Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore are still contemplating buying the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx even though majority owner Glen Taylor said Thursday that his option to take a majority stake had expired, Sportico’s Eben Novy-Williams and Eric Jackson reported.
“We’re going to own the Minnesota Timberwolves,” Lore said, according to Novy-Williams and Jackson. “It’s just a matter of time and the pain Glen needs to get through to the fans, the players, the city and the network. It’s your choice. It didn’t have to be this way. “
In Thursday’s statement, Taylor said Rodriguez and Lore completed the acquisition before the March 27 contract deadline and qualified for an extension.
“The Timberwolves and Lynx are no longer for sale,” Taylor said.
Lore and Rodriguez accused Taylor of “making up a story to get away from a deal that was no longer financially beneficial,” according to Novy-Williams and Jackson.
“It’s not public now,” added The Athletic’s Rodriguez, Jon Krawczynski and Shams Charania. “We can stay in this fight for five years, ten years, whatever. We’re not going to let it go. “
“We will make any and all efforts here to keep the contract that Glen broke. That means time, capital, whatever means you need,” Lore said.
The report echoes what was shared Thursday by a spokesperson for Lore and Rodriguez, who called Taylor’s case “an unfortunate case of seller remorse,” according to Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic.
A spokesperson for Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez said Taylor had “an unfortunate case of remorse. “pic. twitter. com/dvfJaYDKm9
Taylor agreed to sell the Timberwolves to Lore and Rodriguez in 2021 as part of a deal that gave the new owners four years to buy them for $1. 5 billion.
Lore and Rodriguez currently own 40% of the teams. The final payment would give them an additional 40% stake and complement their majority share offering, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Prospective owners said there was a clause in the deal that presented buyers with “an automatic 90-day extension” if they presented signed monetary documents and were still awaiting approval from the NBA, Novy-Williams and Jackson reported.
Lore and Rodriguez said they filed the documents on March 21, six days before the deadline, to Novy-Williams and Jackson.
Taylor claimed that investors could benefit from an extension “in certain cases,” but added that “those cases did happen. “
Lore and Rodriguez had to get the last investment memo when Carlyle Group pulled out of investing, Jackson and Novy-Williams reported on March 19.
Carlyle and the owners “could not agree on a design that the NBA would approve,” Jackson and Novy-Williams wrote.
Krawczynski and Shams Charania told The Athletic on March 20 that Lore and Rodriguez had acquired a new investor, Dyal Capital Partners, to make the final payment.
Krawczynski and Charania noted at the time that the Timberwolves’ new property design still needs to be approved by the NBA’s Board of Governors.
While Lore and Rodriguez have not shown that they are suing Taylor and the Timberwolves organization, Lore told Novy-Williams and Jackson that their attorneys are in communication with the NBA and are ready to “take any action that is mandatory for our formative years dreaming here. “””.
The Timberwolves went from a lottery team with 23 wins to a contender with 50 wins between 2021 and 2024. Currently, the team has a market valuation of $2. 94 billion, according to Sportico.