The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - PTFO - How the Billion-Dollar War to Own the Timberwolves Went Nuclear

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

On the court, the Minnesota Timberwolves are making an astounding NBA Finals run, as Anthony Edwards becomes the next Michael Jordan before our very eyes. Behind closed doors, though, the sale of this skyrocketing franchise has devolved into civil war, as would-be owners Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore get betrayed by a "bumbling" and "diabolical" 83-year-old incumbent. Pablo's month-long investigation gives a rare glimpse at a soap opera within the most exclusive club of American life — one that is equal parts Game of Thrones, Succession and Fargo... and straight-up torture for Wolves super-fan Zach Harper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're gonna find out what this sound is. Who can take me to f**king Disneyland? Like that's what I want. That's what I want. Like who can take me to Disneyland? That's where I want to go. Right after this ad. You're listening to DraftKings Network. Zach, Zach Harper, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. You have no idea what the f*** is going on. You just said come to New York and I did.

And you said bring some wolf stuff and I did. Yeah. So the stuff in your bag. You have a bag next to you. I don't know what's in this bag. I want to start by just opening the bag. Okay. Can we open the bag? Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, what's what you got? So this is just the basic starter stuff, right? You have Timberwolves hat You have a really disgusting Timberwolves hat that I've never seen anywhere else

I think I got it at like I don't know some skate shop in Minneapolis Weirdly stained, but it's so gross It's like it's sweaty somehow and I haven't worn it in years. I was gonna say yeah the the khaki It's like a quilt of different disgusting fluids, right? This bag is so large So, you know you have your basic Kevin Garnett. Yeah, yeah jersey the KG 21 Yeah, the replica. Yep, and then you know as a as a white you have to have a Zerby act jersey Oh, wow, Which is weird because Wally Zerbeak number 10. Yeah one of these guys once punched out the other one allegedly. Right they don't like each other.

They don't like each other even to today I feel like This Kevin Garnett doll. I think I got it like an FAO shorts. Wow In in San Francisco. Couple observations already, this guy's maybe like a foot-ish high, maybe more than that. Yeah, maybe 14 inches. Face looks nothing like KG. Nothing, nothing like him. No, no, no.

The ball is shrink-wrapped to his right hand. That's what it's been since I bought it, and I never took that out. Otherwise, super realistic. You are reconstructing a truly insane shrine. Yeah. On top of this desk. Yeah.

I don't know how many people have this. I have two pair. Now, I saw a screenshot of these and thought they were fake years ago. Turns out they were sold on the team website. And so these are... Oh dear f***ing god. So...

So that's a wolf howling at your d***. That is truly the snout onto the d*** pouch. Yeah. Yep. And there's bottom left, or rather on the right thigh, if the wolf is facing outwards, d*** facing outwards, is the team insignia. Yeah, and in case you were wondering, you do have the wolf howling at your ass as well, but not quite as on the nose, so to say.

Quite on the nose is the fact that it is baying at the moon. And so I cannot believe that is real. I once had a girlfriend who threatened to break up with me if I ever wore those again. Again. Yeah. This is inadvertently the most perfect metaphor. I like how you put the underwear, by the way, away. I just feel like that's weird to have that out.

I don't want this on the table, but it's perfect because this is an episode fundamentally about the dirty drawers inside the T-Wolves organization. I don't think they've ever had clean drawers, so that's about right. Alright, so this is going to be one of those episodes where I return from the very bottom of a rabbit hole and just need to tell somebody what I found. And that somebody for today is my friend Zach Harper, who is the biggest Timberwolves fan that I know, as his underwear now obviously suggests, and also a long-time NBA writer

and podcaster. Because for the last month, what I've been doing with my life is investigating a truly rare drama held inside the most exclusive club in American life, I would say. NBA ownership, which is a 30 member sect of these real-life Illuminati members who can basically be seen on national television, sitting courtside, on stage, at these NBA playoff games, while very famous people with even hundreds of millions of dollars feel not just envious, but desperate to join their club. And this club, by the way, has hidden levels.

It has boards. It has clubs inside of clubs, basically, which we'll get to. But what's even funnier about the soap opera that I have been reporting here is that the investment everybody is fighting over, the multi-billion dollar prize, which has doubled in value over just the last three years, is the Minnesota Timberwolves. Once the single worst team in NBA history, but not anymore. Because these Timberwolves started the week by blowing out the defending champion Denver Nuggets after sweeping the Phoenix Suns the round before. All of which is where Zach Harper's lifelong emotional investment comes in.

Every 20 years you're allowed to have confidence in the Terbwolves and so we're at that mark. Kevin Garnett. Yeah. And now? Literally 2004. Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell, Luttrell Sprewell, Anthony Edwards. Yes. Like up until probably a month and a half ago, I didn't think they had any chance against Denver. If they face Denver in a series, they might get to five games, but I just don't see it. Ant changes everything.

Edwards. Oh, Edwards! A signature slam! That's nasty. That nastiness, that glorious nastiness is what's happening out in public view. Yes. That is the story of the season and it should be. It's a celebration.

