30 March 2024
In an interview with Sportico, Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez said Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor showed “complete and utter disregard for the contract” when he put out a statement Thursday saying the team was no longer for sale.
“We’re going to be the owners of the Minnesota Timberwolves,” Lore told Sportico on Friday. “It’s just a matter of time, and how much pain Glen wants to put the fans, the players, the town and community through. It’s his choice. It didn’t have to be this way.”
Taylor said because Lore and Rodriguez didn’t have the money to complete the final portion of the deal that would’ve made the duo controlling owners by March 27, the deal was off.
“We reminded them that we needed the material, the NBA reminded them that they needed the material,” Taylor told the Pioneer Press, “and they didn’t really do it.”
Lore and Rodriguez said they did have the money and had submitted their commitments on March 21 — six days ahead of the deadline — and simply needed to wait for NBA protocols to run their course. The duo reportedly added Blue Owl Capital’s Blue Owl HomeCourt as a partner in the deal last week.
“We have fulfilled our obligations, and have all necessary funding and are fully committed to closing our purchase of the team as soon as the NBA completes its approval process,” Lore and Rodriguez said in a statement Thursday. “Glen Taylor’s statement is an unfortunate case of seller’s remorse that is short-sighted and disruptive to the team and the fans during a historic winning season.”
There is a clause in the original purchase agreement that notes an automatic triggering of a 90-day extension for the NBA to complete its approval process.
Thursday’s Timberwolves statement read: “Under certain circumstances, Lore and Rodriguez could have been entitled to a limited extension. However, those circumstances did not occur.”
Taylor assumed legal recourse from Lore and Rodriguez was a possibility.
“I’ve never sued anyone; I’ve never been sued,” Lore told Sportico, “but we’re dealing with someone that is very comfortable operating that way, and we have to take whatever actions are necessary to protect our childhood dream here.”
The deal was originally agreed to at a $1.5 billion purchase price in 2021, with a payment plan in place to play out over the following two-plus years. At the time, that appeared to be a low price for an NBA franchise. Rodriguez and Lore currently own 36 percent of the team.
Taylor assumed Lore and Rodriguez would remain on as limited partners. Sportico currently values the franchise at $3 billion.
“Because they bought in at a very favorable price, which is smart of them that they did it, and I agreed to it,” he said. “So, to me, they should probably keep their investment. I think it’s a really good investment.”
Lore and Rodriguez told Sportico that Taylor told team leadership to not speak with the tandem.
Taylor said the partnership hasn’t gone the way he believed it would when the agreement was reached in 2021, noting Lore has been immersed in his food service company, Wonder — “so he’s kind of excluded himself” — and Rodriguez was “not inclined to get involved in a lot of these things, business-wise.”
“I just thought maybe they’d get more involved, and they chose not to. That was fine with me,” Taylor said. “I’m used to making the decisions. So it didn’t turn out maybe the way I thought it was going to be, but I don’t feel bad about it, because I love making the decisions.”
Taylor has had final say on all team decisions over the past three years, but Lore and Rodriguez were integral in bringing in president of basketball operations Tim Connelly. They also created a new owner’s suite in the back hallways of Target Center near the home team locker room where Lore and Rodriguez often reside pregame.
“I mean, that was more of their priority that they had that room than, ‘Who are we trading for?’” Taylor told The Athletic.
“Think about it from our end: If we had an ironclad agreement, like we do, would we be talking about how Marc and Alex are more worried about the owner’s suite than making real (basketball) trades?” Rodriguez told Sportico. “It’s so … childish. But you only do that when you don’t have any ground to sit on.”
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