Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez held their first press conference since taking over as the majority owners of the Timberwolves and Lynx on Friday in Las Vegas, the site of NBA Summer League.<\/p>\n
The two delivered statements and fielded a number of questions from local and national media members alike.<\/p>\n
Here are a few things that stood out:<\/p>\n
Roster building<\/p>\n
Lore and Rodriguez were specifically asked Friday about \u201cnew owner syndrome\u201d \u2014 a made-up disease in which new sports owners make unwise decisions out of haste shortly after purchasing a franchise.<\/p>\n
But the new ownership duo thinks it\u2019s well positioned to avoid such an error, partly because they\u2019ve been around the organization for years now amid the ownership transition. They already made a splash with the hiring of Tim Connelly as Timberwolves president of basketball operations and were proponents of the Rudy Gobert trade.<\/p>\n
And they don\u2019t feel a need for any more fireworks in the near future just in the name of shaking it up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re being very methodical about the decisions we make,\u201d Lore said. \u201cWe\u2019re thinking, in every decision, what\u2019s in the best interest of the long-term, sustained culture of winning?\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not an easy thing to achieve in today\u2019s NBA given the new, strict salary-cap rules. But Lore and Rodriguez have plans for how to navigate the waters.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez spoke of the value of continuity, which he called one of the \u201carbitrages\u201d of the league. But keeping a team together likely requires paying a luxury tax, perhaps even a hefty one. Lore claims they\u2019re fine with that, likening that investment to the financial losses startup companies endure early in their building process.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause it\u2019s creating enterprised value over the long term,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s the way we think about it. Investing in the team, in winning, creates long-term franchise value. And it\u2019s not over the next three to five years, but 10, 20, the next 50 years even. We\u2019re prepared to invest, we\u2019re prepared to lose money to create a winning culture, a sustainable winning culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
A new arena<\/p>\n
Rodriguez noted that new, upgraded arenas may have been vanity features back when he was playing in Major League Baseball. But he no longer feels as though that\u2019s the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, it\u2019s a necessity,\u201d Rodriguez told reporters. \u201cIf you want to compete at the level we want to compete, year in and year out, a new arena is what our fans deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lore and Rodriguez are in the \u201cvery, very early stages\u201d of a plan to get a new basketball arena in Minneapolis to replace an aging Target Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cTalk about community service,\u201d Rodriguez said, \u201can arena is an anchor to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
KG comeback?<\/p>\n
Kevin Garnett is, as Lore put it, \u201cthe GOAT (greatest of all time)\u201d in the Timberwolves organization. But Garnett\u2019s presence within the franchise has waned significantly since the passing of Flip Saunders, as Garnett and Glen Taylor\u2019s relationship was frequently sour.<\/p>\n
Will the entrance of two new majority owners pave the path for Garnett\u2019s \u201creturn\u201d to the Timberwolves in some capacity?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a tremendous amount of respect for KG and everything he\u2019s accomplished, and we would love to get closer to him,\u201d Lore told reporters. \u201cWe know the fans want to see that, and we want to see that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Rodriguez: \u201cAnything that\u2019s important to our fan base is going to be important to us. Obviously, he means a great deal to our fan base, and Marc and I are going to be working on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
New ticketing system<\/p>\n
The Timberwolves and Lynx announced a multi-year agreement with Jump \u2014 a ticketing company founded by Lore and Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s release described Jump as \u201cthe only unified fan experience and ticketing platform purpose-built for professional sports teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fans using the app will be able to purchase and manage tickets. And, in an interesting new feature, Lore said fans in the lower bowl \u2014 even sitting courtside \u2014 can put up their tickets for auction if they\u2019re leaving a game early, and other fans in the arena can purchase them for a discounted price to move closer to the action.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a startup founder, it\u2019s all about innovation, it\u2019s about being disruptive and not doing things the conventional way,\u201d Lore said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a clean slate here to rethink how things are done, not just accept how they\u2019re done. We have big ideas on how to innovate, how to do things in a way that will separate us from others.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez held their first press conference since taking over as the majority owners of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3782],"tags":[5900,7,307,152,3954,6,66,308],"class_list":{"0":"post-164144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-timberwolves","8":"tag-alex-rodriguez","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-timberwolves","12":"tag-minnesotatimberwolves","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-timberwolves"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114836838053245878","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}