Many around the basketball world were shocked when it was revealed that Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore’s attempt to buy the Minnesota Timberwolves had failed, and it seems that continually being late on payments on the nearly $2 billion deal played a massive role.
On Thursday it was announced that a planned sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx to a group led by New York Yankees great Alex Rodriguez and business partner Lore had fallen through. There had been cracks in the facade of this deal for some time and the process to finalize it seemed to drag on.
- Alex Rodriguez Timberwolves deal was canceled on March 28
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On Friday, a new report claimed that while Lore was passionate about a purchase in the early stages, he lost interest in being the majority owner of the NBA Western Conference powerhouse and he pulled hundreds of millions meant to go toward the sale and instead reinvested in a new food company. That left Rodriguez in a serious bind that he could never dig himself out of.
On Thursday night, during a new edition of the “This League Uncut” podcast NBA insider Chris Haynes explained how late payments from the consortium played a huge role in current Timberwolves and Lynx owner Glen Taylor ending the agreement and retaking control of the franchises.
“Throughout this process, the selling process, I kept hearing rumors about like, payments being late,” Haynes said. “Giving Alex Rodriguez and his team a little bit more time to come up with a payment. I was hearing rumbles about that throughout the process. And so, if those were concrete rumbles, then that means that this final straw was just that, that it had to have been other instances of Glen Taylor just feeling like this process was playing out way too long.
“Longer than expected or anticipated and he probably felt like he’s given too many opportunities, that he’s given a couple more extensions, and he probably felt like this process wasn’t going the way it should have been. And then to your point, about the evaluation [of the franchise], he probably could get more now on the market. Maybe that does play a factor as well. But yeah, I wasn’t surprised when I heard the news of this.”
- Alex Rodriguez net worth: $350 million
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Co-host Marc Stein also added that many around the league had doubts if the deal would ever get done and that Taylor actually had trouble finding worthwhile bidders for the team until Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore. However, now that the Wolves are on the rise, the word around the league is the failure of this deal could open the door to a sale for much more money in the future.
The former New York Yankees star and his partner were set to pay $1.5 billion for the team.