After paying a franchise-record $90.4MM in luxury tax penalties last season, the Timberwolves are now under new ownership. But the transfer from Glen Taylor to Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez won’t make the team any less inclined to pay a tax bill, according to Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic.
As Vorkunov relays, Lore said this week that he and Rodriguez are prepared to continue being taxpayers as long as they think it benefits the franchise in both the short and long term.
“We think about it like we do a startup, where startups lose money, but they’re investing because it’s creating enterprise value over the long term,” Lore said. “And I think that’s the way we think about. It is investing in the team, in winning, creates long-term franchise value. That’s not over the next three to five years, but 10 to 20, the next 50 years, even.
“So, we’re prepared to invest, we’re prepared to lose money to create a winning culture. But a sustainable winning culture, not just a one year — you’re not going to see us do what maybe people might expect us to do, which is come in as owners and make some big flashy move. We’re being very methodical about the decisions we make, and we’re thinking in every decision what’s in the best interest of building a long-term, sustainable culture of winning.”
While the Timberwolves have fallen short of a championship, they’ve appeared in the Western Conference Finals in back-to-back seasons and were able to re-sign forwards Julius Randle and Naz Reid to new deals in free agency this month. Those signings pushed Minnesota’s team salary well above the tax line again in 2025/26.
However, because the Wolves aren’t as far above the tax line this season, don’t qualify as a repeater taxpayer, and will benefit from reduced penalties for the first two tax brackets, their year-end tax bill should come in significantly lower than last season’s $90MM+. Their projected bill will depend on how they fill out their roster — they currently have 13 players on guaranteed standard contracts.
Queen sustained the injury in Tuesday’s Summer League game vs. Portland in Las Vegas and underwent the procedure days later in Los Angeles. He’s expected to be reevaluated in approximately 12 weeks, according to the Pelicans. Training camp is scheduled to get underway in about 10-and-a-half weeks.
Extensions, of course, don’t involve adding a new player to the roster. By extending a contract, a team ensures that a current player will remain locked up for multiple years to come. Although a contract extension may not change the club’s short-term outlook on the court, it can have a major impact on that team’s salary cap situation for the next several seasons.
“We couldn’t take the chance [of another lost year],” Bartelstein told Windhorst. “This decision was about basketball. Bradley wants to play in big games and in big moments.”