Tom Dundon’s first postseason with the Trail Blazers has started with a hotel checkout time, a trimmed travel party and a reminder that the club’s new owner does not seem bothered by what anyone thinks of his thrift. During the opening round of the Play-In Tournament against the Phoenix Suns, Tiago Splitter was thinking about the team masseuse, not defensive rotations, because Dundon had ordered everyone in the traveling party except players and coaches to be out of the hotel by 12:30 p.m. to avoid late-checkout fees.
The move came as Portland beat Phoenix and advanced to the NBA playoffs for the first time in five years, but it also underscored the way Dundon is already shaping the franchise outside the lines. A league source said he “doesn’t give a f---” if people think he is cheap and added that “He doesn’t even flinch with this stuff.” Another team source said Dundon’s directive was, “Why are we wasting money? Let’s think about this prudently,” and that he was basically saying, “Let’s make things like (the traveling party) be about who needed to be there, not it-would-be-nice-if-they-come.”
Dundon was thrust into ownership after 81 percent of the $4.25 billion sale closed on March 31, and his early approach has been unusually cost-conscious for an NBA team. The Blazers are the only team in the playoffs not traveling their two-way players, and the support staff was trimmed for the playoff series in San Antonio, where the award-winning team photographer and digital reporter did not make the trip. One team masseuse said she had nowhere to provide treatment for players before the game, a small but telling sign of how the cuts have reached beyond the locker room and into the daily routine around it.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who watched Dundon buy the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes in 2017. He made cost-cutting moves there, including firing the team’s broadcasters and skimping on the salaries of coach Rod Brind’Amour and his staff, and the team later became one of the NHL’s elite clubs. For Portland, the immediate question is not whether the owner will change course. It is how much of the playoff operation will be built around frugality before the games themselves start to decide what this team can become. For more on the shift in tone around the club, see Tiago Splitter on changing standard as Tom Dundon meets Blazers.
