Report: Owner Glen Taylor Has Officially Put The Minnesota Timberwolves Up For Sale. What Does This Entail For The Future Of The Timberwolves?
On July 21, 2020, owner Glen Taylor announced that the Minnesota Timberwolves are up for sale. With Taylor being 79 years old while owning the organization since 1995, most people can concur that maybe it is time for a change in the front office as this team has had little to no success. The Timberwolves have even failed to cater to their most significant player to represent their organization, Kevin Garnett, which is rooted in Glen Taylor's response to Flip Saunder's death. Here is the full in-depth interview from Jon Krawczynski on April 19, 2017, about Kevin Garnett's perspective on how Glen Taylor and the Minnesota Timberwolves dealt with Flip Saunder's death.
“Garnett believes that promises were broken, and he left last summer after a tense buyout negotiation with owner Glen Taylor.
”I love those young guys,” Garnett said, referring to the Wolves’ young core of Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Zach Lavine that he mentored in his final season. “I told Thibs I want to work with him, but obviously me and Glen don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things and that’s how it’s going to be.”
Garnett envisioned having a large role in the decision-making process, particularly when it came to the move to fire GM Milt Newton and coach Sam Mitchell — Garnett’s close friend — after last season.
Garnett also told the AP that he was upset with the way the team handled a memorial service for Saunders, the coach who drafted Garnett as a skinny teenager out of Farragut Academy High School in Chicago in 1995.
Saunders was honored in an emotional service before the team’s home opener against Portland last season. It included a touching video tribute, with players, coaches, media members and others speaking about the impact Saunders had on their lives.
One glaring absence was Garnett, who said he “couldn’t put a lifetime of friendship into three minutes.”
”How do you put a time limit on something like that?” Garnett said. “And then, too, I thought he wasn’t celebrated the proper way. You have high school banners, you have (expletive) hockey banners (hanging in the rafters). You couldn’t put a Flip banner in Target Center, some place that we helped build? … We established that market. I helped grow that with him. You can’t put him in the (rafters)?
”So I just had problems with how they were shoving this down all of our throats. The young guys, they weren’t invested enough to really understand what was going on. I chose to be mute, to be professional and keep all the negative energy down. There was a bigger message I wanted to tell, but I supported it and just kept my mouth shut.”
Taylor told the AP in February that the Wolves reached out to Garnett in hopes of arranging a ceremony to retire his jersey.
”We think that’s the appropriate thing to do,” Taylor said. “At this time he hasn’t commented on a timetable. We just have left it open.”
Garnett said he has never heard from the Wolves”
The Timberwolves failed to honour Flip Saunders, who was a pioneer for the Timberwolves early success when they first started. Garnett felt rejected due to how Glen Taylor reacted to Saunder's death while also feeling baffled at how little the organization honoured him. Saunders has easily been the best coach that the Timberwolves ever signed and should have been honoured in the rafters. Until that day comes, Kevin Garnett would most likely allow the organization to retire his number, but he refuses to until Glen Taylor retires. Fortunately enough, this day has come as the Timberwolves are up for sale, which grants Kevin Garnett his greatest opportunity yet which is, to own the organization that drafted him!
If it's one thing that Kevin Garnett is famous for, his competitive side. When he played in the NBA, his aspirations for winning basketball games were much more profound as he also wanted to end his opponent mentally. During his prime, he was arguably the most skilled player at his position while also being a notorious trash talker. For Garnett, he wanted to do anything to win a basketball game, and if that entailed talking trash to a player to the point where they might attack him or even cry, he was more than willing to do so. As a result, Garnett would go on to win a championship for the Boston Celtics but, he always wanted to represent and win a championship for his original team, the Minnesota Timberwolves. Now that Glen Taylor has put the organization onto the market, Garnett and many other suitors are currently auctioning for the organization. If Garnett owns the Timberwolves, the balance would be restored in the front office as this organization has suffered more than enough since their birth! However, what does this entail for the next chapter of the Minnesota Timberwolves?
During the beginning of the 2017 NBA season, Glen Taylor offered Andrew Wiggins a max-contract extension after playing a mediocre season prior. With Wiggins having so much expectation of becoming a future Hall of Famer, his hype was quickly diminished by his second season in the NBA. With him being just as hyped up as Lebron James and Zion Williamson, receiving a max-contract was bound to happen if he became a superstar in the NBA. Surely enough, Taylor would redeem his abysmal decision and decided to trade Wiggins in the 2019-20 season for D'Angelo Russell, a close friend with Karl Anthony Towns. Taylor would also transform the entire organization as he traded more than 80% of the roster!
The Timberwolves have a bright future once again as they have a great selection of young talent that they can either develop or trade away. Their foundation is solid as they have two All-Stars to work with but lack good enough depth. Glen Taylor selling the organization now is a smart decision considering how bright the future looks for the organization if they can play their cards right. For instance, trading Zach Lavine would later become one of their dumbest decisions in recent history as Lavine is currently a 25 point per game scorer while rotting on the Chicago Bulls. If Kevin Garnett can buy the Timberwolves successively, his chances of winning a championship for the team that he started his NBA career would instantly reappear. Furthermore, the Timberwolves would be in a unique situation as they would have an owner that cares far more than just business and instead would want to grant the city of Minnesota their first-ever championship victory!
Glen Taylor has left a great foundation to work with as he has provided significant assets to develop or trade away as far as changes. Building a championship team will be challenging but not impossible. The most underrated trade that occurred in the 2019-20 NBA trade deadline was the Timberwolves trading for Malik Beasley, who has proven himself to be an efficient scorer who just needed a better role on a team. With Malik being arguably the third option on the Timberwolves, Kevin Garnett or whoever else buys the organization would be in a great situation to build either a playoff team or a title-contending team in just a few seasons!