A few days after the Buss family reached a deal to sell the Los Angeles Lakers for $10 billion, Lore and A-Rod are paying 15% of that to become NBA owners.
Obviously, the Lakers are worth much more than an NBA team here in Minnesota. So let’s say it’s twice as much, which would mean the new Timberwolves owners are paying 30% of the team’s real value, which would mean they have enriched themselves by $3.5 billion, which means that when they talk about a replacement for Target Center … well, the answer will be simple for Minnesota politicians:
Build it yourselves, fellas.
We’ll find you a hunk of land, improve a street or two, put in a few lights — but the arena tab, that’s yours, crafty gents that you were making that original deal.
Once Taylor finished the Zoom call with Lore on that splendid February afternoon, he was encouraged to go back to his sports roots — as a smallish, feisty athlete for the Comfrey Rockets, a dot on the map among many such hamlets in southwestern Minnesota.