It's all we need to know, right? Thanks for coming. What a trip. But the reason I have brought you here without explaining any of this to you before right now truly is because I've spent the last month talking to sources. Sack. Four high level sources who are intimately familiar. Don't you love that phrase?

I love that. Who are intimately familiar. Intimately familiar with the T-wolves and other four sources who have dealt directly with both sides of what has been permed to me persuasively now at the end of this month of reporting as a civil war. This story, I mean, it's just unbelievable.

A mediation session has been set in the Minnesota Timberwolves ownership group to speed. Gwen Taylor in the A-Rod group. Taylor ended the ownership transition when he said that the Mark Laurie, Alex Rodriguez group failed to meet deadlines on the sales condition. What is going on here? Who owns the Minnesota Timberwolves? Does anyone want to own this team? This is a civil war that was sparked by, I would say, a truly insanely high stakes betrayal. And on one side of this is the current owner of the Timberwolves, a man that you

have been, of course, as a fan, very familiar with for now three decades. He's the guy who owns the T-wolves, who owns the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx, Glenn Taylor. Age 83, multi-billionaire, the richest man in Minnesota, has been for a very long time. In one word, how would you summarize Glenn Taylor to someone who knows nothing about him? Bumbling. Bumbling, for sure, yeah. Bumbling Glenn Taylor. Had famously agreed to a succession plan.

A contract to sell the Timberwolves, your favorite team in incremental pieces, three years ago now, this is April 2021. But in late March of this year, there was a sudden and frankly shocking development. Glenn Taylor is the owner of the Timberwolves tonight as we speak, and he is now planning to remain the owner from here on out. The deal to sell the team is dead in his mind, and he's now ready to go all in to finally get his Timberwolves an NBA championship. These are the two guys that Glenn had agreed to sell the T-wolves to and the Lynx to three

years ago. These guys have paid Glenn as his partners for multiple years now, $600 million already for their existing shares in the team. And one of them, I believe one of those names sports fans probably do not know, that is Mark Laurie. He is the businessman and his best friend is the guy that I think sports fans absolutely do know

because he is Mr. Centaur painting himself, Alex Rodriguez. We get an email that says we've been locked out of the building. We can no longer go into the owner suite. We can't go into our family room. We can't talk to Tim Connolly. We can't talk to coach. All the players have reached out. They've been extremely supportive. It's just, it hurts. It really just hurts a lot. Like, I've never had this situation. I've never sued anyone. I've never been sued situation. I've never sued anyone. I've never been sued. The fact that somebody would do that and be planning this

and just ambush us, as Alex said, and be so disingenuous, and it's just really hurtful. I don't know what else to say. I, he was our partner. Mark, Laurie, and A-Rod keep on using this term nuclear bomb to describe how they feel. But to their credit, on the table is the right to control what is now clearly a real contender, a wildly exciting, nationally relevant team.

And also on this table, the same table, upwards of $1 billion. So that's what they're all arguing about. And so you can imagine how unbelievably strained and tense the legal proceedings are around this. But what is especially insane that I've learned is that they all show up. Yeah. They sit, Glenn Taylor on one side, Mark and Alex on the other side, directly across from each other.

We just saw A-Rod and Mark Laurie. Glenn Taylor is seated directly across from them. The ownership situation here. You think they're gonna have this tonight? You think they're gonna get together after the game? Boy, that has added some intrigue, hasn't it? With this franchise, Glenn Taylor... Why can't it just be a good team? Why? Why can't you have nice things? They've won three playoff series.

Three. Ever. Two of them happened in one year. It feels like you sort of need a hug. Not from Iran. Well... And not from Glenn Taylor. Well, which is funny because what I've been learning from multiple witnesses in these buildings

when they see Glenn Taylor approach Mark Lurie and Alex Rodriguez, is that Glenn keeps going up to them and hugging them. And these have been described to me by witnesses as one way hugs. Yes. Which is to say, if you can imagine the palpable awkwardness of just like a visibly uncomfortable and physically limp A-Rod being hugged by an 83 year old multi-billionaire who he fucking hates. Hates.

Who locked him out of the building that he thought he owned. Yes. And Glenn, throughout all of this, I am told, is smiling. Yeah. And at one point he actually asked Mark Laurie, I am told reliably, quote, Mark, why aren't you smiling? That is such a big bank take little bank energy. Like that is like, you broke motherf*****.

Like you can't touch me. I have so much more money than you. Journalistically speaking, we need to relive in some chronological fashion. Yeah. The fact that Glenn Taylor begins as, by the way, old school guy. Old school. The richest man in Minnesota for a very long time.

Made his money with a multinational printing company in Mankato. Yeah. A lot of Timberwolves fans have kind of stated it this way. He bought the team off of greeting cards. And you mean that like literally? Like literally printing greeting cards, like was just like that was a business and it got him Taylor Core. Taylor Core like got him 88 million dollars.

Like I guess I don't know if he was competing with 3M or something, but like he did it. Former state senator, moderate Republican, buys the T-wolves in 94 for 8888 million. And it feels like his biggest victory happens in that decision, which is he keeps the team in Minnesota. Yeah, they were about to move to New Orleans. Exactly.

