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It’s a strange day to be a Blazer.
As only they could, the Portland Trail Blazers have arrived at the midpoint of the NBA season facing questions at every conceivable level of their organization.
The Future of the Blazers
These questions range from the mundane (“Who will be the team’s best player next season?,” “Is the new video board cool?,” etc.) to the existential, like: “What city will the team play in five years from now?” and “Who will be coach next season if the guy who started this one is convicted of wire fraud?”
The one person who could answer nearly all of these questions with authority will not appear in the following pages.
In fact, Dallas billionaire Tom Dundon has operated in silence since purchasing the team in July. The NBA is expected to bless that sale by the end of March. At that point, the power over many people’s futures—from civic icon Damian Lillard to general manager Joe Cronin to every season ticketholder in the nosebleed seats of Moda Center—will be placed in the hands of a subprime auto loan tycoon.
Over the past two weeks, the question of whether Dundon will keep the team in Portland has reached a boiling point, with Trail Blazers executives now traveling to Salem to lobby for a $600 million public subsidy to renovate Moda Center. (To date, there’s been no indication that Dundon and his ownership group will contribute any money to the project.)
The leverage created by a rich man buying a portable asset is a prospect this newspaper warned about last summer in a cover story, as close observers pleaded with local officials to prepare (“Anything but This,” WW, July 30, 2025). Now that the day has arrived, and everyone from the governor on down is scrambling to curry Dundon’s favor, it’s time for a clear-eyed appraisal of where the franchise stands.
When it comes to securing the team’s future in Portland, the civic leaders playing poker with Dundon are holding some very weak cards. But the past two weeks’ hue and cry ignores some ways in which public officials can still demand that the Blazers give to the community that’s about to bankroll them. It’s also the case that the fans who put butts in the seats 40 nights a year have a right to know just what they are getting for their money. So we’ve looked at how an arena overhaul could change the experience for you.
By the way, the team at the center of this mishegas still plays basketball. And on the court, things are slightly better—if not a lot more stable. What can you expect when the head coach was arrested by FBI agents in a gambling probe one game into the season? In that context, the fact that the team is functional—and may have found its star for the next decade—is all the more remarkable. We’ve evaluated the squad’s performance.
But let’s start with Joe Cronin. As a city panics, he sits, unflappable, often expressionless, in his baseline seat under the Moda Center basket. No single person has as close a view of what’s happened—or, arguably, more at stake—than Cronin, who must persuade a new owner to keep him at the wheel even as politicians try to keep the team in town. Last week, we sat down with him for a frank conversation about the future.
To see what he told us, turn the page. —Aaron Mesh, Editor
