Who Is New Trail Blazers Owner Tom Dundon? | Dirt & Sprague

Who Is New Trail Blazers Owner Tom Dundon? | Dirt & Sprague

All right, let’s do this. Final hour during this break here on Portland Sports Leader 1051 FM. The fan 1080 a.m. live on YouTube Odyssey app. Hello everybody. Happy Wednesday. Good morning. Hope you’re getting your hump on. Hell yeah. We went from a factor feelings college football hour to maybe some massive breaking news on the horizon. Uh is there anybody we can text locally that would get the scoop on this? Is anybody like we would know? Well, there’s only one scoop right now and it’s Scottnik and I’m trying I have his car Twitter, but I don’t have an email. Okay. Well, we’ll see if we can find any information there. If you’re just uh jumping in your car and heading to work this morning or turning the show on, uh the news is coming out from Sporico. I wish you could DM people again. Yeah, thanks a lot, Elon. If you have a blue check, you can you can’t DM people with blue checks unless you have a blue check. You got to pay for that blue check. You’re not We’re not not letting you in our DMs, not paying for Twitter every month. What are you thinking over there? I don’t know where people are in sportico as an entity, but like when you have a quote from the dude and they’re like pubbing it as their top story. This is the editor-inchief of the by line. Yeah. It reminds me I remember when um was when Oregon was looking for their head coach when Crystal Ball left and Lanning ended up being a name that nobody really talked about or referenced and all the local guys who tried to pretend as if I got the inside scoop and I’m going to break the news and it ended up being a random guy at a newspaper in Atlanta that broke the news that Dan Lanning was coming to Oregon and everybody’s like, “Who the hell is this guy? Never heard of him before. I guess it’s true.” And then we all had to spend, you know, an hour googling who the hell Dan Lanning is. Oh, that’s right. D coordinator at Georgia. Reminds me kind of of that of like we just we don’t go to this outlet very often. I’ve never heard of these writers, but uh they got I mean they got a lot of followers on social media if you believe that was I just don’t go necessarily to the website very often. So if you’re jumping in your car this morning wondering what are we talking about? What is the breaking news? The breaking news uh is that there is reportedly a new owner is set uh for the Portland Trailblazers. We’ve known that for a while they’re for sales. Great news to be a Blazer. the great day to be a Blazer that they we found out the news that Jody and the Allen estate was going to sell. Just waiting on how long it’s going to take. Maybe it was going to take months. Maybe it was going to take years. Usually takes a long time to untangle all these things. But the report this morning is that Tom Dundan who is the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes. I’m texting our guy um we have a guy over in Charlotte that does a radio show and they talk about the Hurricanes from time to time. I’m going to text him. Okay. And see what he what’s the feeling. That’s the vibe. Yeah. What are people saying about him? Tom Dundon owns the Carolina Hurricanes. He became the primary owner of the Hurricanes in 2021. Actually, majority owner in 2018. He’s the sole owner as of 2021. Now, NBA valuations and NHL valuations are a little bit different. Um, the Blazers are going to cost more money. So, there’s going to be a lot of different cooks in the kitchen here, if you will, because I don’t think he has the, you know, the net worth to solely buy this thing on his own. So, there’s going to be a lot of managing partners in this thing. Um, but he is considered, at least in hockey circles, a relatively good owner and a guy who has tried to win and tried to be aggressive and all of that. And so, this might end up being a really good day for Blazer fans. Time will tell. There is a quote in the Sportical article from Tom Dundan uh saying that he is very excited. And the biggest question in all of this for Blazer fans that we’ve unfortunately had to actually spend time on here in the last couple of weeks is will they ever entertain the idea of leaving after Adam Silver said they’re going to need a new arena or a renovated arena. Yep. And Tom Dundan according to the sporticical article is already out of the gate saying there was zero intention of moving the organization out of Portland. And I think him owning Carolina is a is a good case study for that of you wouldn’t know it if you didn’t watch hockey and you don’t follow the sport. Sure. We were just talking with Patrick uh in the break about this like Raleigh is not a hockey hoted. It’s not known as a hockey central area. Yeah. The fan base and the passion that they have there is massive. They are a very big deal in Raleigh, North Carolina. One of the most passionate fan bases in the NHL. And the idea of him having kind of a smaller market NHL team that with a loyal fan base, it’s exactly who the Blazers are in the NBA. They’ve done it longer than the Carolina Hurricanes have. There’s no doubt about that. But a a good sign at least out of the gate that he’s excited, he’s buying the team, and he has no plans on moving them out of Portland. Yeah, it’s just doing uh I guess research to find out I guess more about him. Uh but you know what? If he’s coming out and saying it, then that’s great. Uh it should be noted it’s not he doesn’t say 0% chance of moving. The actual quote is they intend to keep the team in Portland. Very true. I you know I’m our guy Bill Orum by the way has tweeted out that our guy Bill Orm at the Oregonian he is saying that he is hurting he can confirm the sportical report that the Blazers have reached a deal to sell to a group led by Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundan with intent to keep the team in Portland. Story to come. Somebody said that guy’s a Trump donor. I’m like yeah well rich people man. What have we done? Are the Blazers staying in Portland? Does he care about winning? It’s a sports. Okay. Get your politics out of my sports. Yeah, like come on. Shut up and dribble. Stick to politics. Okay, you stick to politics. I’m