The real play here, of course, was to cut payroll and get the Blazers under the luxury tax. And, as coach Chauncey Billups noted before the game, to give the Blazers that much-coveted prospect named “flexibility.”
“Today we took some necessary steps to have some flexibility that we will need,” Billups said.
There promise to be more moves ahead as the Feb. 10 deadline nears, which will likely add greater context to Friday. There’s no doubt the Blazers needed to shed salary to avoid paying tax for such a poor product. And there’s no doubt the Blazers needed to shuffle what had devolved into one of the more depressing rosters since that loveable collection of
Raymond Felton, Marcus Camby and Gerald Wallace led the great mutiny of 2011-12.
But geez, this wasn’t a real encouraging start.
Interim general manager Joe Cronin hasn’t felt the need to engage with the fan base or provide them with a vision. After eight years of constructing a playoff roster, he says the fan base should have a little faith that the Blazers’ front office knows what it’s doing.
So … we wait. For the fan base, it’s another “trust us” moment from the Blazers. Trust us that we did our due diligence into Billups’ past. Trust us that all the recent firings — and there have been many, from the top health and performance staffer on the bench to those on the business side — were done in good faith. Trust us that the investigation into Neil Olshey found just cause for his dismissal. And trust us that all these cost-cutting moves are not in preparation to sell the team.
And what about those rumors of Jody Allen selling the Blazers?
Well, that’s a big ball to untangle for another day, but for starters here are some key dates.
The ground leases for the Moda Center, Rose Quarter offices, the Rose Quarter plaza and a collection of parking garages run through October of 2025. The Blazers must notify the city by September of 2024 of their intentions to extend or renegotiate the lease. If the ground lease expires without renewal, ownership of the Moda Center shifts from the Blazers to the city.
In 2018, after Paul Allen died, the city told Oregon Public Broadcasting that they
anticipated opening negotiations with the Blazers about those leases.
“As we are coming into the last five-to-seven years of these agreements, we are all cognizant that we’re going to have to sit at the table and have a conversation,” said Susan Hartnett, who has since moved on from her title as Spectator Facilities and Development Manager for the city.
Well, those conversations between the city and the Blazers haven’t happened.
Why?
“You would need to ask them, the team,” said Karl Lisle, the City of Portland Venues Program Director. “Essentially, they hold the options to extend, and of course, they hold the options to ask for something else, or start a conversation there. But to date, those conversations have not started.”
Blazers president Dewayne Hankins, who took over in November when Chris McGowan resigned, told
The Athletic on Friday that “we are committed to Portland and the team is not for sale. We are engaged with the city currently, and the ground lease is a high priority for both us and the city, one which will require significant planning.”
When told that city officials said there has been no engagement with the Blazers, Hankins said he is first addressing a more pressing issue, the operating agreement for the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the Blazers’ old arena that is on the Moda Center campus. That operating agreement expires on June 30, 2023.
“We are leading with conversations about the operating agreement at the Coliseum, which has a more near-term impact than the lease,” Hankins said. “That has to happen first.”
Typically, a negotiation for new terms on a ground lease could take four to six months, so there is time for the Blazers to be settled. But as the smoke clears from the latest round of firings, and Friday’s salary dump, it’s natural to wonder what we are seeing.
“Nobody knows what the plan is there, except for Jody, as far as I can tell,” said Lisle, the city manager. “But it’s an obvious question, and everybody is wondering — what does this mean? What is going on?”
If you believe the Blazers, Friday means nothing other than a necessary step toward getting out of the mess they’ve created. You know, the old, “trust us” line. Cronin wants us to trust him that smarter moves are coming. Billups wants us to trust that progress is being made on the court. And Hankins wants us to trust him when he says “we’ve already made our intentions clear to the city that we are committed to staying in Portland.”
So absorb Friday’s trade with caution. We don’t know yet if it’s the first step toward respectability or the first indication of incompetence. And we don’t know if it’s the first step toward selling the team or the first action to becoming more fiscally responsible.
All we know for sure is Friday was a good day to be a billionaire owner.
*never contenders/fringe playoff team
. Though it is getting considerably worse it seems.