MINNEAPOLIS — From the very first moments that Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez joined the Minnesota Timberwolves organization, they were deluged with pleas from a forlorn fan base.
Their mentions on social media were flooded with them. Anytime they would run into a Timberwolves fan in public, they would hear the demands. The surveys they distributed to fans to understand what was most important to them were dominated by one subject.
Bring KG home. Please.
For almost two decades, Timberwolves fans were children caught in the middle of a messy divorce between the franchise and its lone icon, Kevin Garnett. The relationship between the superstar and the franchise he put on the map became strained after he was traded to the Boston Celtics in 2007 and was torn apart upon his retirement in 2016, thanks to a fundamental disagreement between Garnett and former owner Glen Taylor about KG’s desire to become an owner.
Garnett felt so betrayed by the ordeal that he refused to even show his face at Target Center despite several overtures from the team hoping to host him for big moments in the playoffs. He also rebuffed multiple efforts to hang his No. 21 in the rafters, an embarrassment for the fans that cut deeper than any of the team’s many 60-loss seasons, the 14-year playoff drought or passing on Steph Curry (twice) in the 2009 NBA Draft.
“It was crystal clear that was one of the most impactful things we could do as owners is retire KG’s jersey and bring him back to Minnesota,” Lore told The Athletic. “And mend the relationship because he meant so much to the fans, all the community.”
For so much of this franchise’s existence, Garnett was the only thing that made fans in these parts proud to support the Timberwolves. He laid it on the line every night for just over 13 seasons in two stints bookending his Hall of Fame career.
The Timberwolves and Garnett bowed out in the first round of the playoffs for seven straight seasons, but KG never hinted at wanting out. When he finally won a championship with the Celtics in 2008, the first thing out of his mouth after his now-famous “Anything is possible!” line was, “This is for everybody in ‘Sota.”
Garnett was all they had for so very long, and what they wanted more than anything was to thank him for his service to a team and a community that often felt like it didn’t deserve him.
“We felt it from day one,” said Kelly Laferriere, a senior adviser to Lore and Rodriguez and the chief business officer of A-Rod Corp. “It was like this huge hole in the heart of the organization.”
Rodriguez understands all too well the strains that can come between a superstar and a franchise. But even he was taken aback by the outcry. He would post pictures of a family vacation on his Instagram and see his comment section taken over by Wolves fans.
It’s great that you’re in the south of France. When is KG coming back?
“Everywhere we went around, not only Minnesota, but all around the country, all Minnesota Timberwolves fans wanted to know was, when is Kevin coming back into the organization?” Rodriguez said.
It took four years, countless meetings and a knock-down, drag-out fight for control of the organization, but Lore and Rodriguez finally delivered the long-awaited reconciliation with Garnett last week. He has rejoined the franchise as an ambassador and signed off on having his jersey hoisted up alongside his friends, Flip Saunders and Malik Sealy, right where he belongs.
“When I saw A-Rod, the first thing I said was congratulations (for winning the battle for the Timberwolves and Lynx) and retire Kevin’s jersey. Figure out a way of doing that,” said Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers, who coached Garnett with the Celtics and remains close to him. “Get it done. Get it done.”
If only it were that easy.
When the Timberwolves selected Garnett with the fifth pick in the 1995 draft, it was a landmark moment for the team and the NBA.
He was the first player to be drafted straight out of high school in 20 years. The relationship was a resounding success for 12 years, with Garnett developing into one of the best power forwards in NBA history. He won MVP and led the Wolves to the Western Conference finals in 2004 and gave Minnesota its first true face of the franchise since its inception in 1989. Along the way, Taylor signed Garnett to a groundbreaking six-year, $126 million contract extension, a deal so large that it played a major role in the labor dispute of 1998-99.