And so part of the framing here is that day one, he has the most popular thing he's ever gonna do. And for 30 years, Zach, what happens? I mean, Joe Smith. Yeah, we gotta explain Joe Smith. Okay, so Joe Smith, what a generically named person to be involved in a singularly stupid series of decisions. Joe Smith was the number one overall pick in 1995 by the Warriors.

He signs with Minnesota as a free agent in 99, and he signs a suspiciously small contract. He's not that good, but it's still suspicious, and it turns out that Glenn Taylor has been working an angle here. He's saying to Joe Smith, hey, we've got to save the money that we would spend on you, we've got to spend it elsewhere. We will pay you later. Just keep on signing these deals. All of this, as you can imagine, was very secret. All of this was very not allowed at all.

When you look back now, this may not even be the craziest part. Why did they put it in writing? This is the craziest part. When we're talking about what's happening today, I believe Joe Smith's agents were afraid that Glenn Taylor was going to die before this could come to fruition, this greater contract down the road.

Where 25 years later. They had agreed to five illicit secret contracts with Joe Smith to circumvent the salary cap as a punishment for what David Stern called, quote, a fraud of major proportions, end quote. They docked the T-wolves five first round picks. Yeah. Five first round picks were taken. Yeah. During, it seems safe to say, the prime of Kevin Garnett. Yeah. That was the year 2000. Mm-hmm. And Glenn Taylor's quote by way of admitting to it was,

if it's a mistake, it's my mistake. And he was suspended for a year. One year, yeah. Couldn't be around the team. Glenn and KG, how do you describe the state of their union? I don't think Kevin Garnett would accept one of those limp hugs from Glenn Taylor. I think it would be a push away and no, I'm not doing that. Yeah. He hates him.

So, KG has been very subtle about this fact on national television when he's asked to comment on matters concerning the T-wolves. He's dealing with Glenn who doesn't know shit about basketball. Glenn Taylor. Probably is a... Well, I think he wasn't concerned about the time apart. I know. basketball. Glenn allegedly told Kevin Garnett and Flip Saunders, now the late great Flip Saunders, that you guys can have a piece of ownership. Right. And Flip Saunders dies and KG, per KG's own accounting,

stiff armed by Glenn Taylor who says like, no, I don't remember that deal. There was a lot of animosity, when KG eventually agreed to be traded to the Boston Celtics, when KG finally agreed to be traded away, Glenn Taylor basically went out there and said, yeah, he kind of quit in the last season.

That's right. He didn't give his all. You don't say that about Kevin Garnett. You can say he wasn't good enough. A basket stanchion. To get ready. To get ready for more headbutting. Who people would say before a playoff game, they were afraid his first shot

was gonna go through the backboard because he had so much adrenaline. So KG has hated, he's resented him ever since that. And then on top of that, Flip makes this big like, all right, let's heal this, right? Brings him back in, they trade for them at the end of his career.

He's supposed to, you know, mentor Andrew Wiggins and crawling through towns and teach them how to win. KG, for what I was told, was going through there daily, saying like, when I own this, shit's gonna change. We're not doing this bullshitting anymore. Cause he thought, it wasn't just he was gonna get ownership, like a piece of it. He thought he was going to become the main owner.

He was going to replace Glenn. He was going to replace Glenn. Like it was going to be this big, you know, investment group, but he was going to be the figurehead. He was going to be the, the lead face. This brings us, I suppose chronologically to 2009. With the fifth pick in the 2009 NBA draft, the Minnesota Timberwolves select Ricky Rubio of El Maznú, Spain. The lore of Ricky Rubio as a prospect. Spanish passing prodigy. You can justify that pick. Yes. And luckily, the T-wolves have the pick right after. Mm-hmm. And on the board is Steph Curry.

With the sixth pick in the 2009 NBA draft, the Minnesota Timberwolves select Johnny Flynn from Syracuse University. Well, the crowd loves it, not because, you know, Johnny Flynn is the guy that they love from Minnesota, but because, you know, Stephen Curry is still available. I don't want to rub it in. I mean, this feels like where it gets mean, probably. It's felt mean the whole time. Yeah, it has.

No, it's what the f**k? Like you just drafted Ricky Robier. Overall, another point guard. It's the other sliding doors moment of your fandom. Where it's like, we were so close to not taking Johnny Flynn. And so, 2011, a couple years after that, Glenn Taylor, this is an interview I had not seen before, and I've been just watching, I've been grinding Glenn Taylor film. Sure.

As if it's not obvious. He sat down with Minnesota Public Television, and he talked about his struggles to make sense of like, basketball and its economy. And so he goes on this metaphor about how it's a lot like the business of entertainment but not normal business. And he says this. I would say basketball is sort of the same way. It doesn't seem like really a lot of work to go out there and bounce the ball and shoot

it, but they get a very lot of money. So it's a very different type of business. I can't equate it to my other businesses. I like it because it is different. I like it because it is very competitive. But it's been a kind of heartbreaking because I haven't done as well with it as I'd hoped. At this point, he's owned the team for 17 years, right? At this point, he's actually one of the most influential owners in the NBA. He's like head of the board of governors. So this is a key part. Explain the board of governors.

