Tom Dundon Just Admitted He Made a Mistake. Whether Blazers Fans Buy It Is Another Question
Tom Dundon went on the air this week to defend himself. The Blazers owner has been getting absolutely cooked for two months now over a series of nickel and dime decisions that turned him into the punchline of the NBA. So he sat down with Max Kellerman and Chris Paul and tried to clean it up. The headline quote: “I just made a mistake.”
That was about not letting his two way players travel with the team during the playoffs. Other playoff teams brought them along. The Blazers, alone, said no. The reasoning was probably cost. The optics were terrible. Dundon copped to it, said he did not understand the league, and moved on.
Good. That is what an owner is supposed to do when he gets called out. Admit it, fix it, do better. Where Dundon ran into trouble was in the rest of the interview.
He told Kellerman and Paul, “I am just not going to waste $100 million just because someone wants to write an article calling me cheap.” That is the part that is going to live on. Because the things he is being called cheap about are not $100 million decisions. They are small ball stuff. Free t-shirts. Hotel checkout times. Coaching salaries. Travel rosters. These are the kind of things that signal to your employees and your fan base what kind of operation you are running.
And right now, the operation is signaling cheap.
The Blazers, per Dundon’s own admission, have $100 million in additional cap room compared to the Carolina Hurricanes, his NHL franchise. He is pointing to that as evidence that he is spending. The Hurricanes have a hard cap. The Blazers have luxury tax penalties but not a hard cap. The two situations are not the same. NBA owners spend deep into the tax if they think it gets them a title. Dundon is not signaling that he will do that.
The Micah Nori hire reinforces the perception. Nori got one guaranteed year. Tiago Splitter, who actually won as the interim, left for Chicago because Portland reportedly capped its coaching offer around $1.5 million. That is bottom of the league money. Good coaches do not work for that.
Dundon is a self made billionaire who built his fortune in finance. He is used to running businesses where every dollar matters. The NBA does not work that way. You either pay the going rate for talent or you do not compete. The Knicks just won the title with one of the highest payrolls in the league. The Celtics have been doing it for years. The Warriors built a dynasty on huge payroll spending. The cheap teams stay home in May.
To be fair to Dundon, he just got here. He took over in March. He is still figuring out how the NBA is different from the NHL. The free t-shirt thing was dumb but it was not the end of the world. The travel decision was a real mistake and he owned it.
What Blazers fans actually want to know is whether he will spend the money when it matters. Will he go into the luxury tax for a max free agent? Will he pay a head coach $5 million if that is what it takes to get the right guy? Will he extend Shaedon Sharpe when the time comes?
Dundon has not shown that yet. Until he does, the cheap label is going to stick.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
