There are, when it comes down to it, really only two ways to conduct a campaign for public money for a sports facility: good cop, and bad cop. You can work to field a winning team, and then argue that it deserves a stadium to match; or you can field a terrible one, and warn that it will never be any good without a new home. At the same time, you can play up the possibility of a team relocation as a carrot or a stick: that a new building is the best way to ensure the long-term future that everyone wants, or that if taxpayers don’t cough one up, you won’t hesitate to hit the road.
In general, the whole catching flies with honey vs. vinegar dichotomy applies well here: It’s harder to get the attention of the public or legislators if no one cares about your team and/or they’re busy burning you in effigy. But where it gets tricky is when you have an offer on the table, but you want a richer offer. That’s what’s going on in Portland, where Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon won a promise of a $600 million check from the city, county, and state, but only if he agrees to pay about $110 million worth of rent and payments in lieu of property taxes. How to say “Thank you for the lovely gift, but fuck off if you want me to pay anything at all” without sounding like, you know, a dick?
Here’s how one Blazers exec attempted to thread that needle on Monday:
“We’re committed to a deal that works for our ownership,” President of Business Operations Dewayne Hankins told reporters Monday during the team’s preseason media day at the Moda Center. “We’re committed to a deal that works for our public partners. We’re doing everything we can to ensure that the Trail Blazers stay right here.”…
Hankins assured reporters the team is “committed to Portland” but didn’t offer specific details about where Moda Center discussions stand, even when asked about sticking points from earlier in the summer.
The only way the Trail Blazers wouldn’t “stay right here” is if Dundon chose to move them elsewhere, so this is more than a little like a protection racket enforcer insisting he’s “doing everything I can” not to break your kneecaps. Dundon previously said that the only deal that works for him is one where he pays nothing (or less), so Hankins’ statement doesn’t indicate much more than a willingness to continue talking, and presumably a continuing unwillingness to give in even a smidge on the owner’s demands.
This is a honey-forward statement — the resulting Oregon Public Broadcasting headline stated “Trail Blazers executive emphasizes commitment to Portland” — but with just enough vinegar to try to keep city councilmemmbers scared. The problem he faces is that there’s no real reason for the Portland city council to cave here: If Dundon doesn’t sign a deal by the end of the year, his whole $600 million evaporates and he has to start again from scratch. It’s a game of chicken, in other words, and if chicken goes better with honey and carrots than … you know what, I’ll see myself out.
So, expansion will take Las Vegas and, presumably, Seattle out of play by year’s end, yeah?
The list of places Dundon could take the Blazers is already short. It feels like, at the end of the day, NBA owners would vote to let a team move, but only if where they’re moving makes sense.
The biggest markets left after SEA/LV would be the Inland Empire, Tampa Bay Area, San Diego, Baltimore and St. Louis.
If you want to go to Ontario, California, I guess. Knock yourself out. Tampa has an arena, but you wouldn’t be the primary tenant. San Diego has no arena. Baltimore recently refurbished theirs, but probably not to the extent he would want (and I would imagine Ted Leonsis would speak up at some point).
St. Louis is intriguing in that it has not had an NBA team since LBJ was in office. I don’t know if that is a better arena situation or not, given – like Tampa – you have an NHL team using dates.
But he would likely be back to square one, trying to get some municipality to pony up to renovate their arena, when Portland is already willing to do that, just not to his liking.
Stan Kroenke is involved in a possible new arena in San Diego, but he owns the Nuggets. San Diego makes the most sense: West coast, no NHL competition, and the Padres just sold for a huge amount, making that look like an attractive market.
In addition to a being a secondary arena tenant, another reason why Tampa Bay shouldn’t be considered a legitimate relocation candidate is the fact the Orlando Magic own the rights to the area as part of their 75-mile territory radius.
I think the Magic would have a stronger case to claim TB as their territory, than say, the Atlanta Braves whose CEO last week laughably claimed Tennessee as his team’s territory when asked about Nashville as an expansion possibility.
https://www.theledger.com/story/sports/nba/2020/11/23/how-toronto-raptors-landed-tampa/6392652002/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z114401e002800v114401d–44–b–44–&gca-ft=134&gca-ds=sophi&gnt-djm=1
Fair point. (The distance from Orlando’s arena to Tampa’s is 85 miles, but the markets’ edges are obviously much closer.)
