows somebody and the scuttlebutt was that Jody Allen and Bert Kolde really ticked-off PK with the way they responded to his two semi-formal offers to buy the Blazers

Yeah, this would be disappointing if it's the case... my gut would say even with him getting pissed off, I'm not sure that would be enough to make him write off the idea completely. It was also 2 years ago now that those overtures were made, a decent amount of time to hold a grudge, but I'm also not PK, so who knows...

well, he's a pretty successful businessman so I'd imagine he's negotiated many times with people he detests

but he's not going to get squeezed by anybody, IMO, and Jody & Bert sure seem like squeezers

Post #19 » by **DaVoiceMaster** » Tue May 13, 2025 6:37 pm

Phil is 87-years old. Not sure what he has left in the tank.

zzaj · Post #20 » by **zzaj** » Tue May 13, 2025 6:42 pm

I'm not particularly a fan of Phil Knight...he has a laundry list of "Will Vinton"s in his business dealings, even if there is some good to offset that. He's also 87 years old. How many years until the team is embroiled in his estate?

I do think he'd be a better option than some of the alternatives, however.