The Minnesota Timberwolves are a team on the rise but currently the whole organization is mourning the passing of former head coach, team president and minority owner Flip Saunders. The Wolves are young, exciting and they have a pair of young stars in rookie Karl-Anthony Towns and second year standout Andrew Wiggins.
So with the franchise trending up, what better time to start selling the franchise. Apparently T-Wolves majority owner Glen Taylor is doing just that.
Following from Yahoo! Sports Adrian Wojnarowski.
Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor is engaged in serious talks to sell an approximate 20 percent stake in the franchise to a group led by Memphis Grizzlies minority partner Steve Kaplan, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
For the Kaplan group, a significant motivation in purchasing the minority share of the Timberwolves is vested in hopes to position itself to buy the majority stake once Taylor decides to sell in the future, sources said.
Kaplan is partnering with controversial ex-Memphis Grizzlies CEO Jason Levien and Indonesian billionaires Handy Soetedjo and Erick Thohir, league sources said.
Wojnarowski also reports that Kaplan, who is a Los Angeles-based private equity investor, would need to divest its ownership stakes in the Grizzlies to complete a deal with the Timberwolves. Oddly enough, Kaplan’s group bid unsuccessfully for majority ownership of the Atlanta Hawks in 2014 when their franchise was up for sale. It lost out to an ownership group led by Tony Ressler and Grant Hill.
Hopefully, if Taylor does decide to move on from the Wolves it won’t mean dramatic and drastic changes to a franchise that is going to be very exciting in the next few years.