Kevin Garnett shakes the hand of then-NBA commissioner David Stern on draft day 1995. (Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE via Getty Images)
The relationship between Garnett and Taylor first started to fray the season after he was traded to Boston. In 2015, Saunders, then-Wolves president of basketball operations, brokered a truce of sorts between Garnett and Taylor while executing a trade to bring Garnett from the Brooklyn Nets back to Minnesota. Garnett believed that the move would pave the way for him to one day become an owner of the Timberwolves. Taylor maintained that he was open to Garnett putting a group together to buy the team, but he made no promises that KG would be his successor.
Garnett vowed never to be associated with the Timberwolves as long as Taylor owned the team. He has only appeared at Target Center one time since retirement, for a game on Nov. 16, 2018, in celebration of the debut of Prince-inspired City Edition uniforms. Many around Garnett urged him to at least consider the idea of a reconciliation, including Rivers, former Wolves star Karl-Anthony Towns and former equipment manager Clayton Wilson, a longtime KG confidante.
Garnett wasn’t hearing any of it. If he feels like he has been wronged, he holds onto the grudge tighter than he did any of the 14,662 rebounds he grabbed in his career.
“There was a stretch where we really were getting into it about it because I wanted him to come back here and accept it,” Rivers said. “If you know Kevin, he is … a principled man. And I got it. I understood it.”
When Lore and Rodriguez first came on board as limited partners in April 2021, they were told of the toxicity. But they didn’t fully grasp it until a month later, when they attended Garnett’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The pair had not officially closed on their minority shares yet but wanted to show Garnett how important he was to their plans.
They listened intently to his speech, noting the sparse mentions of the Timberwolves. There was discussion about a brief meet-and-greet after the ceremony, but Garnett left quickly without crossing paths.
“It became clear during that speech how far we had to go,” Lore said.
The unique structure of the agreement for Lore and Rodriguez to begin as limited partners and assume majority control over the course of several years took some of the pressure off the situation. They were in no position to make any sweeping changes or promises right away, and Garnett wasn’t in a hurry to engage while Taylor was still calling the shots.
Rather than trying to rush the process, Lore and Rodriguez set about trying to earn Garnett’s trust over the long haul.
“In many ways, he’s our Babe Ruth for the Yankees, right?” Rodriguez said. “So it was important to start kind of going down a path of mending a relationship.”
Lore had dinner with Garnett in November 2022 to start the introductions in earnest, but it wasn’t until a year later that the ball really got rolling. Garnett, his attorney, George Daniel, and his business manager, Rich Gray, met Lore and Rodriguez for dinner at Lore’s apartment in New York City.
“It was five-star,” Gray said. “If there was a Michelin award for a dinner at a house, that would be it.”
Rodriguez and Lore were careful not to turn the evening into a business meeting. They drank wine, told stories and talked basketball, the two newcomers to the league absorbing Garnett’s deep institutional knowledge and experience over a 21-year career. Few players are more magnetic storytellers than Garnett, and the two owners soaked it up.
“He really opened up,” Lore said. “We had good, in-depth conversations about life and the world. He seemed like a really genuine guy. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He shared his honest thoughts on things and the franchise and basketball and life in general. It was much deeper than we were expecting.”
They started to discuss, loosely, what a collaboration could look like once Lore and Rodriguez assumed control. Garnett shared what was important to him and connected with Rodriguez by splashing some Spanish into his most colorful stories.
“Everybody was sitting back as he held court,” Gray said. “The fact that Marc and A-Rod listened and applied a lot of the things we were talking about, that’s what it was all about. That was a huge needle mover for Kevin.”
When the night ended, Lore and Rodriguez left the dinner believing that a partnership could be brokered. They empowered Laferriere to engage with Daniel and Gray and continue the conversation while they navigated the step-by-step process of buying the team.
Another process that proved easier said than done.
Laferriere, Daniel and Gray continued to share ideas about what a return would look like through the rest of 2023. They talked about honoring Garnett’s legacy in Minnesota, helping him reclaim his rightful place in the organization and doing it in a way that was manageable for both sides.
In February 2024, Laferriere met with Daniel in New York to discuss the framework of a deal, and both sides planned to finalize things once Lore and Rodriguez closed on the final payment that would give them majority control of the team. But Taylor called off the deal in March, triggering a long, tense arbitration process that not only delayed the transfer of power but also any idea of Garnett’s return.
