The end of the Vulcan Inc. Blazers Era is almost here
The Blazers announced they had begun the sale process of the franchise one day after the ping pong balls failed to bounce in their favor for the third time in four years.
There are decades where nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen. This was one of those weeks for the Portland Trail Blazers. And it’s only Wednesday.
Missing out on Cooper Flagg in Monday night’s NBA Draft Lottery now looks like a mere footnote on a much more important timeline in the franchise’s history.
Nearly seven years after Paul Allen passed away, the Blazers announced that they are officially for sale and have begun the franchise sale process by hiring Allen and Co. to make the sale. This was cause for celebration for much of the fan base, with the end of Vulcan Inc., Jody Allen, and Bert Kolde’s rule over the franchise on the horizon.
But of course, that celebration was soon tempered by fans' anxieties about this team and this market. While the NBA has been adamant about not moving franchises since the 2008 Seattle-OKC fiasco, that won’t stop people’s minds from playing tricks on them. The league moved heaven and Earth to keep the Kings in Sacramento only a decade ago, which might be a similar model to look at.
Additionally, NBA expansion to Seattle and Las Vegas is still seen as a formality. If we are to believe expansion is on the horizon, someone buying the Blazers only to move them doesn’t make much sense for a couple of reasons.
In recent years, the NBA has made an effort to cut down on travel, including more back-to-backs against the same teams and longer road trips for teams to minimize the amount of time teams have to spend on planes. In addition to that, the city and the Blazers have some unfinished business to deal with regarding arena renovations, as reported by Sean Highkin of the Rose Garden Report.
If we believe the NBA’s desire for expansion and to cut down on travel for their players, adding a Seattle and Vegas team and having the Blazers move from Portland would be the league hustling backward. It would put Seattle on an island even further away from the rest of the teams in the league, making their travel woes even worse than what Portland has had to deal with since the Sonics moved to OKC.
What is more likely to happen, keeping the Kings in mind again, is that someone who tries and fails to get the Seattle or Vegas franchises might be slotted in as the new owners of the Blazers, much like former Warriors co-owner Vivek Ranadive eventually became the owner of the Kings. The Blazers franchise valuation also might be a little bit cheaper than an expansion fee. The Blazers are valued at $3.65B according to CNBC and the Celtics just sold for $6B, so expansion in markets like Seattle and Vegas would likely be somewhere in the middle of that range.
However, expansion buyers might not be the only ones sniffing around. The idea of a Jon Spoelstra-led group has been local rumor fodder for years, dating back to the franchise’s informal dalliance with his son in the summer of 2021. The Godfather Dwight Jaynes brought the elder Spo up today as a potential leader for a Portland-based group, which would likely assuage some of the concerns about an out-of-town ownership group. The irony about that mindset, of course, is that the Blazers have been owned by an out-of-town ownership group for nearly 40 years.
While most know him only as the father of Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, the elder Spo is a longtime NBA business executive and has the kinds of relationships within the league that can probably get him more consideration than your average group of Really, Really Rich Guys.
The Blazers’ statement about the sale said that they expect it to extend into the 2025-26 season, so that effectively makes this summer’s draft and free agency transaction window the last hurrah for Bert Kolde, Jody, and the Vulcans. If expansion is announced this summer as most expect, the Vulcan-led group can also expect a windfall from expansion fees.
So all of this is to say, I understand the nerves and the anxiety about a franchise in flux. Rich people doing crazy things that nobody likes is kind of standard for our times, which can’t be removed from the anxieties. We are at the mercy of the billionaires now and that never feels very good. And it’s even more understandable for those of us who lived through the Sonics moving. But ultimately, I don’t think this team is in any danger of moving to a different market.
Draft Lottery
Back to that footnote, the Blazers ended up with the 11th pick in the 2025 NBA Draft on Monday. Entering with the 10th-best odds at the No. 1 pick, Portland ended up moving back one pick.
Honestly, the results of the lottery were amusing to me after I realized we had escaped a future where Cooper Flagg and Victor Wembanyama were on the same team. The Mavericks got the top pick despite making the play-in, in the very spot Portland would have been in had they won a couple of more games. It was peak irony, given that people like myself were so stressed about the Blazers making the play-in and somehow making the playoff and losing their pick altogether. There was also a group of people loudly upset that the Blazers were not one of the worst teams in the league. Look how stupid we all sound now.
I’m quite happy that the most egregious tanking teams like Utah, Toronto, and Washington all got burned the same way Portland did in 2024 when they won 21 games and wound up with the 7th pick. None of the teams that tanked worse than Portland had things work out for them, while the teams that won more games than they did got the No. 1 pick.
And when you look at who is left standing in the NBA playoffs, only the Oklahoma City Thunder can truly say they were built by tanking. Even that is an exaggeration, because their best player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, came to OKC via the Paul George trade. The Pacers, Knicks, and even the Timberwolves have never sought out to be bad. Now those teams are all vying for a championship, despite being imperfect teams.
Being imperfect is no longer an invalidating quality for an NBA champion. Even Oklahoma City has its weaknesses when it comes to rebounding.
So while there was a lot of consternation about Portland moving back a spot and the Mavericks striking gold, the flattening of the lottery odds leading to more randomness makes tanking even less of a viable strategy. Luckily for Blazers fans, whether by accident or by choice, the Blazers are already ahead of the curve on the truth everyone is learning that tanking really won’t take you anywhere in the brave new world of flattened lottery odds.