gonna stick to stick stick to sports here. Although there is a UFC fight happening, so now we’re mixing in the politics with sports. Look, I’ll just say this though. We need to do more. I’m uh efforting to get somebody from Charlotte that’s familiar with him as an owner for more background on him. But by all reports, sounds like, you know, like there’s no guarantee there’s a title out of this. is he apron of what I would say is at least a track record established as a sports owner. It’s not one that you go I don’t know you know it’s at least one that’s like dude that’s that’s going well good track record and tends to keep in Portland. So I’m sure he’s going to get a little political and talk about hey let’s how we looking at this and also has other people in the group that are financially backed. Yes, he’s not the richest owner by any stretch. Nope. I think his net worth is just over three bill. So, yeah, not the deepest pockets in the world. That doesn’t mean you can’t win. N uh the net the NBA champion owner is not I think he’s one of the poorest owners in the league. Uh so, it’s more about what your group is, get you find your footing, and then let’s figure out this arena situation. But as an owner, our only sample size is what he currently is doing, and that is he had one of the more exciting NHL teams on ice this season. They came up short in the playoffs. I believe they lost to the Panthers if I’m not in the conference finals if I’m not wrong. I think Carolina went to the conference finals. So like he’s got a good track record in that regard and that’s all we can go off of because that’s all the information we’ve been given. Yeah. I just I will say this just from my perspective. I think just awesome day in general because the sooner Jody is out the better for me. Um, and the happier that I am as a fan, never giving an interview, never sharing a vision or a message about what you want to accomplish, like it just was inexcusable that it was allowed to go on for this long. So, this a great day that we’re one step closer. My biggest fear in the sale outside of the obvious of the team moving, right, was that it still a fear for you? No, I’m not saying it is. I’m just saying outside of that was that this process might take a year just to find a buyer. Sure. and then another year or two untangle everything and you might be looking at two more years of kicking this can down the road and so to have a sale go through so quickly now it’s still got to be approved and all like there’s still a lot of hurdles they got to jump through there’s no doubt but to have that finality of it reached much quicker than I thought going in um to me is great because then that means you start the clock a little bit sooner on how long she can get out and how long the new owner or how quickly I should say uh the new new owner can take over. So, all that stuff is very encouraging for me. Um, very excited about somebody who’s clearly passionate about sports, clearly invests and wants to win with his organizations, is willing to do interviews and talk about what his thoughts are and where the team should go and what the plan is and all of those things that we have been lacking and missing for the last six, seven years in an organization for a lot of fans that would say, “I can’t really take you seriously until I know what the long-term vision is and who the owner is that’s. It’s calling the shots on the direction that you’re going to go.” having those things answered might end up being a really good thing. Also, just to be noted like as many there are some positives, the upgrade to the facility, the the G-League team, right? There are things I can point to during this weird in between era of Paul Allen, the estate, and now the new owner. I I just like sometimes you need to be judged by your track record in history and and that is right now that uh you know, no playoffs for four years. Dude, the last four years have been one of the worst stretches in the history of the organization. We’re giddy right now on a 36 win season. And so I think that’s also be nice. Like I get positive from a development standpoint. You can argue that the G-League team is a bit Nobody cares. Well, but it is important to have is all I’m saying and it didn’t exist and you eat some money to create that thing. They don’t make any money on ticket sales for that. No, because nobody’s going and that’s fine. I just in terms of overall organization success, it doesn’t feel it hasn’t felt great. Hasn’t felt great. GLeague is great for having a spot to send your back of the bench guys to go play for a couple of nights a week. That’s awesome. Um they I mean this has been one of the worst stretches in the history of the organization. Um with a lot of questionable decisions along the way, including losing the way that they did in the playoffs and deciding to run the entire roster back with Norm Pow starting as your small forward, firing your head coach who was beloved in the locker room to lean on and trust a general manager who built that roster that couldn’t win in the playoffs around Damen Lillard. Well, they also traded Dame and I know they got him back, but yeah. Yeah. and not having the balls as an owner to say, you know what, the time is now to make a move and let’s invest in the future and let’s change directions. Instead, they made Damen Lillard force their hand to trade them because they didn’t have the cojones to come out front and say, you know what, we can’t win with you and we’re going to get the best package possible. I just there’s a lot of things that I can nitpick over the last six, seven years. Being an owner is not easy. I’m not holding anybody to a championship or bus standard. Uh but there’s not been a lot of positives over the last seven years and I don’t understand anybody who argues the contrary. very excited that this might be an end. Tom Dundan looks like he’s going to be the new owner. Tom Dund. Now we go through the approval process from the NBA board of governors. Yeah. And Bill Orms confirmed it. So there you go. Big news today. Tom Dunan, new owner of the Blazers.

Dirt & Sprague take a deep dive on the new owner of the Portland Trail Blazers?

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