Socialism-light fails with Blazers' owner

We can't please someone who seeks greener pastures

This image of Tom Dundon was selected because we could not find one with an extended middle finger.

I don’t think the socialists of Portland consider me one of their own. I frequently criticize government programs and do not trust our city and county to spend wisely or to motivate employees toward accountability and excellence.

Nevertheless, I believe the Peacocks and lefties are too timid in their approach to Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon’s extortionate demands that the public build an arena to his specifications or he will find another city that will.

District 4 City Councilor Mitch Green has laid out their most detailed approach on the issue. He thinks Dundon is bluffing and that a deal that protects Portland taxpayers and even ensures “street level” pricing for hot dogs and other concessions is possible.

Dundon may be bluffing, but that misses the point: He believes the NBA franchise he owns would be more valuable if moved it to a growing city waiting with open arms, a new arena, tax abatement and all imaginable sweeteners. He has no loyalty to Portland, as he has gone out of his way to demonstrate. If he can convince other NBA owners—who have to approve a move—that his relationship with Portland is not salvageable or that the city itself is in longterm decline, he wins.

You cannot negotiate with someone who does not want to make a deal.

The bigger problem is that Portland fans believe in their hearts that the Blazers are their team. That’s the essential relationship of every sports team (except perhaps the Harlem Globetrotters) and the town it calls home. The reality is that a professional sports franchise is a private business, no more tied to a locale than its owners are.

Increasingly, cosmopolitan ownership groups exploit the emotional ties of home fans and communities. W.C. Fields said (and Dundon apparently agrees): “Never give a sucker an even break.” It’s no wonder that things get broken in this showdown of unequals.

Sports franchises are “of right and ought to be” public trusts, permanently bound to their host cities. There is one such arrangement in American professional sports—the Green Bay Packers—a broadly held stock arrangement that works so perfectly for the city and its fans that NFL owners have forbidden the model to ever be repeated.

If Portland officials were to declare such a right of local control, league owners in all sports would surely blacklist Stumptown. Major League Baseball would write us off, and the NBA would not consider us for a replacement team. Of course, the same result may occur even if we sit like Charlie Brown in our patch trying to convince the Great Pumpkin that we are sincere.

Our new Portland Fire WNBA team is drawing 15,000 a game, more than the Blazers ever could in the 12,666 capacity Memorial Coliseum when that was a match made in heaven. Without having to share the limelight with the Blazers, they might become the top women’s franchise in the world.

I am touched by Portland’s weird and wonderful sports history. Could there be new chapters like the 1970s Portland Mavericks of “The Battered Bastards of Baseball,” my all-time favorite sports film?

Certain kinds of businesses—such as public utilities—are well suited for public ownership. Ambulance and garbage-hauling services are others that provide better service and lower costs than their private alternatives. National health care seems obvious to me.

That does not mean there is an obvious course for Portland’s ex-major league sports future. Even as a lifelong basketball lover, my instincts say we must free ourselves from the bondage of the rigged poker hand we’ve been dealt and find our own path.

All good socialists should share my antipathy toward the multibillionaires who make us pay-to-play in their monopoly game.