Allen paid $70 million for the Blazers back in the late 1980s and promised to keep the team in Portland — today, the Blazers are valued at $2.05 billion, according to Forbes.
Allen frequently flew from Seattle to sit courtside at Blazers games, sometimes with his Microsoft cofounder, Gates. In the early 1990s, only a few years after Allen bought the team, the Blazers reached the NBA finals twice in two years, though the team has never won a championship under his ownership.
The Blazers were beset by challenges throughout Allen's tenure as owner, including coaching issues, ill-advised trades, financial issues with a new arena, and, in the mid-2000s, a losing record that led to plummeting fan attendance. Allen almost sold the team in 2006 but later called it off — soon after, the team turned things around, journalist Mike Tokito wrote in Forbes in 2018.
"Once you own a team for as many years as I have, and you root for that team for that period of time, you've got rooting for the Blazers in your blood," Allen once told Tokito.