Fans of the Portland Trail Blazers should prepare themselves for a very unpleasant time. Tom Dundon, the team's new owner, is digging in. Arena renovations would improve the value of his property, and so he wants arena renovations. He is simply and resolutely refusing to commit any of his own money to the project. If Portland refuses to pay for stadium renovations, and the stadium thus goes un-renovated, Dundon will have an ironclad pretext for packing the team into a U-Haul and moving it to Las Vegas, or Nashville, or—the monkey's paw finally directing a shriveled middle finger at the world—Seattle. That's how investor ownership works, and why it is fucked: The franchise has been in Portland for almost 60 years; Dundon bought it four months ago, and it is entirely and irrevocably his.

Dundon dispatched a delegation of bottom-feeding deputies to Portland City Hall on Thursday, for the purpose of keeping the pressure on civic leaders. Those vile underlings, pressing a more aggressive line of attack, used the occasion to assert that Portland is too woke and broke, at present, to function as the host city of an NBA basketball team, per reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Dundon is demanding that Portland pay $120 million up front for renovations, and to earmark another $275 million for continuing maintenance. The city, in return, wants a 20-year lease, the Blazers to pay a $3 million annual fee in exchange for the property taxes the team avoids by playing in a publicly owned arena, and for Dundon to commit to using unionized labor. For the sin of presenting these terms to the Blazers, the city is forced to sit there and listen to Dundon's proxies spit Fox News hysteria at a public meeting.

"Portland’s current stagnant business climate, high income taxes, and divisive political environment make this a tough city to invest in," said Dewayne Hankins, the team's president of business operations, who has worked for the Blazers for more than a decade and who should therefore be chased out of town naked and screaming and hounded off into the merciless wilderness. Hankins further defended Dundon's refusal to spend his own money renovating the arena of the team he bought and owns, reports OPB, on the grounds that the arena was built and maintained using money spent by its previous owner, Paul Allen. "That often doesn’t get talked about. Going forward, in order for this deal to make sense, the contribution needs to come from the public sector."

There's a handy lesson in class solidarity. Dundon, wielding Hankins like a sock-puppet, is putting tax dollars on one side of the scale and private investor wealth on the other, and arguing that because private wealth was previously spent by a member of Dundon's billionaire class, the class has already contributed its share to the pot. It is now time for the tax-paying public to pitch money back at the billionaires, goes this argument. Dundon will simply collect this payment on behalf of his tribe.

"We want to have a building that players from other teams are jealous of and want to play in," said Zandria Conyers, the team's senior vice president and general council, at the Thursday meeting. Conyers, who like Hankins was with the Blazers before Dundon took over and has eagerly adopted his open contempt for Portland and its fans, dismissed the city's proposal as "not even a document we can respond to." "We also want our city to be a thriving city," said Conyers, per OPB. "There is a lot more to a market rate deal that we have to think about."

Man, this sucks. Dundon's vile underlings are, at best, referencing MAGA talking points to heap humiliation on Portland's civic leaders for leverage in negotiations. Whether Hankins and Conyers believe this shit or not, their goal is to wrestle away $400 million from Portland taxpayers and redirect it toward the wealth of a Texas billionaire sociopath. Relocation is the unspoken threat behind all of Dundon's sneering insults, with Hankins limply offering Thursday that Dundon does, in fact, "believe that Portland is the best and most obvious choice for this team."

All of that is simply contingent on the people of Portland proving their own commitment, by joining together, apologizing for their town, promising to suit it better for Dundon's enrichment, and then loading their own money into a dump truck and depositing it in Dundon's driveway. Dundon and his mouthpieces are opening new frontiers in investor-owner shamelessness. It's pointless to imagine ways of forcing him out of the picture: If your skin is crawling at the fucking nerve of this guy, remember that the other members of Dundon's class are pumping their fists. Whatever the outcome, this is good teamwork.