Blazers News: Mayor, Adam Silver Discussed Plans for Team's Portland Future

It's no secret that the Portland Trail Blazers' majority owners, the Allen family, will sell the team — after all, that's been stipulated in deceased former owner Paul Allen's will.

His sister Jody, the executor of his estate, has been entrusted to eventually set up sales for all of Allen's sports properties, a collection that also includes the NFL's Seattle Seahawks and Major League Soccer's Seattle Sounders FC.

But will a new owner have a stomach to keep the Trail Blazers in Portland?

Portland is a small market, one that doesn't currently house another major pro franchise in any of the "big four" sports (beyond basketball, that'd be football, baseball or hockey).

But the city has embraced the Trail Blazers, and has supported several talented clubs, including the Bill Walton era of the '70s (which culminated in the 1977 championship), the Clyde Drexler era of the '80s and '90s (which resulted in a pair of NBA Finals appearances in 1990 and '92), and the LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard runs (which, to this point anyway, reached their pinnacle with Lillard hitting the 2019 Western Conference Finals).

Per Andrew Theen of Oregon Public Broadcasting, Portland's current mayor Keith Wilson met with NBA commissioner Adam Silver to discuss the squad's future back in June, less than a month after the Allen estate officially announced that it was moving forward with a sale.

“Yes, the Mayor had a warm and productive meeting with NBA Commissioner to reaffirm Portland’s commitment to keeping the Trail Blazers in Portland back in June,” spokesman Cody Bowman confirmed to Theen in a statement. “The City is committed to working collaboratively across jurisdictions to ensure the Trail Blazers remain a cornerstone of Portland’s cultural and economic landscape.”

Theen notes that Oregon governor Tina Kotek inked a letter to Silver pledging that the state and city were firmly supportive of the franchise, and pledged to renovate the team's current arena, the Moda Center.

Silver indicated during a July presser that “the city of Portland likely needs a new arena.”

Whatever happens, the product on the court appears to be generally trending in the right direction, thanks to the late-season emergence of forwards Deni Avdija and Toumani Camara, plus the hoped-for growth of recent young lottery picks Shaedon Sharpe, Donovan Clingan, and Scoot Henderson and rookie center Yang Hansen.

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