Blazers layoffs hit about 70 Portland Trail Blazers employees in Oregon on Tuesday, with one remaining staffer claiming the team simply 'looked at a spreadsheet of salaries and cut the highest ones' as owner Tom Dundon pushes ahead with aggressive cost-cutting.
The NBA franchise has been under scrutiny since Dundon, who formally took over this year, began reshaping the club's off-court operation with a series of belt-tightening moves. Those early steps prompted unease among staff and fans, but nothing on the reported scale of this week's cull, which appears to mark the most severe trimming yet of the Blazers' business side.
The latest Blazers layoffs were first detailed by Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report, who said an estimated 70 people were let go across the organisation. That number has not been publicly confirmed by the team. Highkin then relayed a stark account from someone who survived the cuts, describing how the process felt from the inside.
Was told around 70 people were let go today in the Blazers' layoffs on the business side. Know some of the names but out of respect to them I'll let them announce it when and how they will.
'Talked to one person who survived the cuts today who said it feels like they just looked at a spreadsheet of salaries and cut the highest ones without any regard for what anyone does and how important they are,' Highkin posted on X.
It is one person's perception rather than proof of how the decisions were made, but it captures the sense of shock in the building better than any corporate statement.
Talked to one person who survived the cuts today who said it feels like they just looked at a spreadsheet of salaries and cut the highest ones without any regard for what anyone does and how important they are.
Publicly, the franchise has tried to strike a more measured tone.Team president Dewayne Hankins, speaking to Joe Freeman ofThe Oregonian, said the Blazers layoffs were about 'positioning the organisation for the future' and called it a 'difficult decision.'The club has not released a detailed breakdown of which departments were affected or how roles were evaluated.
That gap between the official line and the staffer's blunt take is where the unease lives. On the one hand, senior management insists this is a strategic restructuring, the kind of unglamorous pruning that every business undertakes sooner or later.
On the other hand, there is the very human impression from inside that years of experience and institutional knowledge can be erased with a sort-and-delete on a salary column.
Source: International Business Times UK
