To no one’s surprise, Glen Taylor is getting his other employees carry water for him. Although it is mentioned in the middle of the article, I feel like a disclosure about Taylor paying Souhan’s salary should be more up front.
[https://www.startribune.com/timberwolves-glen-taylor-owner-alex-rodriguez-marc-lore-jim-souhan-column/600355500/](https://www.startribune.com/timberwolves-glen-taylor-owner-alex-rodriguez-marc-lore-jim-souhan-column/600355500/)
by Poppa_T
27 Comments
Writing an article about his boss who pays his salary saying that heās the best owner for the team despite him opposing hiring Connelly and trading for Gobert (arguable the main reasons weāre in first place). I can hear the boot licking from here Dan.
Go take your billions and live in anonymity you old fucking crypt keeper Glen. Weāre done with you.
Who are these fans lining up to hug Glen Taylor?Ā
Whoever isnāt Glen Taylor.
Call me crazy but I am skeptical of every possible outcome owner prospective owner doesnāt matterā¦.
These kind of guys donāt spend their money to help me out as a fanā¦
100% not Glen. He is a snake and I hope he loses in court. Then they can send him a memo that he isnāt allowed near the arena.
> In the other corner, you have Lore and Rodriguez, a wildly successful entrepreneur and a former baseball superstar who admitted that he used performance-enhancing drugs and retained few allies from his baseball career.
Because ARodās PED usage has such a big impact on ownership qualifications š
> In a strange and unintended way, the brief, seemingly compatible relationship between Taylor, Lore and Rodriguez might have yielded optimal results.
> Taylor might never have conceived of hiring President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly away from the Denver Nuggets. Lore and Rodriguez pushed for the move, and the Wolves are paying Connelly $40 million over five years, a remarkable sum for a basketball executive.
Funny how āstrange and unintendedā it was for the two incoming owners to specifically target one of the best execs in the league. Who would have guessed that actually hiring top talent instead of your cronies would yield good results?
> Now that Connelly and Finch are in place, Taylor might be the better owner going forward. He’s obviously enjoying watching the team of his dreams from that courtside seat. He doesn’t want the franchise to ever move and won’t blackmail Minnesotans for a new arena.
And Taylor liking to watch the Wolves from court side obviously means heās the best owner, clearly Lore and ARod arenāt there because they hate the team and not because Taylor banned them from the arena (the statement also signals that LoRod would want to move the team, which is false).
This entire article is a complete joke.
If I have to choose between an incompetent owner with money and a famous owner without money I guess Iāll choose the guy with money.
Arod and not just because Iām a Yankees fan. He has a contract to uphold.
I just want the truth to become as evident as possible to our fanbase through arbitration. If Glen is lying about shit, we deserve to know what heās lying about. If ARod and Lore were truly struggling to come up with payments, we deserve to know that as well.
I want whoever can (in writing) say: 1) will never move or sell the team to someone who will move and 2) someone capable of paying the luxury tax on a regular basis. Iām not sure either of the current contenders meet both criteria.
Souhan is a bad joke
the only semi-valid objection i’ve heard to Lore/ARod taking over is speculation regarding their ability to fund team operations going forward (ie. luxury tax, new stadium, etc.), but based on the Dane pod last Friday that concern seems to be overblown. i think we need to disregard, or at the very least heavily coat in salt, all the negative media discourse regarding the new ownership group. it’s clear Glen controls local media narratives, and sadly that’s going to be hard for many people to shake as they’ve been bombarded with this narrative for the better part of a year or so by “journalists” who they’ve learned to trust over the span of years to decades.
i think a majority of fans are rooting for the new group. i certainly am. the decision-making has been totally unlike anything we’ve seen for the entirety of Taylor’s tenure as owner – that is to say, the new ownership group has already shown a strong ability to actually made good decisions, and we’re seeing the pay-off in real time, something I’m not used to saying about the Timberwolves. Now it appears Taylor is trying to take credit for the decision-making, which tracks with Lore/ARod’s story about how they were asked to take a step back in the months leading up to transfer of control. Less Lore/ARod = more perception that Glen is responsible for this historic season. It makes sense that he’s bitter about being cucked like this after decades of taking the team absolutely nowhere. But now that he’s iced them out of the building idk how anyone could read this situation with a charitable lens toward Glen. He is really relying on ignorance of the masses, as if we haven’t been paying attention at all since the new ownership group arrived in MN.
i’m definitely biased in favor of the new group/against Glen Taylor, and i don’t think being biased is necessarily bad given all the facts and circumstances. we still don’t know 100% of the facts surrounding the situation, but intuitively speaking Glen has offered nothing substantive to cause me to believe that his decision to kill the deal had any legal merit. Lore/ARod can point to precise legal language to support their claim; Glen has remained ambiguous on which obligations they actually failed to meet. maybe he’s saving the bombshell for later, but based on this putrid puff-piece from Souhan it doesn’t appear that he has one – time will tell on that front, but i highly doubt it. the longer he let’s their side of the story fester with the fanbase without offering valid rebuttal the worse it’s going to get for him, but i think he’s given up on winning the love of the fanbase. dude has to know just about everyone in this state hates his guts. unless he pays off the mediator they bring into the arbitration process, i do not see how he comes out of this successfully. further, pissing off your partners is a poor way to conduct business and breeds dysfunction. he probably thinks he’ll coerce them into selling their interest, which is a dangerous assumption to make.
