The Minnesota Timberwolves — the early breakout stars of this year’s NBA playoffs — will on Saturday take on the defending champion Denver Nuggets in the western conference semi-finals in one of the most anticipated basketball match-ups of the year.
At the same time there is an equally hard-fought legal battle taking place off the court over the ownership of the team. That dispute is expected to head to arbitration, according to two people familiar with the matter, a process that could take months, leaving a question mark hanging over the future of the franchise as the Timberwolves make a run for a championship.
On the one side is Glen Taylor, a self-made billionaire and former Minnesota politician who has owned the Wolves and its sister club, the WNBA’s Lynx, since 1995.
On the other are ecommerce entrepreneur Marc Lore and retired baseball star Alex Rodriguez, who together in 2021 agreed to buy the Wolves and Lynx from Taylor for $1.5bn over the course of four transactions. A purchase agreement between both sides laid out those transactions as a series of call options, which triggered a 90-day window to close when initiated.
All had been going to plan, with Lore and Rodriguez acquiring approximately 36 per cent of the enterprise by March 2023. Late last year, they exercised an option to purchase an additional tranche of ownership that would have given them control of the clubs. But earlier this year, Taylor said that Lore and Rodriguez’s option had expired, and that “the Timberwolves and Lynx are no longer for sale”.
Just as the Wolves became the hottest team in basketball, the two warring factions began trading public barbs over the past and future of the club.
Lore and Rodriguez have said that Taylor developed a case of “seller’s remorse” in the light of the Wolves’ history-making 2024 season, and claimed on a podcast that Taylor had attempted to thwart a pivotal hire — president of basketball operations Tim Connelly — whom the pair successfully lured away from the Nuggets.
Taylor, for his part, has expressed scepticism over Lore and Rodriguez’s financing for the team. And after decades of middling performances, he has also said that he is enjoying the Wolves’ sudden success — their four straight wins over the Phoenix Suns last week marked the first ever postseason sweep by any professional Minnesota sports team.
“We’ve got a really good team, we’ve got a lot of good things going for us, I enjoy it and I’m healthy enough to do this,” he told the Associated Press in March. A person familiar with his thinking, however, told the Financial Times that he would have continued with the sale if contract terms were satisfied.
So heated were the exchanges that the NBA league office quietly asked both sides to stop talking to the press, according to people familiar with the matter.
The NBA declined to comment, as did the Timberwolves, Lore, and Rodriguez. Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA, said last month that “there is no role for the league” in a mediation or arbitration dispute between the buyer and seller of a franchise.
The agreement hit its first hurdle in mid-March, when Lore and Rodriguez abandoned a plan to include financing from private equity firm the Carlyle Group to fund the debt for the controlling purchase. According to people familiar with the negotiations, Carlyle planned to contribute financing towards the deal from one of its funds, but as a first-time investor into an NBA team, the league would have to vet the entire firm.
During that vetting process, it became known that a separate Carlyle fund under the firm’s management had an existing tangential commercial relationship with NBA players. Under league ownership rules, that relationship could be perceived as a conflict of interest.
While Carlyle was neither approved nor rejected by the NBA, Lore and Rodriguez were aiming to meet the March call option deadline. They selected an alternate financing plan from Dyal Capital, an institutional investor that already had NBA approval.
The pair submitted their paperwork on March 20, a week before the option deadline.
Where Taylor and the hopeful buyers disagree is whether the submitted paperwork fulfils the requirements for closing.
Lore and Rodriguez maintain they submitted “fully subscribed” financing plans that fulfilled the terms to close, according to people familiar with the matter, leaving NBA approval as the only remaining hurdle. They argue that they could not transmit payment for the stake without league approval.
A person familiar with Taylor’s position said Lore and Rodriguez did not keep him informed of any efforts to secure NBA approval, and that they did not transmit payment for the option as they had previously done before the close of the option window for the earlier tranches.
According to a copy of the 2021 contract between Taylor, Lore and Rodriguez reviewed by the FT, the option window for closing the transaction is “automatically extended by an additional ninety (90) days” if that transaction has not yet been approved by the NBA or any other government entity.
The purchase agreement further states that the buyers “shall provide the Seller Parties’ Representative with regular updates on the process of obtaining the NBA Approvals, including copies of all filings and material correspondence with the NBA Entities”.
Last Wednesday morning, the two sides convened in separate conference rooms within the offices of a law firm in downtown Minneapolis, according to two people who were present. Neither Taylor, accompanied by his wife Becky, nor Lore and Rodriguez saw one another, and a mediator travelled back and forth between each camp attempting to make progress on a resolution.
At about 3pm, they remained at an impasse, and the meeting disbanded. Both sides expect to head to arbitration.
That process may not take place until autumn, one of the people said, long after the 2024 NBA playoffs conclude in June. Barring further developments before then, Taylor would remain the team governor and the ceremonial recipient of any trophies should the Wolves advance to and prevail in the NBA Finals.
Until then, both parties are expected to watch the remaining Wolves games this season from their respective floor seats at the Target Center in Minneapolis. Their seats are situated directly opposite one another, face to face.
Additional reporting by Sujeet Indap
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