The board of governors is essentially like all the owners come together, right? Because they're all called governors. And they make decisions on the league. To be on the board of governors, to be a head of the board of governors, you essentially have influence over every... Like you can talk the other owners into essentially anything. Yes, who to approve as a new owner. Yes. The CBA, the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the multi-billion dollar deals like the NBA is negotiating right now, labor stoppages. Yeah. All of that stuff is the job, the purview more than

anybody else for the chairman of the board of governors. You said it was 2011. Yes. Way to lock out that year. Yes. That guy who says, basketball, just kind of bounce a ball around, get paid a lot of money. That guy. Glenn Taylor was the most powerful owner in the NBA for almost a decade.

He had two tenures as the chairman of the board of governors 2008 to 2017. He personally got to see the arc of NBA ownership go from his $88 million purchase to now Steve Ballmer buying the Clippers from Donald Sterling for $2 billion. And Glenn Taylor is the face, the most powerful face overlooking all of this. And he says this to the athletic in 2017,

about why he was the chairman, why he loved being the chairman of the board of governors. It goes, back to the days that I played sports and I always wanted to be the captain. Why would you not want to be the captain? End quote. And so this notion of control. Back to the days when he played sports.

Oh yeah, he was a quarterback, he was a guard. Before they threw the ball, that's like the four, that's leatherheads. And so this brings us, this long arc of history brings us to 2021. And Glenn Taylor does something that was shocking. He welcomes these two guys that he does not know at all, Mark Laurie and Alex Rodriguez,

to his winter home in Naples, Florida. And Zach, people don't know this maybe, but Mark Laurie and Alex Rodriguez are not Minnesota guys. No, they're not. They're not like Glenn in that way. They're not really even basketball guys. But their dream was owning a pro sports team. And in fact, they had tried to buy the Mets just recently before this, and they struck out. Steve Cohen, the multi-bazillionaire, another richer guy, buys the team instead.

But they have this dinner of homemade burgers cooked by Glenn's wife, Becky, who loves cooking, and they get along fantastically by all accounts. And they end up shaking hands on this deal consummated April 2021, the T-wolves and the links for $1.5 billion. And do you remember where you were when you heard this, what your reaction was? Well, at first, I remember thinking finally. Amazing. Wonder who he's selling to. A-Rod. What? I mean, it's not Glenn. At that point, it's not Glenn, right? It's the field.

It's the field, right. I'll take the field here. And then I heard, yeah, it's on an installment plan. They're buying the Timberwolves on layaway. They're buying the Timberwolves like you would buy an 80 inch TV at Best Buy during hard times. Right. There's a payment plan. And on the floor of the practice facility at their introductory press conference, Glenn talks about Mark and Alex and welcomes them like this in the fall.

It never got down a matter of just money. It wasn't just money because I had the opportunity to sell it for more money but it was the right people and it's the right people to continue the leadership and we're going on some very difficult times. I mean the economy is like crap who knows who knows what's going to happen? We need to keep good people around. We need an exciting team for our fans and stuff like this here. So the transition should be slowly.

And so the transition, the layaway plan, the payment plan, the deal they shook on, this slow transfer of power is pretty rare when it comes to buying and selling NBA teams. And it's also the dramatic framework for this entire story because you don't see the structure very often. You don't see an agreement to sell off pieces of your team step by step over multiple years, three years in this case.

And I was able to obtain and review the actual contract, the agreement that they signed, that they brokered, and just to verify it, yes, Mark and A-Rod, their group successfully made the first two payments. So 20% each, each totaling around $300 million, a cool 300 bill. A total of $600 million to Gland for 40% of the team. And on the basketball side, the big move, the substance that this new sort of like hybrid ownership

sort of system brought was Tim Connolly. Yes. Tim Connolly, if you're wondering why the Denver Nuggets were so dominant in their championship run last year, he built them. Yes, Tim Connolly was Mark Laurie and A-Rod's guy. Yeah. This was their big hire.

They said, we need a new head of basketball ops. We want the best. They paid him $8 million a year over five years, according to this contract. And now, by the way, he's like kind of built the T-Wolf's roster to defeat the Nuggets. Yeah. That's what we're kind of watching right now in this postseason, actually, is that he has done an incredible job creating a contender. With what at least a year ago was looked at as one of the worst trades in NBA history, the ready-go-bare trade. The Timberwolves, they send Malik Beasley, Patrick Beverly, Jared Vanderbilt, the number 22 overall pick, Walker Kessler, four first-round picks to the Jazz and now the man...

It's this cavalcade of really high- role players with a ton of draft picks that depletes any future cost-effective moves that the Wolves could make because now you have Rudy Gobert, Carl Anthony Towns, Anthony Edwards, those are three max players. And so they go all in on Rudy Gobert as this big bet. Yeah. And they get Hillary's. I remember laughing at this. I laughed at it constantly. And it results in them having the number one defense in the NBA by far.

