Local Leaders Back The Blazers & Commit To Their Future In Portland | Dirt & Sprague

Local Leaders Back The Blazers & Commit To Their Future In Portland | Dirt & Sprague

Hey, let’s do this final hour. Dirt and Spre here probing your ears for one more hour. Four hours a day now, baby. Got a lot to get to in the final hour of the show. I wish we could have the conversation with Patrick Harris on the air, but we will not. I don’t. The firm of Harris and Merang coming up in an hour. They’re getting ready. P Harris is in here cooking up takes. It’s been great having the fourth hour. Uh it’s thrown my days off a little bit. Leaving work some attorney client privilege in there. Yeah, we’re I’ll Yeah, dude. I’m gonna play the fifth on that one. Whatever that conversation was way is what I would say that was. We will not talk about that topic in the final hour of the show, but we will talk about the effort to keep the Blazers in Portland. This came out yesterday and it started with a coalition of business owners, former players, former politicians or attempted politicians. Basically, the group is comprised of Clyde. How about Clyde Draxster being involved in this thing, dude? Now that Jod’s finally on the way out and Bert’s not gonna be calling shots anymore’s back. Clyde’s in this thing. We got a new owner coming in. I’m back, baby. He did the interview where he basically said, remember what was it? The what team did they honor this year? 90 one of the finals teams the ’90s teams and he didn’t show up. He wasn’t there for it. He did an interview. He was like, “Dude, I’m not going anywhere near Jody Allen and Burke Cole. I want nothing to do with receipts.” Yes. He is not happy. And so he clearly is uh back in the fold now that the team will be up for sale. You still hold grudges against anybody at any one point of your life the way he’s holding the grudge against Burke Cold? Oh, I can’t think. What year was Clyde traded? 95. 945. Yeah. 95. Yeah, cuz they won 94. They won 94 and then he went 95 and was on the second title. It’s been 30 years. Yeah. I Yeah. No. Anybody like anybody traumatized you from elementary school? You still know the name and you’re like, still hate you. Not really. I hold a grudge against my high school for not putting me in the Hall of Fame. That’s almost been 20 years now. So, that’s probably the closest one I got. Cleveland, come on, man. What are we doing here, dude? You’re building You’re building a new school. They’re getting a new school. They’re going to put a I’m sure a new cool Hall of Fame ring. Last time they You said you won the PIO. 2006. Last P. Last time they did it. How many PIO football titles Cleveland has in their history? One. 1947 to 2006. Cleveland. What are we doing? This is for you. I’m right here. You want the free PR? You want some pub on the air? I’m right here, baby. Put me in. So, the high school, your own high school. Yeah, that’s my beef. That’s my beef. Yeah. I don’t have any beef. I’ve held on to the way. Uh, what would you want named after you? That’s appropriate. Oh, I don’t know if I want anything named after me yet. That’s more of like when you pass away kind of thing. I feel like school hall of fame is pretty. Just get me in the Hall of Fame. Like, give me a little little thing on the wall, you know, with the other names. I don’t know if even know if they have a Hall of Fame or if it’s just a symbolic thing. But I digress. Park Crows only has like two or three names. Yeah, we’re letting everybody in. We’re like the basketball hall of fame at Cleveland. That’s what makes it sting even more. They have a lot of people, dude. There’s people going in. I’m like, “You’re going in.” Like, you went to school with them, so you know that you’re going in. Is Sam Tong one of them? You’re going Sam Tong is not in the Hall of Fame. Uh Clyde Drexler’s back in the fold. Uh Chris Dudley, who ran for governor once, who famously didn’t live here, but ran for governor. One of our former bosses. Yeah. Can I I saw the name and I went, look, he knows the He knows politicians. It’s fine. I I know. Whatever. He running for governor and living in Vancouver was not a not a great call. But he probably sent this from Seattle. Uh former or the the former head of the Oregon Business Council, and you’re not going to know that name. Uh different former politicians, the CEO of Salt and Straw is in here. That’s a big deal, dude. Salt and Straw has blown up. They had The Rock as an endorser for a long time. That’s a big deal to get somebody like that. So basically, they wrote the letter to the governor and the mayor. The governor and the mayor are now saying, “Yes, we agree.” They’ve written a letter to the commissioner and in their initial uh basically, you know, kind of pitch to the city, here’s what they said. Quote, “For example, replacing the Moa Center with a new arena at the Lloyd Center or another central city location could not only secure the Blazers future in Portland, but would revitalize downtown and create an even greater opportunity for the futures of the Albina neighborhood and Albina Vision Trust, the largest uh restorative redevelopment effort ever undertaken in the United States.” said to sound that one out. Annuity. No, you did the thing where I don’t know if you said it 100% right, but you did it well enough to get right past it. Uh, and then CEO and Wilson wrote, “We fully support renovating the Moa Center to become a point of pride for the Blazers and for our city. We’re prepared to explore public private partnerships needed to make it happen.” They wrote, “The Blazers are in our DNA and at the center of what makes this community so special.” So, the the whole pitch wrote Tina Cotek’s part. uh whoever her top assistant is, who her speech writer is. He’s the biggest Blazer fan here. Does anybody know anything about basketball? We need you to write