Marc Lore does not come off very well in this. While reportedly worth $4b, he basically subcontracted the financing to a shady baseball player, who never was going to have that much money. Especially weird since the selling price was 60% of the teams value.
While I have a lot of issues with Glen Taylor and they way he's operated the Timberwolves and also at one time was excited about the modern ownership ideas Lore/A-Rod promised to bring to the Wolves, I think we dodged a bullet here. It now appears that Lore/A-Rod would have been house poor and in a dysfunction owners. Which is something the Wolves do not need at this time.
I know it's still tenuous with the Wolves. Taylor is not a good owner, he's 82 and Seattle and Las Vegas are gunning for a team. Lore and A-Rod may not been the answer but unfortunately there's not an obvious good solution to the Glen Taylor problem either.
The occasional enjoyable season aside, I've long said that the Timberwolves are the single worst franchise in all major men's sports. I fully anticipate them having a shocking exit in the playoffs this year too. I'm not hoping for it, but I won't be surprised by it.
This whole saga, no matter how it turns out, just fits in so perfectly.
I have so many questions/problems with this. Anybody that owned 40% of a business would much rather have 80%. In my opinion, 49% is worst case as you have a lot of risk without control. They are very close to that.
I was under the impression that Connelly was brought on by Lore/A-Rod. He's the one that put this team together. And now that someone fixed his product, Glen wants to stick around? What a jerk
Lore is a hedge fund manager with $4B and had an agreement to buy a business for $1.5B that might be worth $2.5B?! And he let that expire? That doesn't make any sense.
I don't know enough to know if this is true. If it is, Glen looks pretty bad.
Everyone's asking for my take on the Lore + Arod situation. Instead of replying to all the DM's here you go:
1. The contact is ironclad regarding a call option around the closing. This basically says the NBA has to approve before they can close, therefore an automatic extension.… pic.twitter.com/zQS87eSm1y
Similar article in a outlet called Sportico. The basic gist is that since Lore/A-Rod got their financing plan into NBA before March 27, they get an automatic 90 day extension for the NBA to approve.
But yeah, we don't know enough to know what is true and what is the parties getting their side out to sympathetic media people. It feels like Glen went rogue on this. He better load up on some big time lawyers if he wants to maintain his position the deal is dead.
I’m kind of surprised the NBA didn’t approve the Carlyle Group financing when it worked out for the Carlyle Group to buy the O’s. But maybe there was a good reason.
It is odd to me that they wouldn’t have a line of good financing partners available if the franchise has really increased in value so much since the deal was set in motion.
It seems like the NBA could still kill the bid by denying the new funding. If Taylor has allies with whoever runs that process, they might scrutinize it more than they would otherwise.
Yesterday was set up for a classic bad Minnesota men's sports day as by 5:00 yesterday we already had:
Wolves ownership debacle
Three players from UMN men's BB team enter the portal (include Payne, who is a stud)
Lewis and Kepler removed from their game due to injuries
That still left the Twins game to finish, UMN men's hockey first round NCAA tourney game, and the Wild game. And lo and behold, all three teams won! It was a Maundy Thursday miracle!!
Looks like @twins closing the upper deck of Target Field between April 8-25. Season ticket holders being notified today of upgrade to lower level seats.
We got that news last night in our training. Crowd shots will look better on TV and they can scale back on event staff a bit early in the year and add more later when turnout is better. They open it again for May because they get a lot of student/youth groups so demand for that real estate goes up.
Here's an interesting article in the NY Post of all places about the Timberwolves "sale" to Lore/A-Rod.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/28/sports/marc-lore-depended-too-much-on-alex-rodriguez-for-timberwolves-sources/
Marc Lore does not come off very well in this. While reportedly worth $4b, he basically subcontracted the financing to a shady baseball player, who never was going to have that much money. Especially weird since the selling price was 60% of the teams value.
While I have a lot of issues with Glen Taylor and they way he's operated the Timberwolves and also at one time was excited about the modern ownership ideas Lore/A-Rod promised to bring to the Wolves, I think we dodged a bullet here. It now appears that Lore/A-Rod would have been house poor and in a dysfunction owners. Which is something the Wolves do not need at this time.
I know it's still tenuous with the Wolves. Taylor is not a good owner, he's 82 and Seattle and Las Vegas are gunning for a team. Lore and A-Rod may not been the answer but unfortunately there's not an obvious good solution to the Glen Taylor problem either.
The occasional enjoyable season aside, I've long said that the Timberwolves are the single worst franchise in all major men's sports. I fully anticipate them having a shocking exit in the playoffs this year too. I'm not hoping for it, but I won't be surprised by it.
This whole saga, no matter how it turns out, just fits in so perfectly.
I have so many questions/problems with this. Anybody that owned 40% of a business would much rather have 80%. In my opinion, 49% is worst case as you have a lot of risk without control. They are very close to that.
I was under the impression that Connelly was brought on by Lore/A-Rod. He's the one that put this team together. And now that someone fixed his product, Glen wants to stick around? What a jerk
Lore is a hedge fund manager with $4B and had an agreement to buy a business for $1.5B that might be worth $2.5B?! And he let that expire? That doesn't make any sense.
I'm guessing this saga isn't done
It really is weird. Lore committed around $500m and then just kind of lost interest.
I don't know enough to know if this is true. If it is, Glen looks pretty bad.
Similar article in a outlet called Sportico. The basic gist is that since Lore/A-Rod got their financing plan into NBA before March 27, they get an automatic 90 day extension for the NBA to approve.
But yeah, we don't know enough to know what is true and what is the parties getting their side out to sympathetic media people. It feels like Glen went rogue on this. He better load up on some big time lawyers if he wants to maintain his position the deal is dead.
What'll be really amazing is when Tim Connelly bails...
I’m kind of surprised the NBA didn’t approve the Carlyle Group financing when it worked out for the Carlyle Group to buy the O’s. But maybe there was a good reason.
It is odd to me that they wouldn’t have a line of good financing partners available if the franchise has really increased in value so much since the deal was set in motion.
It seems like the NBA could still kill the bid by denying the new funding. If Taylor has allies with whoever runs that process, they might scrutinize it more than they would otherwise.
Diamondbacks scored a whole lot of runs in one inning yesterday.
If one more batter reached, Perdomo would have batted three times that inning.
I wonder what the record for most batters in a half inning is.
I believe it's 23 by the 53 Red Sox
I thought you couldn't score runs in the majors without hitting homers.
Yesterday was set up for a classic bad Minnesota men's sports day as by 5:00 yesterday we already had:
Wolves ownership debacle
Three players from UMN men's BB team enter the portal (include Payne, who is a stud)
Lewis and Kepler removed from their game due to injuries
That still left the Twins game to finish, UMN men's hockey first round NCAA tourney game, and the Wild game. And lo and behold, all three teams won! It was a Maundy Thursday miracle!!
We got that news last night in our training. Crowd shots will look better on TV and they can scale back on event staff a bit early in the year and add more later when turnout is better. They open it again for May because they get a lot of student/youth groups so demand for that real estate goes up.
Another beautiful day in MO, even better than yesterday was - a perfect day for a baseball ... oh, never mind
Genius.