In a press conference Tuesday evening, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver expressed dismay at the pace of negotiations over renovating Moda Center, and said a potential deal to keep the Trail Blazers in Portland \u201cseems to have gone off track.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silver\u2019s remarks, made July 14 in Las Vegas, came in reply to a question posed by Sean Highkin of independent media outlet The Rose Garden Report<\/a>, who asked if Portland City Council approval of $120 million in public subsidy for the arena overhaul would be sufficient to guarantee the Blazers\u2019 future in Portland. <\/p>\n Silver offered no such reassurance. Instead, he said he had been discussing the situation with new Blazers owner Tom Dundon and city officials, but wasn\u2019t pleased by what he was hearing. <\/p>\n \u201cI spent time with Tom and his partners here in Las Vegas,\u201d Silver said, \u201cand what we are most focused on right now, the league office, is the deal that we discussed when we were in Portland in March. I was hoping more progress would\u2019ve been made by now on that agreement, and it seems to have gone off track in various ways. I have a colleague who\u2019s day-to-day on it, but we are working with both sides to ensure that the Trail Blazers can have a long-term future in Portland. But there are several open issues that still need to be resolved.\u201d<\/p>\n Silver\u2019s remarks follow a report by Oregon Public Broadcasting<\/a> this week that councilors will be voting without seeing the specifics of what the money would be used for. Independent sports columnist John Canzano then reported that Dundon and the Blazers have largely broken off written communication<\/a> with city officials; Canzano surmised that Dundon was slow-walking a deal in hopes that a \u201cno\u201d vote from City Council would allow him to pursue more lucrative markets.<\/p>\n City councilors must vote on a term sheet for the Moda Center overhaul by Aug. 12 in order to have enough time to hash out details of a lease with the Blazers before a state funding package of $360 million expires in December. <\/p>\n Representatives of the Blazers and the mayor\u2019s office could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n Willamette Week\u2019s reporting has real-life impact that changes laws, forces action by civic leaders, and drives compromised politicians from public office. <\/p>\n Support WW.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a press conference Tuesday evening, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver expressed dismay at the pace of negotiations over…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":935686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[377036,37697,14733,377037,193206,377038,136289,377039,377040,377041,1260,312641,3133,377042,377043,62,251937,23884,67,132,68,213918,377044,377045,223022],"class_list":["post-935685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-andrew-hoan","tag-annual-meeting","tag-billionaire","tag-dundon","tag-jamarcus-shephard","tag-jessica-vega-pederson","tag-keith-wilson","tag-mayor-wilson","tag-michael-liu","tag-nanette-reid","tag-nba","tag-portland-metro","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-rob-wagner","tag-senate-president-rob-wagner","tag-sports","tag-tom-dundon","tag-trail-blazers","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-us-bank","tag-willamette-week","tag-winta-yohannes","tag-ww"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116921783292320572","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/935686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}