Portland Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon is at it again.
On Wednesday, The Athletic’s Jason Quick reported that the Trail Blazers fired or allowed many employees involved with the team’s broadcast to leave, including Kevin Calabro and Trevor Demers, the play-by-play callers on television and radio, respectively. Those moves follow several cost-cutting measures that have come since the Carolina Hurricanes’ owner purchased the team at the end of March.
The moves have largely targeted the business side of the Trail Blazers, although the team did not send their three players on two-way contracts on the road in the first two games of the playoffs, for which general manager Joe Cronin took the blame. The Blazers fired more than 70 employees in May, and did not hand out T-shirts to fans for its playoff games against the San Antonio Spurs in April.
In NBA circles, the most common reaction has been to criticize Dundon for being, well, cheap. In many of those cases, that seems like the right reaction. However, the NBA is a league with its share of “keeping up with the Joneses” spending. Dundon might not be doing it very artfully, but it is surprising it took this long for a new owner to decide NBA organizations are perhaps more bloated than necessary.
A few disclaimers are necessary. First off, broadcasts are one of the most direct links a team has to its fans, and in a smaller market such as Portland, that link is likely more important than for teams that are regularly on national television. Cutting back on a broadcast doesn’t help anybody. Beyond that, nobody should be begrudged for making a living in the NBA. If you think the salary of the fourth member of the media relations team or the hotel costs for three extra players is the reason tickets are so expensive, please acquaint yourself with reality. The savings will not be passed down to the consumer.
Finally, for those who believe this is all part of Dundon’s quest to crater interest in the team so he can move the Trail Blazers out of Portland, let me be unequivocal in saying the fans at the Moda Center are consistently among the best in the NBA and the league should make sure the team stays where it is. The Athletic reported this week that the team considers itself and the city “very far apart” on terms to pay for the renovation of the Moda Center. At the same time, the Lenovo Center in Raleigh, N.C., where the Hurricanes play, is undergoing $300 million in renovations. Trail Blazers fans are understandably worried. Skepticism is warranted.
With that said, the league has been heading down this path for a while now. Under Mark Cuban’s ownership, the Dallas Mavericks became known for having nearly an assistant coach for every player on the roster. (The Mavericks also were at the forefront of tricking out locker rooms.) These days, walk onto a practice floor at a team’s home base and the players are reliably outnumbered by other staff — coaches, video coordinators, members of the medical staff, members of the front office and so on. And it’s not as if the NBA has notably cut down on injuries or radically improved skill development.
While you will frequently hear players rave about the coaches they work with individually or the help they are getting on the health side, it would also be reasonable to conclude that players are going to put their own salaries, opportunities and chances to win above those relative luxuries — unless, of course, they conclude that the luxuries help with their priorities.
That is where this line of thinking could get really interesting. In the NFL, teams such as the Cincinnati Bengals and Arizona Cardinals have reputations for skimping on frills. While neither of those teams has been a model of success, the Bengals were in the Super Bowl in 2022, while both have gone through the regular ups and downs that most teams go through in a league that has cultivated competitive parity.
And hey, would you look at that, the NBA is trying to go down a similar road, with eight champions in the last eight years and a CBA that restricts the ability for teams with wealthier owners to outspend others in putting together a roster.
Now, truly competitive people would accept that and identify organizational accoutrements as areas on which teams with more money to spend as potential competitive advantages. But if an owner has concluded that player talent is by far the biggest factor in winning, why would they splurge on the other stuff?
In short, you’d have to believe the other stuff leads to winning. There are reasonable arguments to have about all of that, but there have to be diminishing returns at some point, as teams approach nine-figure expenditures on practice facilities. What spending is necessary? What spending leads to winning? Those are good questions, ones that have not been conclusively answered.
Fans have no reason to be terribly invested in whether owners turn year-over-year profits, especially when there is no evidence that franchise values will plateau anytime soon. But humans, even (especially?) billionaires, tend to care about maximizing income.
As Bill Gates explained to Homer Simpson when buying out Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net, “I didn’t get rich by writing a lot of checks.”
None of that is to say Dundon is some financial visionary, finding a way to streamline the Trail Blazers while not sacrificing winning. (Although it would be strange if he were not emboldened by his experience with the Hurricanes, who have become one of the most successful teams in the NHL during his tenure, winning the Stanley Cup this year.) Dundon has yet to prove that his methods work in the NBA. Beyond that, you didn’t have to be a genius to look at NBA teams and see there were some inefficiencies.
But Dundon is willing to be the bad guy, risking a reputational hit in the name of increasing profit. You don’t have to like it or even respect it. It is a wonder, though, that someone didn’t brazenly push back on teams’ spending escalation long ago.