Billionaire businessman and former three-term New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has reached an agreement to join the prospective Minnesota Timberwolves ownership group of Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, league sources briefed on the agreement tell The Athletic.

Bloomberg, ranked by Forbes in April as the 12th-richest person in the world, brings a major investor to the Lore-Rodriguez group, which currently owns nearly 40 percent of the Timberwolves and WNBA’s Lynx and is in a battle with Glen Taylor for majority control of the franchises. 

Lore and Rodriguez had an agreement with Taylor on a gradual purchase of controlling interest in a multi-step process at a $1.5 billion valuation. The group purchased two chunks of the team in 2021 and ’23 to get to 36 percent equity. They were working to purchase another 40 percent stake for majority control in March when Taylor called off the deal.

Lore and Rodriguez had made a late change in their financing for that $600-plus million chunk, going to Dyal Capital after the Carlyle Group withdrew from the bid. Taylor said at the time that Lore and Rodriguez didn’t have the money to complete the transaction and also missed several benchmarks in the agreement along the way. 

Lore and Rodriguez disputed that characterization, saying they…

MINNEAPOLIS — At the corner of East 38th and Chicago, the Minnesota Timberwolves are not front of mind.

The people who come here, 10 minutes or so from downtown, where the city’s NBA team is in the midst of a renaissance, don’t bring up Anthony Edwards or the unceasing comparisons of him to Michael Jordan. They don’t seem to care much about Rudy Gobert winning his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award, or Naz Reid getting his first Sixth Man of the Year award. They have come, this day — from Michigan and Oregon and Colorado and California and New York and Ghana — to see the spot where George Floyd was murdered, in front of the Cup Foods store, and how they reconcile what that means to them.

They are, all of them, quiet, contemplative, nervous. Black, White, Latino, male and female, on foot or bikes; it doesn’t matter. They don’t know where to stand or where they should walk or what they should say. Knowing what happened here, they seem not to want to trespass on the grounds.

An Asian woman has brought flowers. She is crying.

“Would you like a hug?” asks Bridgett Floyd, George Floyd’s younger sister, in town last weekend. They embrace.

East 38th and Chicago is in the heart of what people in this neighborhood call “The Free State of George Floyd,”…

The back alleys of Target Center underwent a renovation last fall. At the behest of majority owners in waiting Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, an opulent private owners’ suite was added just down the hall from the Minnesota Timberwolves locker room.

The suite features marble flooring, a private bathroom, a bar, a dining area, plush furniture and flat-screen televisions. It was designed as a gathering place for Timberwolves leadership with Rodriguez and Lore wanting it to entertain guests, conduct business on game nights and add some pizzazz to the second-oldest arena in the NBA.

In some ways, that room encapsulates the battle between the Lore/Rodriguez group and current owner Glen Taylor for control of the Timberwolves and WNBA’s Lynx that exploded into public view on Thursday. It is a symbol of the differences that developed between the two sides over the last three years of a partnership that has collapsed in recent days.

Taylor and his wife, Becky, viewed the expensive renovation to be an unnecessary flex that goes against their pragmatic and practical sensibilities. They rarely visited it this season, preferring to eat their pregame meal in a common area where the media and other gameday staffers are served, as they have done for years.

Lore and Rodriguez, limited partners…

As the Minnesota Timberwolves enter the stretch run toward the NBA playoffs, their three-year ownership transition plan is reaching a culmination point as well.

The deadline for Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez to complete their purchase of a majority of the shares of the Timberwolves and Lynx from Glen Taylor is at the end of March. Lore and Rodriguez remain on track to finalize the transaction, two sources involved with the plans told The Athletic on Saturday.

It has been an unconventional process, given the years-long succession plan that was put in place when Lore and Rodriguez initially joined the ownership group as minority investors in April 2021. That makes now a good time to revisit the arrangement to make it clear how this is all supposed to play out.

The plan

When Taylor agreed to sell the franchises to Lore and Rodriguez, it was significant not just because of the transfer of power that was going to take place, but also because the Wolves and Lynx owner had finally found a setup to his liking after more than a decade of looking for a successor. Taylor had conversations with a handful of prospective partners before Lore and Rodriguez came along, but he was never able to come to an agreement on the terms for a sale. Part of the reason for that was Taylor wanted to make it…

INDIANAPOLIS — There isn’t too much scoring in the NBA — 70-point games and record-breaking team offenses be damned.

The players don’t like to see what happened to Joel Embiid, or even Tyrese Haliburton, but they support the spirit of a league requirement for games played to determine eligibility for awards like MVP.

Clippers or Celtics? Joker, Embiid or even … LeBron? And who wants to be NBA commissioner Adam Silver for a day?

The Athletic again put on its collective hard hat, grabbed a lunch pail and jumped head first into All-Star media day, a savage, unruly affair in which players sit up on a dais, behind a gate, having questions shouted at them by YouTube influencers, goofballs on top of other goofballs’ shoulders, rappers, WNBA players and, yes, traditional reporters.

From the practice court at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Joe Vardon, Sam Amick, David Aldridge and Mike Vorkunov spoke to 18 players, most of them All-Stars, a couple from the Skills Challenge, 3-Point or Slam Dunk contests, and one second gentleman, to canvas them on who’s the NBA’s best player, the best team and what about the league needs to change.

