Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
NBABase: Bill Simmons: "One of the things I was fascinated by was, 'Why did they let this guy buy the team? Why let "El Cheapo" [Tom Dundon] get in there?' Apparently they only had two offers [for the Portland Trail Blazers sale] ... I just don't think they had a lot of people that wanted to buy in."
Shams Charania: San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama has signed a new long-term contract extension with Nike -- including a new signature shoe line, per sources. After 3 NBA seasons, Wembanyama has run to the Finals, MVP finalist season, Defensive Player of the Year, max deal and a signature shoe.
Nick DePaula: BREAKING: Spurs star Victor Wembanyama has landed a long-term shoe deal extension with Nike. 📄✍️ The Wemby 1 is on the way … and a new signature logo:
LeBron James joins the 76ers as their jersey patch deal with Crypto.com is set to expire after this season. His presence, should it continue past this year, could turn the next jersey sponsorship into one of the NBA’s most coveted sponsorship opportunities. The partnership between the 76ers and Crypto.com was announced in 2021. Although no terms were disclosed, reports at the time said it was a six-year deal worth more than $10 million annually. The Golden State Warriors are believed to have the league’s most lucrative patch deal, with an artificial intelligence company paying the team more than $50 million annually. The Sixers’ deal will expire at the end of the 2026-27 NBA season, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to Front Office Sports.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of James joining the 76ers just ahead of a potential bidding war for the jersey patch, according to consultant and former Citi executive Ian Cropp. “It’s a huge deal to have him there from a sponsorship perspective,” Cropp tells FOS. “I know he’s not quite [Lionel] Messi going to Inter Miami in terms of his ability to win games single-handedly, but from a global star power perspective it’s on par.” The star power James brings could widen the field of interested suitors, according to Cropp, who runs sports consultancy 575 Partners. The 76ers could receive calls from international companies, as well as those in sectors that in the past may not have considered an NBA jersey patch.
Advertisement
Bill Oram: "Early on in Tom Dundon's tenure, the number of people who said to me, Portland has never seen anything like this guy. They are not at all prepared for the way that he is going to operate and the way he negotiates. And I think that has proven true at every step of the way. His mindset and his mentality when it comes to negotiating is so firm. I have been told a number of times he doesn't negotiate, he sets his terms and you either get there or you don't."
Bill Oram: "It has become clear what the challenges of operating a team in Portland actually are, given the economic realities and the direction of the market. It is not a city that is growing in terms of population, it is losing businesses. The economics of the team have been really bad. Ticket sales have been way down in past years. They were charging among the lowest prices of the 16 teams in the playoffs. It is a hard place to make money."
Chris Mannix: "It struck me when I've had some phone calls, mostly with league officials, just how much leverage Tom Dundon believes he has. The Blazers need or the city needs the Blazers more than he needs the city. It's struck me and a lot of league officials who are you know, I'm I'm speaking more to the league side that I am to anybody in Portland, just the exasperation on a league level with how this is going. And I think that was reflected in Adam Silver's comments in Vegas uh during Summer League where he just usually the cherry-eyed optimist about some of this stuff, Adam would usually say it's going to get done, we'll work it through some stuff. Like watching his kind of face kind of go blank and seeing him deadpan like you know, there's this is off track, I believe was his phrase was really revealing to me and and told me where the league thinks that that this situation is. And and Dundon clearly believes that he's got a lot of leverage here and he's going to get whatever deal he wants or else he's going to do what he wants or at least try to do what he wants."
Bill Oram: "In terms of locations, I think that it is more of the body of potential cities than it is any one city. You could talk yourself into a list of seven or eight cities that could be targets, and there is a good reason why each of those would not work. There has been noise about St. Louis lately. I have heard plenty of people say that St. Louis isn't going to be interested in doing the public financing for an arena dance again, given the scars there."
Bill Oram: "Austin is the one that comes up a lot. And I know that San Antonio is 70 miles away. I am not ignorant to that fact. And I do not think that at face value the Spurs would like to have a team in a sister market. That said, everything is negotiable, and Austin is a robust market that is the economic inverse of Portland. Even though things have slowed slightly in Austin, it has had explosive growth, it has a great sponsorship base, tons of tech money. It would be a huge boon to the NBA."
Advertisement
Chris Mannix: "I pretty much have been told that Nashville is off the table. You could see the Grizzlies in Nashville before the end of the decade, and they are going to play some regular season games."
Chris Mannix: "How much of this is on Jody Allen?" Bill Oram: "I don't think it is an overstatement to say all of it, because this was all done very intentionally. Everything I have, every conversation I have had about this points to this all being very much by design. Where Tom Dundon is not the one who is making this happen, he is simply playing his part and executing a vision that predates him entering the picture."
Oh No He Didn't: Baxter Holmes on the Kawhi/Clippers investigation: "I think the NBA wants to get this right. People have said to me all throughout that Adam Silver has forecast that in all his comments about how the burden of proof is on the league, that we're gonna follow the facts. They wanna be thorough so that at the end of the day, this process can look fair, transparent, accurate and that everybody can feel at peace with what happened"
Oh No He Didn't: Ramona Shelburne on whether the Raptors would back out of the Kawhi trade: "I haven't heard them trying to back out. I think the discussion is more of a league wide discussion which is when you have a trade that gets held up, whether it's a failed physical or something like that you can modify the trade"