Three months into Tom Dundon's ownership of the Portland Trail Blazers, the cost-cutting has reached the broadcast booth. According to Sport5, the Blazers are moving to consolidate their television and radio operations into a single, leaner unit — a restructuring that would make Portland the only franchise in the NBA without fully separate, travelling crews for each medium.
The purge has already claimed several familiar voices. Michael Holton, the team's television analyst for 19 seasons, is out, along with longtime statistician Tom Haberstroh and TV hosts Neil Everett and Jamie Hudson, according to Forbes' Maury Brown, who first laid out the cuts in detail. The contracts of TV play-by-play voice Kevin Calabro and radio's Travis Demers are both up for renewal, with their futures unresolved, while producer Greg Fonseca has already left for a role at NBA Broadcasting.
Under consideration, per the reporting, is a plan to simulcast the television broadcast onto radio and to cover road games remotely rather than sending announcers on the road — a model no NBA team currently runs in full. Twenty-eight of the league's 29 clubs still maintain fully separate TV and radio broadcast teams; only the Toronto Raptors' radio operation skips travel for away games, and even that falls short of a true simulcast.
The blueprint looks familiar to hockey fans. When Dundon took over the Carolina Hurricanes in 2018, he dismantled the radio booth after Hall of Fame voice Chuck Kaiton declined an offer that would have cut his pay by roughly 80 percent, folding radio coverage into a television simulcast that has stayed in place ever since.
The broadcast cuts follow a wave of roughly 70 layoffs across the Blazers' front office since Dundon's group completed its takeover, touching both the basketball operations side and close to a quarter of the business staff — an early sign of how aggressively the new ownership intends to run the numbers on a franchise it paid a reported $4.25 billion to control.
The NBA's Board of Governors unanimously approved that sale on March 30, with Dundon's group — which also includes Portland-based investor Sheel Tyle, Blue Owl Capital co-president Marc Zahr and the Cherng family behind Panda Express — buying an 80 percent stake immediately and the remaining fifth by 2028. The Blazers had been controlled by the estate of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen since his 2018 death, with sale proceeds required to go to charity under the terms of his trust.
The broadcast overhaul fits a wider pattern Ynet has also chronicled in recent weeks: Dundon is reportedly seeking Portland's next head coach for around $1.5 million a year, well under the $7-8 million typically paid to established NBA coaches, and has been unwilling to give interim coach Tiago Splitter the raise he was hoping for after steering a shorthanded roster through the playoffs. The same reporting describes the Blazers skipping free jerseys at a playoff home opener and declining to fly two-way players to road games — small line items, but ones that have unsettled a fan base and staff still adjusting to life after the Allen era.
None of it touches the roster directly, but it lands at an odd moment for a Blazers team increasingly built around Deni Avdija, whose breakout form since his 2024 trade from Washington has made him the closest thing Portland has to an untouchable asset. How far the cost-cutting eventually reaches — and whether it stops at the broadcast booth — looks set to be one of the defining storylines of Dundon's first full season in charge.
