The St. Louis Trail Blazers?
It pays to click down the blogroll on the regular. Today on The Burner NBA (formerly Blazer Banter) I learned something: One of the new minority owners of the Trail Blazers is Richard Chaifetz, a billionaire guy from St. Louis, who has been saying for years that he'd love to bring an NBA team to that city. And his son Ross just said the same thing the other day.
Are they pitching that idea to the Blazers' controlling owner, Tom Dundon? I'd be surprised if they weren't.
Moving the Blazers to St. Louis would be a stretch, to say the least. As the Burner post explains, there are so many hurdles, it's not a likely prospect. But depending on how badly the deal-making in Portlandia continues to go, it might come up in conversation.
St. Louis – huh.
In ye olde times, that town has had men's pro basketball: two NBA teams, first the Bombers and then the Hawks (now in Atlanta); and an ABA team, the Spirit of St. Louis. But of course, all of those teams failed. As did two pro football teams, the football Cardinals (now in Arizona) and the Rams (now back in L.A.). But St. Louis does have major league baseball (the Cardinals) and hockey (the Blues). The venue for the hockey, Enterprise Center, is 32 years old, just slightly older than the Moda Center.
Anyway, the writer at the Burner, Erik García Gundersen, has downgraded the likelihood of the Blazers' staying in Portland long-term, from 90 percent to 60 percent. And as for the problems with a St. Louis move, he sagely notes:
[I]n the United States of America in 2026, things don’t have to make sense to happen anyway; a really rich person just has to want it to happen. To paraphrase the modern American proverb from Matt Christman, every day in America is the dumbest day in American history, a record that will be broken every day in perpetuity. To believe that stupidity will prevent something dumb from happening is naive.
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Never having heard of this Chaifetz guy, I wondered if there was a complete list of the new Blazers owners anywhere, and yes, apparently it's here:
- Tom Dundon — Governor
- Marc Zahr — Alternate Governor
- Stan Middleman — Alternate Governor
- Andrew Cherng — Alternate Governor
- Sheel Tyle — Alternate Governor
- Richard Chaifetz — Owner
- Marc Grandisson — Owner
- Jennifer Gates & Nayel Nassar — Owners
- Taavet Hinrikus — Owner
- Dan Zilberman — Owner
From this story, we get:
Marc Zahr, co-president of investment firm Blue Owl, and Stanley Middleman, founder and CEO of Freedom Mortgage who is also part-owner of the Philadelphia Phillies.
And according to an artificially intelligent (and thus potentially wrong) source, here are some identifications of the lesser known Richie Riches in the group:
- Richard Chaifetz – Founder of ComPsych and chairman of the Chaifetz Group; longtime sports investor with interests in the San Francisco Giants and other sports ventures.
- Marc Grandisson – CEO of Arch Capital Group, the global insurance company.
- Nayel Nassar – Olympic equestrian and entrepreneur; husband of Jennifer Gates.
- Jennifer Gates – Physician and daughter of Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates.
- Taavet Hinrikus – Co-founder of Wise (formerly TransferWise).
- Dan Zilberman – Technology investor and entrepreneur.
Nobody on the list is from Oregon, except possibly Tyle, a Silicon Valley financier. Until recently, Tyle's wife, who is a physician, was the head of the Oregon state health department, but that's all over now. Cherng's spouse, of Panda Express fame, went to Oregon State.
The younger Gates grew up in Seattle but now lives in style in New York City. Near the Wydens, perhaps.
Good lord what a motley crew. The new carpet baggers. Jodie still owns something like 20% of the team and could put her foot down and stand up for the city, but maybe she can't get over the immense wealth her brother achieved by being Bill Gates brain. Nothing like a woman scorned.
ReplyDeleteI bet the players are rooting for it. An NBA player making $5 million per year would save between $200,000 and $400,000 per year in state and local income taxes playing in St. Louis rather than Portland, depending on how their duty days are allocated.
ReplyDeleteNot sure the math works out that cleanly. They only get the state tax rate for 41 home games and likely have a sales tax to offset the income tax rate.
DeleteWe are SO far apart in what each side is demanding, I can't imagine things moving-forward here.
ReplyDeleteThere are sports arenas elsewhere that have negotiated labor agreements, but Blazers have said that guaranteeing union / living-wage jobs is an absolute non-starter here.
And when Novick threatened to sue them, that got their panties in knots & they now demand it in-writing that the City's not going to sue them.
It's still not even a negotiation, it's just the 2 sides stating / leaking their unbending demands.
And would somebody please explain this - from the bill the State had passed in March - "Authorizes the Oregon Department of Administrative Services to enter into agreements to own and oversee the operations of the Moda Center in the City of Portland."
Can the State take this over, override the City-??
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2026R1/Measures/Overview/SB1501
(Delicious crack about Wyden, BTW)
Sell Moda to Dundon. (The city paid $1 back in '24.) Keep the land underneath and charge rent. The NBA won't allow him to move the team; and the city could paralyze him with lawsuits. Time to play hardball.
ReplyDeleteThe Blazers led the league in travel miles last season with just over 50,000. A move to St Louis would put them somewhere between Atlanta and OKC, roughly 39,000. On the one hand, I say these guys have no interest in being a tenant in someone else's NHL barn. On the other, this is the sort of group that relieved Seattle of the Sonics. So who knows.
ReplyDeleteI still say the league forces parties to figure things out.