AROUND the NBA:

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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 come to negotiating is so firm. I have been told many times he doesn't negotiate; he sets his terms and you either get there, or you don't." "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." "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." "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 and tons of tech money. It would be a huge boon to the NBA."

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