The collapse of the Timberwolves’ sale to the Lore/Rodriguez consortium this week is inevitably triggering to Wolves’ fans, waiting for the other shoe to drop after a catastrophic injury to center Karl Anthony Towns earlier in March. Nothing ever seems to work out for the Wolves, so fan ambivalence about owner Glen Taylor is inevitable.

He saved the Wolves from being moved out of town after the NBA stopped undercapitalized founders Marv Wolfenson and Harvey Ratner from selling to New Orleans interests five years after the team’s founding. But Taylor’s tenure has been marked by unprecedented stretches of failure, a string of underachieving draft picks, coaches, and general managers, and season after season of futility and unrealized potential. Taylor has had bad luck, certainly, but at a certain point you have to wear the chain you forged in ownership.

Taylor’s decision to sell the team to diapers.com entrepreneur Marc Lore and baseball legend Alex Rodriguez in 2021, with his 80th birthday in sight and following the failed tenure of his latest savior, coach/basketball VP Tom Thibodeau, seemed a necessary capitulation to the inevitable. Though the Wolves surely lost money over much of Taylor’s ownership, his rumored $90 million purchase (in 1994) was worth $1.5 billion a quarter century later. He had also surely tired of relentless media criticism of his “country club” operation and his longtime minority investors wanted to cash out.

Taylor was rumored to have abortively sold the team as early as 2015, so his 2021 purchase agreement with Lore and A-Rod was the culmination of a longer process with the team on and off the market. Taylor said the duo was the first prospective buyer who promised, though not in writing, to keep the team in Minnesota.

Lore and Rodriguez did not appear to have the wealth of a typical NBA buyer. The sale was structured to play out over three years as they presumably raised funds. But in a Friday interview with Sportico, Lore insisted the structure was at Taylor’s behest, that he was unwilling to depart that rapidly. Perhaps the duo were content with that due to how quickly NBA team values were appreciating, realizing the team would be worth far more by the time they closed (current estimates are the team has appreciated 65% to 100% in value since 2021).

Taylor is not a man who needs money, but this recent revelation appeared to play a role in his change of heart. An article in the New York Post Thursday indicated Lore may have had a change of heart as well, losing interest in the Wolves for his food startup, Wonder. The article said Lore had access to capital to complete the purchase but insisted the less-wealthy Rodriguez raise the second half of the funds.

When the duo exercised their final option to purchase in late 2023, Rodriguez had apparently not finalized the private equity investment needed to raise much of the $600 million still owed Taylor. Media reports suggested Rodriguez enlisted The Carlyle Group, but its investment was stillborn for yet unclear reasons. A second private equity investor was found in mid-March, but too late for league approval before the March 28 expiration of their purchase agreement, which Taylor had extended by a month.

The Post article said Rodriguez had been trying to raise the 40% equity based on the Wolves appreciated value, intending to retain the difference between it and what they owed Taylor.

In interviews Thursday, Taylor—whose lack of cageyness is always disarming—seemed to imply his old minority investors, to be bought out with this final tranche from Lore/Rodriguez, had become restive realizing the valuation at which they were being paid was well below the Wolves’ current value. He said he was sympathetic to their interests, as some had been waiting to be paid since the team’s earliest days.

Taylor also stated that he had begun to again enjoy owning the team after its current-season run of success and liked working with Lore and the sports savvy Rodriguez as minority investors. He was grateful perhaps because Rodriguez was behind the hiring of president of basketball Tim Connelly, who has finally assembled a Wolves roster sufficiently talented to challenge for the conference’s #1 seed—even with Towns’ injury. The Lore/Rodriguez group has also been instrumental in modernizing the Wolves’ executive roster and the hire of TV play by play man Michael Grady, a world-class talent, from the Brooklyn Nets.

Lore and Rodriguez claim their purchase agreement mandated a freeze in expiration once financing paperwork had been filed with the NBA. Taylor disagrees. An arbitrator reportedly will decide, or maybe the courts. This assumes Lore still aspires to be the managing partner of the Wolves. The Post article says Lore lost interest in the team one or two years ago and it’s really Rodriguez who remains engaged.

This speculation was rejected by the duo to Sportico, insisting they are eager to complete the purchase and that Taylor has barred Wolves executives from speaking with them and barred them from an “owners’ suite” they commissioned at Target Center. It’s clearly now a he said/they said conflict.

Taylor, at 82, is not a long-term owner. He may want to ride the current wave, but the Wolves will clearly be for sale again this decade if Lore and Rodriguez do not prevail. A delay will pause talk of replacing aging Target Center—a priority of Lore/Rod’s but not Taylor’s—talk that would not be well-received at City Hall or the Government Center, places unprecedently hostile to rich businessmen looking for taxpayers to make their investments more valuable.

In the end it seems like Taylor again inexplicably may have the last laugh. He’s been sued by U of M basketball hero Kevin McHale, been frozen out by Wolves great Kevin Garnett, and alienated the buyers who may have supplied his team with the talent to elevate it to the league’s elite. He’s made a fortune on said investment and may well get to sell the team again.

Everything about this deal once made Taylor look like a naif, snookered by New York sharpies who slow-walked the purchase while defacto running the team, profiting like owners while their purchase was just on layaway.

Taylor told WCCO’s Chad Hartman that he harbored no animosity toward Lore and Rodriguez and in fact looked forward to continuing to partner with them in their current capacity. It was hard to tell whether the folksy Mankatan was pulling our chain or really approached commerce with such trademark placidity.

After all, he noted, “it’s business.”