Glen Taylor bought the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1994 and has been at the helm ever since. But there have been a lot of ownership changes in the NBA since then. Taylor sat down with TheStreet and explained why he thought so many teams have changed hands, and what he looks for in a potential owner.
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Full Video Transcript Below:
CONWAY GITTENS: Are you now happy with the investment that you’ve made into the team?
GLEN TAYLOR: Well, if you’ve just an investment, it’s been a terrific one because when I bought the price of the teams was somewhat different. I paid $88 million for it. And you know, and it’s been 30 years and the values have jumped up. So that has been good. If you’re talking about investments getting into the championship, we’ve been disappointed because every time we’ve had a pretty good team, we’ve ran into injuries and we just haven’t got as far along in the Championship Series as we anticipated.
CONWAY GITTENS: Now, you mentioned how things have changed in terms of ownership, how much you paid for the team and how things are worth now. You know, the Suns, Mavericks, 76ers, The Nets, The Jazz, all of those teams got new owners within the last five years. So what do you make of all of the recent changes in terms of ownership?
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GLEN TAYLOR: Well, it just really has changed the value because of the TV rights and stuff has gone up greatly. It has just found out there’s more people who want to own the team than there are teams. And that just changes the market so that the sellers can control. And that’s where it is right now.
CONWAY GITTENS: And so as someone with a seat at the table, as an owner, what do you look for when it comes to potential owners who are approaching the league to wanting to buy a team?
GLEN TAYLOR: Well, I think ideally you would like to find ownership that lives in the community, that they have the team, but that’s not always practical and it hasn’t always worked out. So you want people to build a staff that live there and work there that really care about not only the team but the community. I think this is kind of a community asset and I think that’s a very important element to ownership.
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