And any rational observer has to point to this and say, that shit worked. On the subject of reputation and what Glenn would let anybody do, a key part of the story is like how Mark and A-Rod clearly have approached media differently from Glenn. So I am told, Zach, I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, I'm told that Mark and A-Rod made a bunch of hyper-detailed documents upon buying the team where they lay out their vision for the Timberwolves. On their paperwork, what Mark and A-Rod wanted to do was not just win, quote,

multiple NBA and WNBA championships by 2037, which was a stated goal on this piece of paper. They also wanted to be recognized as Sports Business Journal's franchise of the year by 2032. Codified in this paper. They wanted a 100% increase in media coverage specific to quote being a top tier destination end quote in the next five years and they wanted to quote improve our management ranking each year in the annual ESPN NBA future power rankings with the goal of becoming top five end quote this is how Mark and A-Rod think about This is how Mark and A-Rod think about the mild posts that they need a hit. And Glenn Taylor is doing local media interviews, basically flame throwing them in every way.

Look, I'm not a billionaire. I'm not a wealthy person. I'm not a former, you know, all-star baseball player. I'm not a Hall of Famer. I'm none of that stuff. Could it just be about f***ing basketball? Could it just be like we want to put the best product on the floor? It's like the, what is it, like the planet, the sun in Fifth Element, like the more you attack it, the bigger it grows? That's the Wolves ownership. Like that's behind the scenes what is happening.

And so this ownership group where Mark and A-Rod are like urging these big decisions, these big bets, it's this sort of like intimate partnership that by the summer of 2022, I am told, also leads to like just all sorts of business connections. So Glenn and Becky Taylor also invest $1 million, I am told, into Mark Laurie's company, this company called Wonder. This is a food delivery startup. This is how intimate the partnership appears to be. A-Rod is going around calling Glenn a mentor.

Everybody's investing in everything else. It's this real sort of like union, this partnership that is gonna culminate after three years in the biggest step. The big payment, which would finally hand Mark and A-Rod their next 40% chunk of the wolves, the control piece. The control piece of the Timberwolves on a very specific date, March 27, 2024.

And on March 28th, I am told, Mark Laurie, Alex Rodriguez, they're on their way to celebratory vacations with their respective families. And their phones light up and they get a link to a newly uploaded article on nba.com. Yeah.

On the league website and the headline declares, quote, owner Glenn Taylor says Timberwolves, comma, links no longer for sale. This decision comes as Alex Rodriguez and Mark Laurie were just about to make their final payment

of roughly $600 million to take over majority ownership. For f*** sake. Can nothing be normal? Nothing can be normal with this franchise? So the question is, why did things turn out this way? Why did they turn out so badly? And Glenn immediately goes on local radio. Okay? And he says a couple of things.

One of which is, Mark and A-Rod did not have the money. They didn't have the money to complete the purchase of the team. He also says that Mark and A-Rod did not make the deadline, the payment plan layaway deadline. And Glenn says that they failed to make the deadline even though Mark and A-Rod, according to Glenn, are the ones who asked him for this whole step transaction format, as it's called, in the first place. We heard that they were having trouble raising the money and et cetera, et cetera. But then the 27th came and they never closed and did anything. And the agreement that we have with them says, you know, that if they don't have it done by then,

that our commitment to them and their commitment to us is void. Yeah, just calling him broke boys to Chad Hartman. If you were like, hey, Zach, you gotta come up with 10 grand in the next year to like just get, and I'm like, okay, and I put it together and I give it to you. And you're like, yeah, you're broke.

Like you're a broke boy. And I'm like, hold on a second. I just cobbled together this money. Like you can't call me broke. I put it together and I give it to you. And you're like, yeah, you're broke. Like you're a broke boy. And I'm like, hold on a second. I just cobbled together this money. Like you can't call me broke. I figured it out. Now imagine in this equivalent metaphor, you are the baseball player who earned more money, 450 million dollars,

than any baseball player in the history of baseball. Or if you are the guy who has been called in the business press, the LeBron James of e e-commerce because Mark Laurie made well into the nine figures from selling diapers comm to Amazon and jet comm to Walmart But the reason why this is extra infuriating for these two dudes Is that they also know that they still aren't as rich as Glenn Taylor Yeah, or Steve Ballmer or Matt Ishbia, the owner of the Suns or Tillman Frutita, the owner of the Rockets or Miriam Adelson and her family, the owner of the Mavericks and on and on and on because one way to feel poor, it

turns out, as a really rich guy is to hang out with NBA owners, all of whom are basically definitionally multi-billionaires. And so what I'm told by multiple sources across the board here is that lots of people actually doubted whether Mark and A-Rod could come up with the money. They weren't as rich as all these other people. The third payment was going to be a problem according to many people's prognostications and Mark and A-Rod also could feel this. They knew that much and even inside the Timberwolves, I am told, before Mark and A-Rod made the second payment, there was actually an all-hands meeting of employees where Glenn's business side executives were speculating aloud

about how the new owners were having trouble coming up with the money. Right. And there was also the speculation all around the building too that Wonder, the company that Glenn had invested in, that Mark had seen as his moonshot startup, there's speculation thatunder was struggling financially and Mark was consumed by running it. And so Glenn just may not end up selling the team at all. So this was all happening behind the scenes in the background.

