The Portland Trail Blazers’ blockbuster acquisition of Ja Morant hasn’t been the joy it should’ve been. Instead, it has ignited local backlash. Intended as a massive summer splash, Portland sent veteran forward Jerami Grant and young wing Kris Murray to the Memphis Grizzlies in exchange for the controversial 26-year-old guard. While national analysts evaluate the basketball upside of Damian Lillard’s return to the floor, local sentiment has turned entirely toxic.

Morant’s lengthy history of injuries, suspensions, and off-court drama aside, Blazers insider Bill Oram is directly questioning new owner Tom Dundon’s intentions behind this trade. 

“I hate every single thing about it, Joe,” Oram said on the SiriusXM show. “Every single thing about it. I think it’s a terrible trade and an affront to the fan base,” Oram stated bluntly. “I think it’s an insult to Damian Lillard.“

The Oregonian columnist doesn’t spell out the mechanics of that insult on air, but the shape of his argument is sitting in plain view elsewhere in the conversation. Lillard spent the season rehabbing a torn Achilles, the kind of injury that erases a year and tests a 35-year-old’s patience for a rebuild.

The front office’s response wasn’t to build a clean, settled backcourt for him to return to- it was to import a third ball-dominant guard with his own list of complications, on top of a roster that already had Jrue Holiday and Scoot Henderson occupying that exact position.

Read that way, “insult” isn’t about anything Morant does on the court. It’s about what the move says regarding whose timeline actually matters to ownership.

However, Oram does claim that this is further alienating Dundon from the local fanbase given recent circumstances.

“I think it’s only further driving a wedge between the franchise and the city of Portland as this new owner is deep in negotiation over an arena deal that could potentially spell the end of the Trail Blazers in Portland. While I don’t think they made this trade to basically poison the well and sour the fanbase’s view of the organization, it certainly wasn’t a deal that was made with any sort of care for this fanbase, for this city.”

If you’ve watched the Jail Blazers documentary, you’d know how strongly Portlanders feel about the only sports team representing their city. A potential relocation concerns the Blazers’ fanbase, though they are enthusiastic about seeing what Morant can do alongside Dame and Deni Avdija.

But someone who knows the ins and outs of the organization has a different read than the fans, hoping it all just works out. A healthy Ja-Dame backcourt might look indefensible on paper.

It says nothing about whether the front office actually thought through how three point guards share one rotation, or what happens to Morant’s $87 million in remaining money if the fit doesn’t work.

Oram hints there’s a worrying pattern in the decision-making since Dundon took over, and the trade is just the latest data point.

Ja Morant trade comes as Portland Trail Blazers struggle to protect their franchise

The core of Oram’s bluntness isn’t just related to the trade. The franchise’s ownership group is currently negotiating a new arena structure with the city. Dundon’s reportedly seeking $600 million from Portland’s taxpayers to renovate Moda Center.

“It feels like we’re making a pretty big investment by staying here and paying these tax rates,” Dundon said at the Portland Metro Chamber meeting last week.

He went on to say, “There’s lot of places that don’t have taxes at the same rate.”

That was interpreted as a veiled threat to take the franchise away from the city that holds it dear. He’s already pursued cost-cutting measures since buying the team for $4 billion.

The implication that the city would have to spend more money to keep the team didn’t sit well with fans, and it’s the backdrop against which the Morant trade now reads less like a basketball decision and more like another item on the list of things this ownership group does without consulting the people who’ll absorb the consequences.

Most analysts claim that it’s not possible to relocate till the Moda Center lease is up in 2030.

While Damian Lillard focused on recovering from his torn Achilles, the team has lost head coach Chauncey Billups to an FBI investigation, gone to the playoffs shorthanded, endured layoffs and cost-cutting, watched Tiago Splitter leave for Chicago, hired Micah Nori, and now added this.

Each of those, on its own, might be defensible. Stacked together, they’re the pattern Oram is actually describing and Lillard may be walking into a far bleaker situation than a single trade headline suggests.

From a logistical standpoint, Portland’s roster is already saturated with point guard talent: Jrue Holiday, the 2023 No. 2 overall pick Scoot Henderson, and now Morant alongside Lillard.

A guard logjam, and somebody on that roster is going to be miscast, underplayed, or eventually traded at a discount, which is its own quiet tax on the asset value Portland just gave up Grant and Murray to acquire. Nori has a significant balancing act ahead in his first head-coaching post.

Local critics like Oram argue that this trade is a desperate, short-sighted gamble while the city’s basketball identity hangs in the balance.