The battle between Minnesota Timberwolves owner and incumbent owners Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore is ongoing. This organization should have seen their new ownership group take command from Taylor during the 2023-24 season, but this process of selling the team has reached a point of no return with Taylor halting the sale in April and stating that the team was “no longer for sale,” despite language in the contracts stating the complete opposite.
New ownership led by Rodriguez and Lore has had ongoing legal battles with Taylor regarding the sale of the Timberwolves, and the two sides will now enter binding arbitration in November.
With the 2024-25 NBA season set to begin and Minnesota making noise recently by trading All-Star big man Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks, the Timberwolves have a lot of outside noise distracting them from their main goal of being a championship contender. The ongoing battle between Taylor and the Rodriguez-Lore ownership group will reach a conclusion in the coming weeks, one that the new owners believe will be in their favor.
“Essentially, there was an agreement to sell the team at $1.5 billion. They were going to do it in chunks of payments, and Glen Taylor’s argument was that the chunks of payments were not done on time, the paperwork wasn’t done, and the wire wasn’t done on time,” ESPN’s Shams Charania said on the Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday. “Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore’s position was (that) the paperwork needed to be on time, not the actual wire itself… November 4 is when arbitration starts. Glen Taylor against Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore. I believe, from what I hear, that within a month, we should know who is going to be the owner of this team.
“Alex Rodriguez & Marc Lore have $940M sitting in a JP Morgan account to be wired to Glen Taylor to finish this purchase of the team.”
It is very clear that Rodriguez and Lore want to buy the Timberwolves outright from Taylor, and that is what they are prepared to do entering arbitration. Given that they have the money ready and have followed the step-by-step process through the years of buying small chunks of equity from Taylor, it is hard to imagine that this decision won’t be in their favor.
As for Taylor, he has gone to extreme measures to hold up the sale of the Timberwolves, who are coming off their best season in nearly two decades. With Anthony Edwards leading the charge, Minnesota is expected to once again be a title-contending threat in the Western Conference, which is likely where some of the hesitance from Taylor formed.
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However, Taylor has gone as far as to involve the NBA in this problem, as the long-time Timberwolves owner subpoenaed the league for the ongoing fight in September. The NBA has had zero involvement in the matter between Taylor and the Rodriguez-Lore ownership group, yet they may be forced to expose private league communications and financial information based on this subpoena.
“The arbitration process exists independent of the league that was set out in the sales agreement,” Silver told reporters at the league’s Board of Governors meeting in September. “Depending on the outcome, only then would the league then continue a vetting process for ownership. We really aren’t operating in any way right now on that situation other than waiting for the outcome of that arbitration.”
Arbitration will ultimately decide the outcome of who will own the Timberwolves. With that set to begin on Nov. 4, a clearer picture will be painted for what the future of this organization will look like.