Portland coach Mikah Nori says all the right things about his contract. Owner Dundon does not about arena.
· Yahoo Sports
Tom Dundon might be beloved in Charlotte (where his NHL team just hoisted the Stanley Cup), but fans in Portland have their doubts about their team's new owner. Dundon continues to live up to his penny-pinching reputation (except with players he says, although that has yet to be put to the test), and a couple of new instances have had fans — and plenty of people around the league — shaking their heads.
One was the contract for the new head coach, Mikah Nori. He is a longtime assistant in the league who most recently served as the right-hand man to Chris Finch in Minnesota. Dundon waited until there were no other open jobs on the market, then offered Nori a one-year contract with two team options after that. It's an owner-friendly contract that is radically different from the standard contract given to a first-time head coach (usually four years, with the final year a team option). In a league where status is somewhat based on contract size, you can be sure every player on that roster knows their head coach is on a lame duck deal, undercutting his authority.
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Nori took the deal, but around the NBA, other coaches have been livid.
"I feel like he was put in a situation that he shouldn't be put in with having to make a choice of this nature because of the structure of what the contract is," said Pistons' coach J.B. Bickerstaff, the president of the coaches union. "It's unfortunate that you have a dream, and from our perspective, it's like someone's taking advantage of your dream and devaluing what we feel like coaches have earned over the years. You think about the sacrifice, the time, the growth that coaches have helped and done with the NBA, and then for someone to come in and attempt to devalue the work that coaches have in this league is extremely disappointing."
Nori, for his part, handled questions about the contract with grace.
"The way I look at this is: opportunity," he told reporters at his introductory press conference. "For 28 years, the first 25 years I never had an agent. I never look at money or years. I know that if I'm successful, the rest of these things will take care of themselves."
Trail Blazers arena
Portland's Moda Center, home to the Trail Blazers, is 31 years old, feels a little dated, and is in need of maintenance and upgrades. Paying for those changes has become a political fight in Oregon.
An estimated $600 million in renovations and maintenance is needed for the building, which is owned by the city of Portland with the Trail Blazers as the main tenant and a lease that runs through 2030.
There are ongoing negotiations about how to pay for this amongst Portland (which has pledged $120 million), Multnomah County, the State of Oregon, with multiple of those entities saying that Dundon and the Trail Blazers should chip in toward the cost. Dundon said don't expect that. From Kyra Buckley and Alex Zielinski of Oregon Public Broadcasting, at the Portland Metro Chamber meeting this week.
"I just know it feels like we're making a pretty big investment by staying here and paying these tax rates and agreeing to these fees for dollars that go back into the building."
"There's lots of places that don't have taxes at the same rate. So if you charge people taxes and invest it back into the thing that helps generate the money relative to the market, other places … it's a huge investment."
While the Moda Center is city-owned and it benefits from the upgrades and maintenance, nobody would benefit more than Dundon and his franchise. In Oregon, a billionaire owner saying he shouldn't have to pay for any of the renovations to the building, and a cash-strapped city should use taxpayer dollars to fund all of it, is not going to go over well.
Not that Dundon cares. He won't care until it hits him in the pocketbook. Just know his casual threat to move the team is not something that's happening (with expansion coming to the NBA, no way Adam Silver and the other owners let that happen). Dundon is going to have to work out something with the city, and he should pay his fair share.