I have no idea how many people from Tampa go see the Magic, but Silver probably would not want to get into a squabble. Especially given that even though the market is bigger, there’s the secondary tenant status and a municipality that just agreed to pony up for baseball (and surely will now for football).
The last “real” NBA relocation involved the Sonics moving to a much smaller market in OKC, but that can be seen as an outlier aided in part by a healthy heaping of “want to” among businessmen based in Oklahoma.
If the list of the largest non-NBA markets come with a series of flaws, so do the list of cities that are kinda where OKC was before the Thunder came into being. Any new team in places like, I dunno, Norfolk, Richmond, or Louisville would have the same type of existence as the Grizzlies in Memphis: a tiny market that has adopted and embraced its team the best it can, but still struggles to sell out games even in the best of times.
There’s really no city in North America that Dundon can turn to and claim that the Blazers *might* be better off there than in Portland. The team’s “only child” status in the city, on its own, is a valuable enough asset that he’d be dumb to fumble away (MLS fans, don’t come at me).
Not to mention that there’s no other market offering even the net $490m that Portland is. The city is very much bidding against itself at this point, which probably explains the “we love you and would never leave but wouldn’t it be a shame if we did” messaging from the team.
Weren’t the people who bought the Sonics also FROM Oklahoma? I don’t know where Dundon is from (sixth or seventh concentric circle of hell, maybe), but there’s a slight difference there.
Also, OKC did well with partial ownership of the Hornets after Katrina, didn’t they? That may have swayed people. IDK.
That’s pretty much what happened, where OKC basically got a two-year trial run with the displaced Hornets team, “proved itself” as an NBA market, and then found a local ownership cohort to essentially pry a team away from another existing NBA market.
In hindsight, it might have made more sense for the then-Hornets to just stay in OKC permanently, but the team had only been in NOLA for a few seasons before Katrina struck, and the optics of the team and the NBA “abandoning” a reeling/recovering city wouldn’t exactly have been great.
I agree that there is no greener pasture than Portland. I’m in St. Louis and see an NBA team here as something that would push our ability to support our teams past a saturation point where the Blues would a bad ownership group away from being a relocation candidate.
Every time we play Sportsball Franchise Roulette we base everything on perception rather than reality.
Inland Empire would be the 3rd NBA team in the Los Angeles metro. NHL has 3 teams within 25 miles of the Empire State Building, yet NHL coverage in the New York media has fallen below even the New York Liberty of the WNBA.
St. Louis is a heavily black city surrounded by lily-white suburbs in an increasingly reactionary region.
Be careful for what you wish.
The city of St. Louis is majority white. 45.5%
The NBA should have penalized Ballmer by requiring him to swap ownership from the Clippers to a Seattle expansion franchise. Ballmer is penalized by having his franchise value dramatically reduced, but saves face by being the hero in Seattle. The NBA can now sell a team in LA, where it will be worth >$12B (the value of a team in Vegas, apparently).
What about Kansas City? I’m sure that market has grown a lot since the Kings left in 1985.
T-Mobile Center has long been rumored for all sorts of things, but I *think* it’s one of those arenas (or at least was, IIRC) that is well-utilized even without a 41+-game sports anchor tenant. (It will be 19 years old next month, though, and even the used-car financier likes a new car smell.)
Like Glendale is finding out, you don’t necessarily need a team to make the finances work.
I think one terrible jerk owner was enough for San Diego. I doubt they would welcome another. The NFL team that is most cheered for in San Diego is the one the Chargers are playing.
Then explain why the Chargers are on San Diego TV at every opportunity.
Hate watching
Two words: Secondary Market.
“if chicken goes better with honey and carrots…”
You know, that actually sounds pretty good. Might be even better with hot honey and carrots. Get the carrots nicely caramelized, glaze the chicken with the honey, roast, make a sauce with the pan juices and additional honey…
Personally, I like chicken with vinegar, Carolina BBQ style.
Baltimore’s CFG Arena is a fine venue, but even after its revamp feels extremely dated. Though we do have a Democratic governor more than willing to give big checks to keep teams. It’d be really fun to have an NBA team I could root for without having to schlep to DC.
Just ‘cos no-one has tried it yet, I wouldn’t rule out someone (maybe Dundon….) trying the “other, other operation”:
You know, where you field a truly horrific team in your current location and then threaten to move the team to a new city unless the new city agrees to pay you to stay right where you are…
Portland already lost if they agreed to pony up $600,000,000. I’m sure Dundon will find a find a way to finish the job.