Glen devolving into his best Logan Roy impression just reeks of desperation. he thinks he’s invincible because for the majority of his career he’s been able to fuck people over without facing significant recourse due to his massive wealth. he could very well be the first owner to suffer through “SELL THE TEAM” chants when the team in question is 20+ games above .500 lol
I strongly dislike Glen Taylor, but he tends to rely on his familiar faces. I would hope Connelly and Finch are in Minnesota long enough that Glen Taylor can’t mess it up. The franchise is actually stable, so hopefully it doesn’t even matter which ownership group wins the battle.
So ultimately, it comes down to who is more willing and able to pay lux tax and pump money into the team. I tend to think that’s much more likely Glen Taylor. Bill Simmons has talked quite a bit about how shady the Lore/A-Rod ownership group is liquid cash-wise.
Furthermore, I do not trust A-Rod. At all. I’m worried he’s just buying the Wolves so he can flip them and buy an MLB team, and he won’t give a shit about keeping the team in Minnesota, he’ll sell to anyone who will move the team anywhere.
I recognize this will probably get downvoted just because it’s popular to say “fuck glen taylor”. But I am very, very skeptical of Lore/A-Rod group.
āIgnore the fact that this is the worst franchise in professional sports and has been marked by inept ownership until the new guys got involved. Glen Taylor is obviously the right guy for the job!ā
I really donāt know what to make of this whole dispute. Taylor says they missed the deadline; Lore and Rodriguez say they didnāt. Let lawyers settle the thing.
But you canāt try to tell me the guy who has been one of the worst owners in sports is the better choice for the Wolves solely because heās from Minnesota and expect me to take you seriously as a journalist.
Iām anti-Glen
>AfterĀ the game on Sunday, the Taylors made their way toward the exit, and stopped to chat with Connelly. Even after a loss, they were all smiles.
I know this is supposed to be cute, but this whole column is vacuous drivel and says almost nothing. It is exactly why fans have left legacy media for better coverage from the likes of Dane and Jon K.
Gross
Iām rooting for Derek Jeter to do the funniest thing possible.
I think trying to decide who to ārootā for at this point is dumb.
All we have is what each side has said. And as the famous saying goes, there are three sides to every story: Glenās side, Lore/ARodās side, and the truth.
Until we get more clarity about the 3rd side, itās generally foolish to dig in too hard for either side. Thereās a possibility that Glen is having sellerās remorse and is trying to weasel his way out of the deal because he wants to hold onto a team thatās finally good; thereās also a possibility that Lorenzo/ARod couldnāt actually get the money together and hit all benchmarks, invalidating the contract and foretelling challenges actually investing money to run the team long term. But we, as fans, have pretty much no way to tell right now, so itās better to not get so attached to the words of billionaires squabbling over a fat financial asset.
My general thoughts ā I think Lore and ARod actually having the money and doing everything right (and Glen just being an asshole) is the ābestā option because I think the pair has illustrated a vision for a modernization of a long-hapless franchise. With that being said, if there is even a question about their financial ability to foot the bill, Glenās likely the better choice ā heās financially secure, is firmly committed to keeping the team in Minnesota, and has shown at least some willingness to spend. But, again, this is all contingent on the facts of the matter, which we are still very far from learning
As gross as it is to root for ANY billionaire, I have to say that I hope A-Rod and Lore come out on top. I’ve watched Taylor bumble and fuck around with this franchise for decades. Reporting at the time gave Lore-Rod the lions share of the credit for bringing in Connelly. TC was able to fill out this roster in a way that NO OTHER Taylor GM has ever been able to do. It’s no surprise that this team feels competent at the same time a new ownership group has come in.
I also don’t buy that the new guys had trouble coming up with the money. The franchise may be worth double what they acquired it for. They had a deadline to get the money, and A-Rod had every right to negotiate deals to bring on limited partners at a higher rate than what he purchased for. His negotiating partnerships at newer prices probably gives him added capital to invest more in the team…a good thing for fans who want to see them pay the luxury tax.
Everything stinks of Taylor being annoyed that the team is worth a lot more than it was when the deal was done, but this structure was Taylor’s idea. Almost everyone knew that the value of the team would increase over the following three years. Glen could have demanded a contract clause stating that “if the value of the franchise exceeds $X on the day of completion, then Taylor should receive an additional $Y.” He didn’t do that.
Does anyone want an owner who does business like Taylor? We’ve seen his approach destroy our relationship with KG. Do we want the same with KAT or Ant?
Obviously ARod and Loreā¦ Glenn has literally been the worst owner in professional sports history and it is no surprise heās throwing a tantrum on his way out
Anyone in Glen’s corner is one of the following:
– Super casual fans that have very little to no semblance of the history of the team and why it’s been bad for decades.
– Someone on his payroll (i.e. Strib writers).
– Masochists that only want losers so tickets at TC can be dirt cheap because no one would want to see the team.
– Pearl-clutching fearmongers that proclaim that Lore and ARod would move the team to Seattle or Vegas, despite evidence to the contrary.
– Glen’s closest friends and family.
– Glen Taylor.
Anyone else should not be beating the drum for this Mr. Magoo-type dumb fuck.
We stand with KG
What a joke. Souhan should be embarrassed.
It comes down to very wealthy people fighting over something most of us canāt comprehend. Who knows who is lying or who is not living up to the deal. To acquire that much money you have to be pretty selfish and a little questionable in the moral compass department imo. All parties could be guilty of something so itāll come down to lawyers.
I think itās best for the team to get some new blood, but at the same time I can fully understand why Taylor is playing hardball with the team more than doubling in value. He didnāt become a billionaire by chance, dude knows what heās doing financially. I hope we can get some clarity on exactly who is in the right and wrong
a lying billionaire or a lying millionaire?