Report: Timberwolves sale 'should be complete by the end of February'
Glen Taylor has owned the Timberwolves since 1994. In a few months, he'll still be the top dog, but he just won't possess as much of the team he's run for most of its existence.
A small report was buried in Charley Walters' mostly football-centric column for the Pioneer Press on Monday:
The sale of at least 30 percent of the Timberwolves by owner Glen Taylor to a handful of Los Angeles investors, including Memphis Grizzlies limited partner Steve Kaplan, should be complete by the end of February. The Wolves, though, will be required to remain in Minnesota.
We learned back in November that Taylor was negotiating a minority sale of the team to the ownership group Walters references in his report. Later, it seemed the deal was all but done, but it takes a little while for such sales to become official.
One of Kaplan's partners is former Grizzlies CEO Jason Levien, who has made his way around the league over the years, and who hasn't earned the NBA's best reputation in the process. As Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski reported in November, part of the motivation for the Kaplan group in purchasing a minority stake would be to have an inside track on buying the team from Taylor in full whenever the current Minnesota owner does decide to part with the organization.
