This is part of a four part series on the Trail Blazers 2025 offseason. You can read all the previously published and future parts via the links below.

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 (You are here!)

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Speaking of buyers and sellers, the estate of Paul G. Allen has finally (reportedly) found a buyer for the Portland Trail Blazers franchise, as reported by Sportico.

And all this in a few months.

No, seriously. After listing the team in May of this year, the agreement to sell the Trail Blazers was reported in August, with a price tag of roughly $4.25 billion. It was blockbuster news that came at breakneck speed for sales of this magnitude.

The principal buyer is billionaire Tom Dundon, a Dallas-based billionaire with a background in financial services and the sole owner of the Carolina Hurricanes in the NHL.

The Hurricanes have a curiously similar, swirling red, white and black logo and a loyal fanbase in Raleigh. So it’s nice to know Dundon has a type. In the years since Dundon moved to take full control of the hockey franchise, the team itself has been competitive on the ice and made deep playoff runs. The question is can he bring that same level of success to Portland?

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Dundon will not be alone in this endeavor. He is joined by Marc Zahr of Blue Owl Capital and Sheel Tyle, a Portland-based co-CEO of Collective Global. In the past week it’s also been reported that the Cherng Family, the founders of Panda Express, have also joined the sale. Their wealth of $7.5 billion will make them the wealthiest faction of the Dundon’s ownership group and allay any fears of a new, cash-strapped regime.

The sale is currently mired in a reported lawsuit brought by Bhathal family (owners of the Portland Thorns in NWSL and soon-to-come Portland Fire in the WNBA) against the Cherngs. The lawsuit alleges that the Panda Express magnates violated an exclusivity agreement after they were announced as part of Dundon’s group. It remains to be seen how this is resolved, but the sale is reported to still be underway with an estimated deadline of March, 2026.

There’s something to be said, however, about how insane it is that four wealthy investors are needed to purchase a franchise that Paul Allen bought for just $70 million in 1988. Publications are focusing on that figure, but here’s the crazier statistic: the sale represents a return on investment of over 6,000%, with damn near all of it going to Allen’s charities.

Pertinently, the deciding factor for the decision to sell to Tom Dundon’s group was a stated commitment to keeping the team in Portland, which is smart because it’s a captive freaking market, my dudes. Apologies to the Timbers, but the Trail Blazers have been in the NBA for over fifty years and largely competitive for nearly forty of them.

And this would all be fine, if Adam Silver hadn’t commented that the team “needed a new arena” during a press conference at the Las Vegas Summer League. Sean Highkin asked the question and aggregators ran with it, so here are some facts.

Last year, the Vulcan Sports Entertainment sold the Arena Formerly Known as the Rose Garden to the city of Portland. The reason given was that the city could use earmarked money to finance upgrades to the arena. The franchise then engaged in a bridge agreement with the city to keep the team in Portland until 2030.

New videoboards and upgrades to inner bowl are being completed this summer, with plans to refurbish the exterior before March Madness in 2026. Another bridge agreement can be signed to keep the team until 2035.

The facts all point to one thing: building a new arena would be objectively stupid.

The building has good bones. It’s just a little outdated and needs some work done. However, you could not pay me money to say that the building needs replacing before 2035. The real issue is that our value on these modern coliseums is poor. How cities don’t demand them to be usable for more than fifty years is beyond me.

They take up massive amounts of resources and usually gobble up significant amounts of public tax dollars. The Rose Garden, however, was different. Paul Allen effectively consulted with city planners and architects to place it near public transit, design it to then-modern standards and then bankroll the entire construction of the arena out of pocket.

Any new arena would be just as much cash as an interior renovation for a worse location. That renovation money would be better served making the area around the arena appealing on non-event days.

Moreover, Tom Dundon has shown a willingness to do as much; part of his ownership of the Hurricanes included investments in construction of an entire entertainment district in Raleigh peripheral to the sport. The bridge agreements with city give the Dundon group an opportunity to do just that in Portland and it would be a far more lucrative strategy by the ownership group. They can opt for revenue generated by the real estate outside the arena without being bogged down by the cost of maintenance on an (admittedly) aging arena.

But I digress to the original concern: will the team move? It all seems unlikely. There’s too many triggers that would need pulling in order for that decision to occur, and thus far zero have.

In the meantime, it is a comfort that the Trail Blazers will soon exit their caretaker ownership’s hands for a group led by someone with a demonstrable desire to invest. There is no Clay Bennett, lying through clenched teeth, here. Just fans, clenching their teeth at the possibility that Portland’s beloved basketball team may not be Portland’s anymore.

With this sale, I hope we can relax those jaws just a little.

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