And to this point, as to the, again, the layaway plan here and why they needed it to afford the team, I wanna play for you also what Glenn told the local news. It's always local news in the story. After the deal collapsed. I met with them. It was pretty simple negotiations. I said that I'll name the price and you can name the terms. And I gave them a price and they accepted the price and the terms were they would pay for it over three years.

Now what I found, Zach, is that according to multiple high-level sources, that is not true. Right. So it wasn't Mark and A-Rod's idea. I am told that it was Glenn Taylor's idea. It was his idea to want the three-year step transaction format in the first place. But you don't even need to take my word for it. You can just listen to what Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, said after the board of governors meeting last month at a press conference after Glenn

had announced that the deal was off. There was one line in here that I want you to just flag for me, but it was a crucial one. It's certainly not ideal to have a stepped transaction like this. I mean, it met our rules from that standpoint. But, you know, and it's what Glenn Taylor wanted and it's what they were willing to agree to. It's what Glenn Taylor wanted. So that line feels important here

and it raises this question of like, so why is he saying this now? And what is the story he wants to tell? Because it's now a question of like perception management. Yes, which matters. Which totally matters, especially to Mark and A-Rod, who I am further told, I've confirmed this, actually did raise the $600 million.

So what I'm confirming is that Mark and A-Rod raised a $600 million payment, the key payment. I have seen the subscription agreement myself. There's a group of investors, Google CEO, the former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt is among them. The money is real. What I'm also confirming is that Mark and A-Rod really did submit the $600 million, a subscription agreement for that money with a week to go before the deadline.

They submitted the whole thing to the NBA to start the approval process on March 20th. This is a week before the March 27, 2024 deadline, which would, according to this contract, give the NBA's board of governors an extra 90-day window to approve the deal. I just want to read this relevant part here for the sake of thoroughness,

because the deadline, quote, "'sh shall be automatically extended by an additional 90 days if all MBA approvals have not yet been obtained. And quote. And so just to recap here, Mark and A-Rod raised the money. They submitted the money a week ahead of the deadline. And Glenn Taylor is saying all of this stuff about how they didn't do any of it. We're sure Glenn wants to sell the team. At any point in this process, he has ended up with more money.

A major influx of cash. In other words, Glenn Taylor keeps the first $600 million for the first 40% and he's now stiff-arming the second 40%, the next $600 million. Right. He's now liquid in a way that he wasn't before. The case that Glenn is making behind closed doors, I want to acknowledge that I completely understand why Glenn doesn't want to give up the team, economically speaking, because Zach, your favorite team in 2021 during the pandemic, during that quote unquote crap economy

that Glenn referenced was $1.5 billion. Sure. Cool. It's essentially doubled in value since then. At least. Right, so it's an estimated $3 billion now. The NBA is negotiating this new. The board of governors is negotiating this new.

A sensibly even bigger TV rights deal. Plus Anthony Edwards, plus all of this stuff. A finals run potentially. That is what's at stake financially. So of course Glenn would not want to give that up logically. Right. But there's just, there's this other parallel logic for why he wanted to keep the team that you've been sort of just like touching on this entire episode.

And Glenn was almost remarkably candid about it in yet another local TV interview. Good Lord. From last month. I'm pretty sure no one saw this nationally, but Glenn Taylor just says this. Well, Glenn, you're 83 years old. What else would be logical? I mean, I'm at the end of my career, so I want to finish it out in the top. I mean, it's just, I don't have to tell you a story.

You can believe that and say, well, that's the way you'd want to finish it, wouldn't you? And I would say yes. Good Lord. So he's like, dude, I'm 83! We're finally good! I'm 83! 30 years! I want the prize.

Yes, can you imagine what it would be like if the Timberwolves, let's say, make their first finals run? And it's the very first month, two months after, three months after, that Glenn Taylor actually loses control for the first time. By the way this has been just a waterboarding of

fandom torture I just wanted like it's been a it's just been I feel like I'm in an episode of 24 like this is just just... This has been absolute torture. But it's... Oh, man. The biggest sign that Glenn had a sense of what he ultimately wanted to do here came last year. So according to documents that I reviewed, sometime between March 2023 and December 2023, this is several months before the final payment deadline, we have to hand over control officially to Mark and A-Rod, Glenn decides to buy out very quietly to Mark and A-Rod.

Glenn decides to buy out very quietly without Mark and A-Rod and Alex Rodriguez knowing, another minority owner of the Wolves. He loves doing this. It's an incredible detail. He has a friend, an old friend named Bill Sexton, he's a limited partner, and he owns, Bill Sexton does, 2.96% of the team.

