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New Blazers owner Tom Dundon has been accused of being overly cheap by many people in NBA circles, and he has now pushed back on at least one of those specific narratives.
During a road trip in Phoenix, the Blazers’ training staff had to check out of their team hotel in the early afternoon when they had a game later that day. That prompted a report from Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix, who said he was told by multiple sources that the team was attempting to avoid being hit by late checkout fees.
Appearing on a recent episode of Game Over with Max Kellerman and Rich Paul, Dundon told his side of the story, saying that there was a shortage of hotel rooms in Phoenix in March and that the one they booked “really wanted us out because we needed the rooms.”
“They wanted us to pay for a second night, so we did that for the coaches and the players, but we got them to let us leave at 1 o’clock,” Dundon said. “I had a room at the hotel—I was there, and I was like, ‘Well, lunch starts at 1:45, we have a huge ballroom with this really nice lunch for everybody.’ So I said, ‘Look, we’ll do the players and the coaches, we’ll pay the extra night. For the staff, we have this huge ballroom, we’ll go down there and work.’”
Dundon continued, “I would do it again. I think it’s actually pretty stupid to think people who are there to work, and are being fed 45 minutes later—they weren’t in the lobby … If that’s too hard for people, I’m not right for them. I want that culture.”
Not everyone was swayed. SiriusXM NBA host Eddie Johnson, who played 17 years in the NBA, commented, “Does he realize he is fighting a losing battle? It’s hard for Portland to get free agents doing the right thing. Now they will suffer more doing the wrong thing.”
Dundon, the owner of the NHL’s Hurricanes, purchased the Blazers from Paul Allen’s estate earlier this year at a valuation of $4.2 billion. He has since been nicknamed “El Cheapo” by Bill Simmons. Other avenues of cost-cutting have included leaving two-way players at home during the NBA postseason, and reports that he doesn’t want to pay the team’s next head coach more than $1.5 million.
Speaking to Kellerman and Paul, Dundon admitted that not sending the two-way players to road postseason games was a “mistake,” but defended his overall approach to spending.
“I’m just not gonna waste $100 million just because someone wants to write an article calling me cheap. I’m just not going to do it,” he said. “Some of the stuff that was blamed on money is actually not 100 percent true, that I thought about the money. Like on traveling players, I just made a mistake. I just don’t understand the league. In hockey, we don’t travel extra people because we’re not on vacation, we’re here to win.
Last month, NBA commissioner Adam Silver defended Dundon in the wake of the previous reports.
“People are starting to say he’s not willing to spend the money,” Silver said on Barstool’s Pardon My Take podcast. “You gotta remember, this is a guy who just won a bidding war, call it $4.5 billion to buy a team, and they’re calling him cheap. It just can’t be.”
“I think the Hurricanes—I’m not following the NHL every night but … he knows what he’s doing,” Silver added. “His mindset is—and I’m just getting to know him—but I don’t think it has as much to do with the cost of the T-shirts or wherever he’s saving money. It’s a mindset on how to run a business.”
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