The Minnesota Timberwolves officially have new owners. They may have a new look soon as well.
Alex Rodriguez, who finalized a purchase of the Timberwolves and the Minnesota Lynx last month with partner Marc Lore, told The Athletic’s Jon Krawczynski that the team is looking into a possible rebrand modeled after its look from the Kevin Garnett era in the late 90s and early 2000s:
“We’ve done a lot of work in the background. I think our fan base is going to be very, very excited. … Bringing back some of the history of the KG days is something we’re very aware is important to our fan base.”
Rodriguez and Lore held an introductory news conference in Las Vegas on Friday in which they laid out their vision for the Timberwolves after holding a minority stake in the team for four years. Rodriguez touted Lore’s business acumen combined with his own experience as a professional athlete, saying he believed roughly 30% of his knowledge from baseball, most notably team culture, would translate to basketball,
The pair were also asked about potentially reuniting with Garnett, who has been estranged from the team for years after a falling out with previous owner Glen Taylor. Garnett, the T-Wolves’ all-time leader in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals and pretty much every other counting stat, said he didn’t want his jersey retired in Minnesota in 2020 because “I don’t do business with snakes.”
The Timberwolves’ new owners signaled an interested in repairing that relationship:
Lore: “He’s the GOAT in Minnesota and we have tremendous respect for KG and everything he’s accomplished. We would love to get closer to him. We know the fans want to see that and we want to see that too.”
Rodriguez: “Anything that’s important to our fanbase is going to be important to us, and obviously he means a great deal to our fanbase. Marc and I are going to be working on that.”
Given how Lore and Rodriguez’s own dealings with Taylor resulted in a bitter legal battle, they might have some common ground with Garnett.
Another area where Lore said he plans to improve the Timberwolves and Lynx is the launching of the Jump app, a unified ticket system that appears aimed at cutting out the secondary ticket marketplaces. The franchises announced a multi-year deal with the platform earlier Friday.
Lore laid out one intriguing feature of the app: the ability to sell your seat during a game:
“You can dynamically move to any seat in the arena in real time. So if somebody leaves in the fourth quarter, that seat opens up, reverse auction, somebody can just buy that seat for five or 10 bucks and move to it. The arena will always be filled at the bottom even if people leave.”
After three decades under Taylor, the Timberwolves and Lynx could soon look very different, though Rodriguez praised the team’s current basketball operations after a second-straight Western Conference finals appearance.