And Glenn buys him out. And you might, you may ask why? Why would Glenn Taylor do this? He's gonna like, you know, ostensibly sell the whole thing to market error. And why is he making this purchase before months ahead of the deadline? Well, it turns out that by March, 2023, Mark Lurie and Alex Rodriguez personally owned 36% of the Wolfs. Glenn owned 33.18%.

So control was still with Glenn, but the majority ownership actually by this point was Mark and A-Rod. This was the mutual resentment of like, it's our money we're spending. What are you talking about? And if you do the math, Zach Arber, 33.18%, which is what Glenn Taylor owned, plus Bill Sexton's 2.96%, just carrying the one, 36.14%. This guy is diabolical.

0.14% more than Mark Adairad, so he could be the majority owner and it could be his checkbook in every sense. He's outplayed them at every move. So Glenn would not comment for any part of the story. Marcadeirod would not comment for any part of the story for the reasons of them entering arbitration. But what happens in the sort of like framing of this in terms of the out-foxing that Glenn Taylor has been executing here.

You know, he gets the right to say, it's my checkbook, I'm the guy, I'm in control, and you'll be shocked to hear this. But in a local TV interview... This guy loves local TV! After he pulls out of the deal, Glenn Taylor proceeds to say, essentially that. I have been the controlling owner all these years, the last two years. So we would just keep everything in place. They have stock in the timber wolves.

They can keep that stock. That's fine with me. They can be my partners and stuff like that. So we would just goes on. But we will follow the contract. I mean, it isn't what Glenn Taylor says or anybody else. I'm not involved. I'm not a lawyer. I mean, it isn't what Glenn Taylor says or anybody else. I'm not involved. I'm not a lawyer.

I don't get into that. But the next step is because there's a disagreement, we take it to a mediator. And we'll do that this next month sometime. We'll take it to a mediator and see what they say. And this is where we should talk about what happened just last week. So mediation happens, Zach.

And what I found out is that Mark and A-Rod and Glenn meet with this mediator in Minneapolis. It's in between the first and second rounds of the playoffs. They are put into separate rooms. Mark and A-Rod in one room, Glenn Taylor in another. And the distrust is high. So Mark and A-Rod go into this meeting personally believing that Glenn had picked them now, specifically thinking back to these homemade burgers with Becky, he had picked them specifically because the step transaction gave him this escape hatch if he wanted to

change his mind. If you wanted to back out of the deal, here are these two dudes he didn't know, but probably aren't rich enough to finally complete the transaction. And so he had this out if he needed it. Glenn, I am told, in mediation, proceeds to offer to buy out Mark and Alex. Mark and A-Rod are like, no. They want the contract enforced.

So this goes on for about six hours. They only agree to intensely disagree with each other. I do not think they hugged for the record. But this is what I've learned about the legal argument that Glenn is making behind closed doors. Because it's not what Glenn has said publicly. What Glenn is going into this mediation saying, I'm told, is not that Mark and A-Rod didn't raise the money. It's not that they didn't raise it by the March 27 deadline. The real case for why Glenn Taylor should still own the T-wolves, and this is the question at the heart of their upcoming arbitration now that mediation has failed, this is the

billion dollar question that will decide who owns your favorite team, is something even more legally specific. And it centers around these three specific words. And the phrase was, quote, commercially reasonable efforts. What does that even mean? Great question, Zach. So the meaning of commercially reasonable efforts is exactly what these lawyers are being paid lots and lots of money to argue about.

It is an inherently subjective threshold for whether the buyer of an NBA team in this case tried to make their $600 million payment in a way that seems reasonable when compared to normal purchases of NBA teams, thereby triggering the 90-day extension for review by the NBA itself. One complication I've learned about here when it comes to comparables is that the vast majority of comparable purchases of NBA teams do not happen over three years. They also, for the record, do not devolve into civil wars between two buyers and a seller

they thought was a kindly grandpa, but instead wound up being the bane of their existence. Once again, the Timberwolves, abnormal. But Glenn's argument here is not that the $600 million subscription agreement that Mark and A-Rod submitted isn't real. Glenn's argument instead seems to be that he has the right to refuse it because they didn't try hard enough to check some boxes, I guess, along the way. You said they got it in a week early. I do believe, to your point of getting it in a week ahead and to the general point of Alex

Rodriguez as an entity, this is the first time I think that anybody has ever accused A-Rod of not being enough of a tryhard. But talking to lots of people about this, the lawyers who are just like familiar with this case and the Salesforce franchises, what I found out is that, yeah, like Mark and A-Rod have a really strong case. Right. And I want to acknowledge here that raising $600 million for that last payment, it wasn't necessarily easy, right?

So I can confirm that Mark and A-Rod had a massive private equity investor, the Carlisle Group, back out of the deal in March due to this reported conflict of interest with one of its other investment funds, a conflict with the NBA. That led to Mark and A-Rod going to their backup, a private equity firm called Dial Capital, which was pre-approved in the lingo of finance by the NBA. And Dial Capital came aboard to join Eric Schmidt, Mr. Google, and the other Rich Guy investors,

and they together comprise the $600 million. But the whole reasonable efforts thing, which is funny to me because it speaks to psychology, as well as just, okay, did they do enough to try and make this happen? I just want to detail here the generally desperate extent to which Mark Lorie and Alex Rodriguez wanted to be in control of this team and make that payment. Because I don't know, Zach, if people appreciate the difference between being the control owner of something and a limited partner of an NBA team.