Garnett showed support to Lore and Rodriguez through the fight and patience to wait out the outcome. When they prevailed in February 2025, conversations with Garnett’s camp resumed. The discussions centered not on a basketball decision-making role but something that included content creation, a lane in which Garnett has excelled in his post-playing career, and initiatives in the Twin Cities community.
TEARS IN OUR EYES. 🥹 pic.twitter.com/7NIvLknwoY
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) December 24, 2025
“I think his heart was in the right place,” Rodriguez said, “and I think he missed the fans and the community regardless of what was happening inside the building. He really misses the fans.”
“The keyword was partnership,” Gray said. “It wasn’t about anything transactional or him showing up one day and doing one thing. This is something we’re going to do over time that is going to have several components to it.”
Lore and Rodriguez closed the purchase in June, and Laferriere met with Daniel and Gray at the Las Vegas Summer League to go over a more formal arrangement. Daniel and Gray said Garnett was on board, and the group spent the next few months hammering out the final details. Earlier this month, a final agreement was reached, including a jersey retirement that will happen at an as-yet-unspecified date.
“I think what he wanted is exactly what I would want as a player,” said Rodriguez, the former New York Yankee. “Here’s a guy that gave his heart and soul to the organization, to the fans of that community. And I think Marc and I wanted to lead with respect and just make sure that we honored him and we saw him and we understand exactly what he means to everybody in the state of Minnesota and all the fans across the U.S.”
For nearly a decade, there has been a stark contrast in the nostalgia of Target Center, depending on which end of the arena your eyes gravitate to. One end is cloaked in glory, with four championship banners for the Lynx and the retired numbers of Lindsay Whalen, Seimone Augustus, Maya Moore, Sylvia Fowles and Rebekkah Brunson, WNBA royalty to be revered.
On the other end, there is only tragedy. Two names hang on the Wolves side — Saunders, the beloved coach and executive who died from Hodgkin lymphoma in 2015, and Sealy, Garnett’s close friend who was killed by a drunk driver in 2000. The absence of No. 21 was its own kind of heartbreak.
“I’m so happy about it,” Rivers said. “He deserves to be here. When you think Minnesota basketball, that has to be the first name, right? You look up there, and you don’t see his jersey.”
Kevin Garnett acknowledges Target Center fans in 2015 after he rejoined the Timberwolves via trade. (Jesse Johnson / USA Today Sports)
And no matter who was to blame, it was still an indictment on the organization. For the Wolves to be estranged from their most revered player was just another way in which the franchise fell short in a long list of them.
“If we all do one thing in the next 10 years that’s going to matter to fans, it’s that,” Laferriere said early in the process. “It carries so much more significance and weight, because it’s like the only thing that people were really proud of. … There’s just things that we didn’t match up with other franchises because it’s just this black hole of the history.”
When that jersey rises in the air and the fans get to howl for their favorite Wolf once more, the hole will be filled.
“It’s really like welcoming him back home, and his house is open, and he can come back anytime he wants,” Rodriguez said. “Even having him and Anthony Edwards and Naz Reid dapping up before the game. I just think that it would be very soothing for this fan base that’s been waiting for this moment for a very long time.”
For Garnett, the acrimony started and ended with Taylor. Through the years, Garnett always made it clear that he still felt an allegiance to the community, the fan base and the team. When he returned to the Wolves in the trade with Brooklyn in 2015, Target Center shook as it had never shaken before.
This reunion between the alpha wolf and his pack has been years in the making, which only means the party that comes with his return will be that much louder.
“I’ll be there,” Towns said. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“It’s going to be electric, man,” Gray said. “Minneapolis is his home. He hasn’t changed the area code on his phone. It’s still 612. That connection is still there. It’s going to be him coming back to a fan base that essentially helped raise him and grew him into the man that he is now. I feel like it’s going to be really emotional, but it’s a lot of excitement.”