What Kind of Owner Will Tom Dundon Be for the Trail Blazers? His Management of the Carolina Hurricanes Could Tell Us

📍NEW YORK — Trail Blazers fans have known Tom Dundon's name for seven months.

In that time, the franchise has been in a holding pattern. Dundon's group has had an agreement in place to buy the team from Paul Allen's estate for $4.25 billion since August, but aren't officially in charge yet as the NBA league office completes the vetting process for new owners.

That's going to change in the coming days.

This week, the NBA is holding its annual Board of Governors spring meetings, where they will discuss matters such as expansion, tanking remedies and the NBA Europe project that commissioner Adam Silver seems intent on making happen.

Dundon will be in New York to complete a final round of interviews with the board's finance committee and make sure everything is fully in place. The sale then needs to be approved by a three-quarters majority (23 out of 30 teams), but these things don't usually reach that stage unless they're going to go through. The vote is a formality. Dundon will officially own the team by the end of the month at the latest.

With the Blazers' ownership change finally imminent, the question of what kind of owner Dundon will be is more important than ever. In recent weeks, it's become a common topic of discussion and speculation among team employees at all levels, from support staff to top executives.

"We understand there's going to be some changes," acting head coach Tiago Splitter said before the Blazers' March 13 win over the Utah Jazz. "I can't go crazy with it, just gotta do my job, but there's definitely something in the air of the change, that's for sure."

What kind of changes are in store is anyone’s guess. Dundon hasn’t said a word publicly since news first broke in August that he was the winning bidder for the Blazers. So as fans wait to see how he transforms their team, and staffers wait to see if they’ll still have jobs under the new regime, all there is to do is wonder how it will all unfold.

This is where Dundon’s other team, the Carolina Hurricanes, could be instructive.

As he prepares to take over the Blazers, I've reviewed hours of interviews, podcasts and radio appearances he's done since he bought the Hurricanes in early 2018, as well as the reaction and coverage in the hockey world of his management of the team during that time, positive and negative.

Hockey and basketball are two different sports. The NHL and NBA are two different leagues with two different financial landscapes. Raleigh, North Carolina and Portland, Oregon are two different cities with two different sets of communities and cultures. Just because something worked for the Hurricanes doesn't mean it's going to work for the Blazers.

But Dundon does have an eight-year track record owning a major professional sports team in a market about the same size as Portland, and that track record is worth a deeper look as he's finally set to take over the Trail Blazers.