Not everyone polled answered every question, but they all had plenty of ideas:

Who is the best player in the league?

Nikola Jokić, Joel Embiid — 3
Luka…

LAS VEGAS — This week, the NBA will descend upon Las Vegas in full force. Even for a city used to spectacle, it’s bringing something novel along with it. For the first time in decades, the league will hold real, live, actual — yes, they count — regular-season games in Sin City. It is a step into the breach unlike any other for the NBA.

Professional basketball has come to Vegas before. There have been exhibition games, the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, NBA Summer League, even a few Utah Jazz games in the 1980s, a playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers in 1992, the NBA G League Ignite franchise since 2020 and, for the last six seasons, WNBA games. But the NBA has never put a product on display quite like the one it will on Thursday afternoon when the NBA In-Season Tournament semifinals tip off at T-Mobile Arena.

While it is a seminal moment for the league and the city, it is also one open to much conjecture and forecasting. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has tiptoed around expansion in recent years, and Las Vegas has come up as a potential home for a new franchise. This week will likely do little to silence those rumblings.

In July, Silver called Vegas “our 31st franchise;” now, everyone is waiting to see if Vegas will actually be the league’s…

The weeks leading up to the NBA’s February trade deadline were anxious times for Mike Conley and his wife, Mary. They had spent the past three-and-a-half years in Utah, making a home in Salt Lake City for their three children while Mike pursued a championship with the talent-laden Jazz.

They had found the perfect neighborhood, filled with similarly aged children for their kids to play with, made friends in the organization and the community, and with Mike at 35, could envision what life would look like in Utah even after his playing days were over.

But one by one, they had watched the core of the Jazz depart. Donovan Mitchell traded to Cleveland. Rudy Gobert shipped to Minnesota. Bojan Bogdanović sent to Detroit. Suddenly, Conley was one of the last vets standing in Utah’s rebuilding plan. Even though the Jazz had been surprisingly competitive through the first three months of that 2022-23 season, Mike and Mary knew they could be next out the door.

Conley stayed in constant communication with his agent and would even bend the ear of a journalist or two to see what they were hearing about the rumor mill. He kept a close eye on the Los Angeles Lakers and LA Clippers, two playoff-hopeful teams in need of a veteran point guard. But as the deadline grew nearer and nearer, there…

FUENGIROLA, Spain – Josh Hart stared into the blue light of his computer screen at a desk in his hotel room.

He was on a training table at the Team USA hotel getting treatment before practice, with his wife Shannon watching him on FaceTime.

Where Hart is in the world right now, on the southern coast of Spain, in a resort community in the province of Malaga, with the Mediterranean Sea nearby and Morocco just 25 miles across the water, and with the Sierra La Blanca mountain range glistening in the sun behind the hotel, is easy on the eyes.

Even easier, the blinking cursor, over the blank line, on the DocuSign version of his four-year, $81 million contract extension with the New York Knicks.

One click on Thursday morning, and Hart and his wife would remember Malaga forever, even though she isn’t here and his reason for the trip is to get ready for the FIBA World Cup with Team USA.

“It was actually pretty cool, I was just laying down on the training table, getting some treatment, on FaceTime with her and signing the contract,” Hart said. “It meant a lot. I wasn’t highly touted coming out of high school, wasn’t highly regarded in the draft, went through free agency the first time and I was restricted, it was a terrible experience for me, so to be able to do this, it’s a…

Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards was fined $50,000 for “recklessly swinging a chair in frustration” and striking two bystanders as he left the court following the team’s season-ending loss to the Denver Nuggets at Ball Arena on April 25, the NBA announced Wednesday. Here’s what you need to know:

• Denver Police initially cited Edwards, 22, for third-degree assault after two women said they were hit with a folding chair swung by Edwards as he walked to the locker room. The police said both women were injured, “and at the time it was reported that the injuries were not serious.”
• Edwards’ attorney said after charges were filed that the player’s exit “was partially obstructed by a chair, which he moved and set down three steps later,” adding, “As video of the incident confirms, Anthony did not swing the chair at anyone and of course did not intend to hurt anyone.”
• The charges were dismissed last month after the criminal investigation into the incident concluded, the NBA said.

The following has been released by the NBA. pic.twitter.com/1PzBCKEo51

— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) August 9, 2023

Backstory

Denver closed out the first-round playoff series with a 112-109 win in Game 5. Edwards — the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft — missed a…

The Timberwolves are aware of an alleged incident involving Anthony Edwards as he left the court following Minnesota’s 112-109 loss to the Nuggets on Tuesday night but are still gathering information, the team said in a statement Wednesday. Denver Police cited Edwards for third-degree assault after two women said they were hit with a folding chair swung by Edwards as he was exiting the court. Here’s what you need to know:

• The Timberwolves issued a statement Wednesday: “We are aware of the alleged incident regarding Anthony Edwards following Game 5 in Denver and are in the process of gathering more information. We have no further comment at this moment.”
• According to Denver Police, it was reported that “while Edwards was walking from the court to the locker room at the conclusion of the game, he swung a folding chair and struck two women who were working at the time. Both women were injured, and at the time it was reported that the injuries were not serious.”
• Minnesota was eliminated from the postseason with the loss to Denver. Edwards, an NBA All-Star this past season, had 29 points, eight rebounds and seven assists in the Game 5 loss.

(Photo: Nick Wosika/USA Today)