Right. Because the control owner, it's like, yeah, that's the owner of the team. He makes decisions. He's the the control owner, it's like, yeah, that's the owner of the team. He makes decisions. He's the guy, again, signing checks. Yeah, you can't make a trade without him, right? Can't make a signing, doesn't matter, like has to approve. A limited partner is a shareholder. You can vote on how much hot dogs you cost, essentially.

And they might listen to you. And they might, yeah. You don't even get guaranteed courtside seats. Right. Like the ultimate indignity. Right. I'm an owner of this team. It's like, well, you're sitting all the way up there.

And so that's the gap. By the way, it's gotten to the point where I... So before I mentioned to you how Glenn and Becky had invested $1 million in Wonder, this is Mark's food tech delivery company, which is again, raised now $700 million. And there's all the speculation around the world about how Wonder was going to fail. What Mark and A-Rod believe is that Glenn and Becky paid $700 million and there's all the speculation around the wolves about how wonder was gonna fail What mark and a rod believe is that Glenn and Becky paid? $1,000,000 for the right to talk from position of information As an investor in the company, they would have credibility

This is the level to which these people are fighting a shadow secret war against each other Yeah, while Anthony Edwards is becoming Michael Jordan, honestly You could prove to me that that's not true. I choose to believe it. Like he's labeling them not rich enough in public and then in private, he's labeling them too lazy to be rich. Well, that's the thing I wanted to comment on. You called it commercial, what is it? Commercially reasonable efforts.

That's the clause. The purchase of Bill Sexton's... 2.96. 2.96, that's effort. Mark and A-Rod, in other words, feel like they're being gaslit by an 83 year old. Well, they are. I mean, let's be fair, like they are being gaslit, but he's looking at A-Rod and Mark Laurie

as you only care about this relationship on Valentine's Day. And so for you as my focus group of one, my waterboarded sample, what's important to you is they keep the team together and they continue to invest in it. As long as this team looks the way it does, absolutely. Is your brain allowing you to imagine a title? I'm getting there, not fully, but I'm getting there. There is part of me that believes the Wolves will beat Denver,

which even those words coming out of my mouth right now, I said, no, they're not. Like in my head, I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, that doesn't make any sense. But they are good enough, and Ant is becoming good enough to where, yeah, in the next like three years, four years, if this team is still together, like, yeah, I think there's a really good chance of that happening. It does not sound like the personas,

the sort of character study of these guys, f**k all of that. You're like, can I please just have a normal basketball team that can afford its expensive players? Isn't that what anyone wants? Like when you think about it, like, look, I'm lucky. I got a pretty good life, right? I get to watch basketball, give my opinion. That's the job.

But at a certain point, even as this is work for me, there are times where I'm just like, I just want to watch fun basketball and not have to worry about any of the other s*** that I got going on. Right. Which is so many, every fan is that way, right? No one's there to like, yeah, I want to show you how much I can endure with it.

Like, no, you just want to have a good time watching this stuff. Whichever parent in this broken cohabitation scenario... Who can take me to f***ing Disneyland? Like, that's what I want. That's what I want. Like, who can take me to Disneyland? That's where I want to go. Arbitration, Zach, I am told, is not starting until after the postseason.

Oh, good Lord. And so what this means, though, what this means is that the timeline is going to take them possibly into the start of next season. Yeah. Clearly, like, at least into the summer. And so if your Timberwolves win a title, the guy who will hold up the trophy, the guy who will be in control after 30 years of bumbling, while Mark and A-Rod are somewhere in the background watching this, is going to be the immortal, seemingly, Glenn Taylor.

He's never going to die. All right. If you're A-Rod and Mark Laurie, do you sky write during the, during the parade? Do you just hover in a helicopter? Do you pull the plug on the power grid? I would assume this is going to go down Hennepin, right? Like this is good. Like that's the street that the parade's going to go down and everything. The same county where the judge, the third vote in the arbitration will be pulled from.

Yes. If you're A-Rod and Mark Laurie, do you take that $300 million you've got and take a little bit out of it and you set up parades on both sides of this parade? You double the parade. The first? A spite parade. Do you create double spite? You flank them. I was watching Braveheart earlier, so I'm like into this whole idea that the British Army had no idea what they were doing and I was like someone just said Well, what if we attack from the side and the Brits were like?

We don't know what to do here. So I'm like, do you flank this parade? Zack Harper, I hope you get your parade parentheses s Yeah, I hope I hope you get to go to Disneyland. I don't think you do I think you're enjoying this pain too much. This has kind of been a spite parade. Yeah, I know it's felt that way to you. It has not my intention But it is it is um It has been a delight. I'll be there regardless, you know, this is just through the pain or the joy of it. Probably the pain This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a MetalArk Media production, and I'll talk to you next time.