Message ID CAEGnrcaeW824d8vMjc-nf8yGYWhsY9ZzBQ3NzTLOgP4XGU1pJA@mail.gmail.com

Created at: Thu, Aug 6, 2026 at 9:26 PM (Delivered after 0 seconds)

From: Jared jared@rosecityironfront.org

To: Council Clerk councilclerk@portlandoregon.gov, mayor@portlandoregon.gov, cityattorneysoffice@portlandoregon.gov

Subject: Deprecate the NBA's monopoly on Basketball, and finance a semi-pro regional league and the country's first minor league basketball team. The name "Trailblazers" is an inalienable cultural heritage of the State of Oregon: reserve the privelege of eminent domain. Drive a hard bargain on the Moda Center term sheet, or walk away.

Portland City Councilors, Mayor, and City Attorneys,

The NBA’s monopoly and monopsony have outlived their usefulness to the country, to the sport of Basketball, and to the people who play it. We must insist that U.S. Congress repeal the provisions of the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act that legalized this monopoly on basketball entertainment1, and replace it with a better framework that allows minor leagues and alt-leagues to flourish. Analyze and critique the attached legislative proposal, and llobby our representatives and Senators in Oregon's delegation to Washington D.C. to sponsor this.

In the meantime, the City of Portland can re-invest the money it would otherwise spend on excessive capital improvements to the Moda Center2, by using it instead to finance a semi-professional regional sports league that will feed the nation's first ALTERNATE or MINOR LEAGUE BASKETBALL team, which will occupy the Arena and probably inherit the name TRAILBLAZERS after the 2030 divorce and subsequent litigation. If you really want to "defeat the billionaires", then you have to start thinking like one: invest in the CIVIC and CULTURAL CAPITAL necessary to COMPETE DIRECTLY WITH THE NBA (a boring and overpaid anti-competitive blob) by producing a superior form of basketball entertainment, and cultivate SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT for truly "LOCAL" ECONOMIC GROWTH.

Next, a legal authority is researched and outlined under which the trademarked name "Trailblazers" is an inalienable cultural heritage of the State of Oregon3, and as such can be seized by Governor Kotek under eminent domain, if the so-called "Portland Trailblazers Inc." Basketball franchise were to decamp outside the state (as the new owner has threatened to do when the bridge agreement expires in 2030, as now seems likely) Please request the City Attorney analyze the attached legal memorandum and give a professional opinion on the feasability of this action and its defense, and it's pleading in the alternative. You can also negotiate this as a term of the covenant with Dundon Inc.: that he forfeit the trademarked name if the team leaves (c.f. Cleveland Browns)4. But know that the City has a strong hand here, so please drive a hard bargain or just walk away.

Here are the five titles of the legislative proposal to deprecate the sports monopoly, the entire proposal is attached. An advocacy website is now in the works, and should be live before the vote next week. If you respond with your analyses and critiques, and give permission, I will upload them verbatim to the website under your name.

  • Title I — Repeal of the Basketball Broadcast Pooling Exemption to the Sherman anti-Trust Act
  • Title II — Franchise Ownership Structure Reform Act
  • Title III — Alternate League Non-Interference Act
  • Title IV — Entry-Level Player Market Competition Act5
  • Title V — General Provisions

Footnotes

  1. 15 U.S.C. § 1291. Full findings and citations for the legislative proposal are in the attached legislative proposal. ↩

  2. Council agenda item: Moda Center term sheet resolution, authorizing a non-binding term sheet with Rip City Management LLC and Trail Blazers Holdings, LLC — now majority-owned (80.1%) by a Tom Dundon-led group, per OPB's coverage of the March 2026 sale. ↩

  3. Trailblazers: an inalienable cultural heritage of Oregon, Section 4, laying out both mechanisms — the negotiated covenant and the eminent domain backstop — in full. ↩

  4. Cleveland Browns relocation settlement, per Wikipedia (cross-checked against Case Western Reserve's Encyclopedia of Cleveland History): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Browns_relocation_controversy. ↩

  5. The non-statutory labor exemption, recognized in Brown v. Pro Football, Inc., 518 U.S. 231 (1996). ↩