Tom Dundon bought the Trail Blazers for $4.25 billion. Then he started cutting jobs.
Portland announced Tuesday that the new ownership group is laying off roughly 70 employees as part of a “restructuring” of the business. The team confirmed the layoffs included staff on both the business side and the basketball operations side. Among the casualties was Casey Holdahl, the team’s longtime digital reporter, who had been with the franchise for 18 years.
Employees learned about the cuts on a Tuesday morning video call. Eighteen years of work, ended in a Zoom.
This is the latest in a string of cost-cutting decisions that have defined Dundon’s ownership so far, and the timeline is honestly stunning. The NBA Board of Governors only approved the sale in April. That is six weeks ago. In that span, Dundon has reportedly asked staff to check out of hotels early to avoid late fees, refused to bring two-way players on playoff road trips, eliminated free fan T-shirts on giveaway nights, and now laid off seventy people.
The Paul Allen era ended for good in 2018, but his fingerprints stayed on the organization. Allen treated the Blazers like a passion project. The new ownership group, led by Dundon, is treating it like a balance sheet.
That is the harshest reality of the modern NBA. Franchise values keep climbing. The Blazers sold for a number nobody would have believed possible a decade ago. The new owners spent eye-watering money to acquire the team, and they are running it like every dollar saved on operations is a dollar saved against their original investment. Even with the league printing money through new media deals.
The fanbase is rightfully furious. Portland has one of the most loyal markets in the league. The team has not won a title since 1977 and has not made the conference finals in over a decade, and Rip City keeps showing up anyway. Treating those fans to a steady drip of “the new owner is cutting corners” stories is not how you build goodwill in year one.
Holdahl’s firing might be the part that stings the most. The guy was the institutional memory of the franchise’s digital coverage. Eighteen years of access, archives, and relationships across the building. You do not casually walk that out the door unless your priority is the spreadsheet.
The basketball product is going to feel this too. Front offices need depth in scouting, analytics, salary cap analysis, and player development. Cutting bodies in those rooms means the Blazers will be shorthanded against the rest of the league when it comes to identifying value. In a draft year where Portland is sitting on a top-three pick, that is a brutal time to thin the staff.
The optics are also bad for the league. The NBA wants its owners to behave like proud stewards of a public trust. Dundon is behaving like a private equity guy who just bought a regional grocery chain and is squeezing margins. Adam Silver has not commented publicly. He probably should.
The bottom line for Portland is that ownership in the NBA is supposed to be a privilege. Tom Dundon is treating it like a project he wants to make pay for itself fast. Seventy families now have to figure out what is next. The Blazers, meanwhile, just lost a lot of good people for the price of slightly higher quarterly margins.
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.