a statement here. Maybe she is a die hard, though. How funny would that be? That’d be interesting. And they’ve also said, “Look, it doesn’t have to be a new arena. We’re totally fine completely renovating the Moa Center. The city owns the arena now. Remember, they bought it from the Blazers a couple of years ago.” And saying essentially, as long as there is a buildup around it, like that could be another viable path. But I, you know, we roll our eyes a lot at the local politicians and I get it because they have not been on the right side of the sports fan argument largely over the last 30 years. I feel like at least in this moment of time, mainly because of what our city has gone through over the last 5 to six years and the lack of national interest in traveling here and the the the degradation that has happened with our city name. Some of it deserved, some of it undeserved. I it does seem like there is a now symbiotic relationship between the two sides of saying we cannot let this happen. It would our economy. It would not be good. Businesses are already leaving to begin with. Oh yeah. And we need to be on the same page here. And at least that’s a that’s a good place to start in an effort to build a new arena or completely facelift the MOT center. I mean look I I think the facelift of the Motus Center is is like very necessary. The district thing has been talked about at Nauseium at this point. like obviously we need that to be a district. It’s a terrible area. There’s nothing there. There’s old stacks in a building that should not exist, but it does that they’re renovating as well. I, you know, selfishly, we talked about Lloyd Center earlier in the show, and I think it’s cool all these business owners are getting a a cheap lease option to have businesses. I’m a big supporter of that. I think that’s, you know, weirdly, just growing up and living here my whole life. It’s why I kind of like it. It’s I am one of those weirdos that way. went to Lloyd Center a lot when I was a kid, man. Come conditioned to unique business things going on. I I hope those people can continue their businesses, but I also selfishly look at that area and wish there was more. Uh I I feel like as close as we get to turning a corner and maybe doing the right thing, we turn the other way and we’re like, we’re going to attack agro tourism and we’re going to destroy all of these family farms for no reason other than to appease other people, right? And then it takes massive amounts of complaints and letters to be written to say actually, okay, small farm owners, you can continue selling your blueberries and having little concerts on your property. That’s okay. Like I don’t know why we attack certain things and make certain decisions. This is just one of those like it’s hard to believe that we don’t as a city look at it as an investment. And I’m not saying like bail out an owner who’s a multi-billionaire or a group and pay for the entire thing and say spend $2.5 billion. But I think to Swag’s point earlier, it’s more like if the ownership group, whoever it be, says we have some money, how can the city contribute money in a positive way? And a district to me is a positive thing of like are you going to attract businesses? Are you making livable areas that people want to be around? uh by doing that are you then are you then in turn I guess enticing other things around that area or close across the river in the city to to be built up more? I think there are real adult conversations that can be had versus just simply going guys spending a billion dollars on stadiums never pays off. Like I don’t think it’s that cut and dry here. If we had fixed all of our potholes I would understand the argument a little bit better but every time I drive I’m feeling like my truck’s going to fall apart. No, I’m with you there. And then like I I’m I love this city. I do like uh fundamentally love it. I love all the quirks about it. I also see all of the negatives that people point about it. I’m one that wants to continue participating in the city and not move away to the country hillside and then be scared guy who and moans but he never goes to it. I thought an interesting part was Sean Hiken wrote a blurb and he bought he brought up the jock tax that got passed by the MLB diamond project and he wrote this because people like to tout that as an option 800 million or whatever it was 800 million in jock tax. He says the funding structure probably won’t work for the Blazers because the funds for the baseball stadium come from income taxes on future ball player salaries rather than diverting money from taxes on NBA players that the city is already collecting and using for other more pressing matters. But if the state was willing to help out with a ballpark for the Portland Diamond Project, a group that doesn’t even have a publicly owned uh owner for the hypothetical baseball team that has mostly functioned as a merch company since 2018. I have to well I mean I have to think if it really came down to it they do what they’d have to do to help get an arena built and I I check that box for me argue with how much money cities should spend or never spend a dime. I believe there is a benefit to helping district get built up and what that can mean for it. Now, there’s a lot of details and a lot of questions, but I took the launch yesterday from that group and the leaders of we’re here. We will be sitting down having adult conversations about what this city needs to do to keep the team here. We desperately need to keep it here and whatever it takes. How long did the key arena renovation take? Do you guys remember when they actually made it climate pledge? When it started and they dug out the whole cuz I think the only thing they kept was the roof if I’m not mistaken. It’s just the structure outside historic thing. Yeah. You’re going to be there. I’ll be up