Alex Rodriguez may not have the money to put together a championship NBA team, according to a source close to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor believes he was saving the team by snatching it away last week from Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, a source familiar with current ownership told The Post.
Lore and A-Rod did have trouble raising money at a $1.5 billion valuation to raise their stake from 40 to 80 percent of the team by a March 27 deadline.
The buyers said they raised the money just in time while Taylor said they missed the deadline and has terminated their option to increase their stake. The dispute seems headed for arbitration.
Regardless, A-Rod was in charge of fund raising and pushed this to the last minute, The Post reported exclusively last week.
There is a concern that if Lore and A-Rod can barely afford to buy the team they won’t be able to pay the luxury taxes to keep its young star players together after this season.
“If you don’t have the money to make the transaction, how are you going to be able to run the team?,” the source familiar with the current ownership said about their thinking.
The Timberwolves are projected to break even this year, and could make $5 million to $10 million if they go deep in the playoffs, a source familiar with its finances said.
Next season, payroll for the team that goes into Monday’s action with 51 wins and 23 losses goes up from $163 million to a guaranteed $185 million. That would also put the Timberwolves over the luxury tax resulting in a roughly $24 million penalty, a January report said.
Without trades, the Timberwolves could easily lose $40 million next season, the source said.
That is unless the team deal away Karl-Anthony Towns, who is set to make $49 million, or Jaden McDaniel, set to earn $22 million.
The team likely will not move star Anthony Edwards or Rudy Gobert after trading away five players and five draft picks for him, sources speculated.
Taylor believes he is better positioned to keep this young winning team together.
Lore and A-Rod maintained over the last few months that they instead played a direct role in the 2022 hiring of team president Tim Connelly from the Denver Nuggets who has built this group.
Also, they take credit for the Gobert trade, which looks decent at this point.
The Timberwolves since Taylor bought the team in 1994 have only made it to the Western Conference finals once and never the championship series.
Right now Lore, who has much more money than A-Rod, is laser-focused on keeping his gourmet food delivery company Wonder operating.
He has in recent months invested several hundred million in the money-losing start-up and just completed a $700 million round of financing, sources said, believing Wonder will be worth $30 billion.
Lore was not investing much in this round of Timberwolves financing, after putting up most of the money from 2021 to 2023 when he and A-Rod built up a near 40 percent stake.
This last stage with the March 27 deadline would have brought them up to 80 percent.
Lore told the NBA in 2021 he was worth $4 billion, though much of that is connected to Wonder.
The NBA has a policy of not getting involved in ownership disputes and has not taken a stand on the Timberwolves ownership jump ball.
A spokesman for Lore and A-Rod said, “We will not comment on these baseless claims.”
