You Can Buy a Portland Trail Blazers Ticket for Less Than a Gallon of Gas

As gas reaches $5 a gallon, a Moda Center seat falls to $4.

Interstate 5 in the Rose Quarter. (Wesley Lapointe)
By Aaron Mesh

This week, Portland crossed a meaningless but amusing intersection: A gallon of gas costs more than a ticket to a professional basketball game.

To be precise, a ticket to the March 28 Portland Trail Blazers game against the Oklahoma City Thunder can be purchased for $4 on the resale site Vivid Seats.

Exhibit A.

A gallon of regular unleaded gasoline at the nearest service station to Moda Center (a Shell Jacksons at 15 NE Broadway) costs $4.95.

Exhibit B. (Aaron Mesh)

Admittedly, the cheap ticket is an outlier: On most resale sites, a nosebleed seat will still set you back at least one portrait of Abraham Lincoln. (That said, Lloyd District gas prices are some of the lowest in the city; in many neighborhoods, a gallon of gas rose above $5 a week ago.)

The price reversal marks a convergence of two trends: The rise in oil prices as Vladimir Putin wages war on Ukraine, and the abject awfulness of a Blazers team that has traded or rested all its starting-caliber players in an effort to lose enough games to obtain a top pick in this summer’s NBA draft. (On Monday, the Blazers confirmed what Damian Lillard had previously indicated: He won’t play again this season.)

But they play the games anyway—with the dance squad and the halftime show and the T-shirt cannon—so we assembled a list of the best bargains remaining this season.

Related: We found the cheapest Trail Blazers tickets at the end of a lost season.

Anyway, like the fella said: Go by Streetcar.

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