there. I was I was up there when they did the key arena one. My brother I’m not counting that cuz that one was a disaster. So the outside walls of Climate, if you haven’t been there, have these massive uh windows. Yeah. My brother was one of the window pe all the windows in climate pledge. He taking pictures of it and send it to a year and a half. I think it was two and two to two and a half years. I guess the the question would become if we had to do something like that in the city, what did we do? Well, you said the coliseum is being renovated. Coliseum’s going under renovations right now. Yeah. What’s the capacity if if the seating is right for basketball max for the coliseum? Is it 13? Yeah. 12. Well, it was for years it was 12,66. So, let’s call it that just for argument sake. Could you play there for two years if you had to? You have no choice now. Climate. I mean, the this is why the alternative is building a new arena because you can continue to play in the MOA center until the new arena is built and then figure out what the hell you want to do with the arena. That’s great. Where are you building it? That’s the problem I have is like I think the renovation is the most realistic scenario here unless something big comes our way that we don’t know about. Yeah. The climate pledge part two. Now it’s important because they mentioned this I think in their announcement and their backing. It’s it’s waves of renovation. Climate pledge was empty. There was nothing needed for it. Uh the storm went and played at the Huskys arena. Yeah. And they had nothing else. So it was easy to say complete tear down gutting. do all you need to do. Swag, you and I I I don’t know about you, I went to Key Arena back in the day. I went to the Seattle Coliseum. There you go. It was as bland an arena. I’ve been in all three. You were there when they built the space. All three Seattle Coliseum. The key arena was as bland an arena as I’d ever been in. I thought it was cool cuz I want to see Gary Payeyton, but like not anything special. That was a complete gutting internally and all that stood was the bones. So this would be waves of renovation which I think is a really important factor here. They’re already doing it this summer I think with the scoreboard. Yeah, they’re starting because they got to get ready for the final four that’s coming to town in a couple of years. I you know if the worst case scenario is for a year or two seasons there needs to be like one of those waves massive renovation that not going to be done in time. You shut down right at the end of the year. Maybe you miss one season and then you’re ready for the start of the next season. But yeah, you got to figure something out. Yeah. Yeah. It’ll be interesting. I just I I’m glad that it seems like we’re I’m weirdly excited. Actually, I’m not fear-mongering. I’m kind of excited of where is this from yesterday, especially like this is great to have and I don’t know if they’ll be able to figure it out and cut through all the red tape. And there’s still a ton of hurdles that you got to overcome. Nobody’s denying that. You got to sell the damn team first and figure out what the owner wants to do. And maybe you sell to a Steve Balmer who’s like, “Dude, here’s a billion dollars. Let’s build a new stadium. I’ll do it. I got all the money in the world.” I may have mentioned this to you guys off the air during one of our Blazer segments when the sale was announced or maybe I said it on the air, but uh I I listened to a Simmons pod. He has a name like he’s heard a name that wants to bid on this team. He wouldn’t say the name obviously that’s a dude that’s, you know, he’s worth $200 million as a media entertainer. But was he the one that said Bezos was going to buy the Celtics or did he shoot that down? No, I think he had mentioned that he had heard Bezos, but Bezos was a popular name. I was told by a lot of people that Bezos was going to buy the Celtics. He just teased that he knew of at least a name that’s going to be in on the oxygen auctioning of because I think that’s how they’re doing that process. Yeah. Is like an auction for billionaires. Whatever. I’d love to see what masks they wear. I have it like as a sex party where they have weird masks and they auction it off with like crow masks on. Who bought it? You got to find out at the end. They take their mask off and you find out who the new owner of the team is. Whoa. Um, but he had said he had heard a name and so like I understand people are scared. They’re nervous this stuff comes out. I’m kind of living in a positive bubble here and I hope it not it’s not burst, but I I want my city I want our hometown to I want to have cool stuff, dude. I want to have fun stuff. Yeah. I want that good stuff. Like a new arena and concerts and a cool district to go to your stadium and things to do around the arena and an arena that remains inside the city limits and not built in Hillsboro or Damascus or wherever you have free land to go do what you want to do. I want us to get nice things. I always famously said the Blazers don’t get nice things. We deserve nice things. The Blazers Dame Lillard reaction and reunion was a good thing. I want nice things to happen. This is a nice thing. Hopefully, it’s a good start. We’ll see where it goes. But the group has put together former players, business uh executives coming together with now the governor and the mayor of the city to say keep your damn hands off our basketball team. The Blazers are staying in Portland. The group is called Rip City uh forever. And they’ve written a letter to the commissioner.

Former Trail Blazers legends, local business owners and now city/state politicians have sent a letter to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver backing the Portland Trail Blazers to keep them in Rip City.

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