How the Billion-Dollar Civil War to Own the Timberwolves Went Nuclear

EPISODE 100: Bumbling and diabolical.

For the last month, I’ve been investigating a rare drama inside what I believe to be the most exclusive club in American life.

NBA ownership is a 30-member sect of de facto illuminati members who sit courtside at playoff games while celebrities with even hundreds of millions of dollars fog the glass of exclusivity, desperate to be inside.

And nowhere is this more palpable than in the feud between 83-year-old multi-billionaire Glen Taylor — long the richest man in Minnesota — and the two men who agreed to buy his team: Alex Rodriguez (yes, that Alex Rodriguez) and Marc Lore (a serially successful entrepreneur who’s been called “the LeBron James of e-commerce”).

As of a month ago, theirs was the story of a high-stakes betrayal, a partnership gone shockingly wrong, and a secret war to control perception.

But what’s even more remarkable is that the prize these men have been fighting over is now the hottest team in the NBA playoffs.

The Minnesota Timberwolves, long the worst franchise in the sport, are a genuine title contender that’s doubled in value over the last three years — since Taylor started selling Rodriguez and Lore huge chunks of the Wolves via a suspicious series of installments. All of which now form the dramatic framework of a battle over three words, I am told:

Commercially reasonable efforts.

So, yeah. This is one of those episodes where I return from the bottom of a rabbithole and need to tell someone what I found behind closed doors. And what might happen next.

Enter my friend Zach Harper: a tremendous NBA writer and podcaster and the biggest Timberwolves fan I know.

Also, I should probably acknowledge that today is PTFO’s 100th episode, a fun milestone we didn’t even have time to observe on the show itself.

Because this whole thing is… a lot.

DKN/YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERTS:

Honestly,

Pablo