Tell me about the Wolves' owner
by jorga on Dec 3, 2008 10:47 AM CST
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PrintAs the BE representative here I'm trying to learn more about the team and I know nothing about the team owner. Can someone give me some background about who he is, how long he has owned the team, how involved he is in player decisions, etc. I know that he gave Wittman a recent vote of confidence which probably didn't sit well with the fans, but outside of that what are your feelings about him?
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I'll take a shot
Glen Taylor is a MN native. Grew up in a TINY town, went to college here built an empire called Taylor Corp. He purchased the Wolves in 1994. Net worth of about 2.7 billion according to Forbes. He was rumored to be a potential buyer for the Twins and Vikings at different times. Those are the basics.
Taylor is very loyal to his GM, coaches and players. He doesn’t get too involved in player decisions, instead entrusting his franchise to Kevin McHale (the greatest GM in all of sports according to Forbes). McHale can seem to do no wrong.
On the plus side he has shown that he is willing to spend when necessary to put a winning team on the floor. He signed Garnett to the biggest contract in NBA history which put him over the NBA luxury tax for several years where he was losing money for a few years in a row.
So in a year or two he may be willing to pay for a good team again, but until he cuts ties with McHale there is little hope for positive results on the floor.
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Glen...
…is a neighbor and I see him around town. Of course, I use “neighbor” lightly because he lives in a gated mansion and I live in a modest craftsman and he runs the biggest business in town, but I like to think that he raises the collective wealth of the neighborhood. Mankato (where we live) is a modestly sized community of about 45,000 if you include its sister city, North Mankato. It is home to the aforementioned Taylor Corp (which is wedding card/post-it note empire built on the backs of $9/hour labor) and Minnesota State University. It is home to lots of construction companies and agriculture interests and is filled to the brim with drunken college students. It’s a blue collar town with lots of outdoorsmen and bike trails. Glen is very well respected in the community and he has his name on everything from the North Mankato library to the excellent Mankato Y, where I take my daughters to swimming lessons in the Taylor Family Aquatic Center.
He’s done some really nice work at the University, pumping millions of dollars into his alma mater and putting it on track to be the 2nd largest U in Minny. It’s really turned into a nice campus and they are trying to get a foothold in the biofuel research arena.
He also has a history in Minnesota politics. He was a GOP State Senator in the 80s and briefly held the position of minority leader. He continues to be a money man in Minny GOP circles.
Business wise, he’s done very well for himself but Taylor Corp is built on several things that may not survive the next generation. As anyone with a computer can tell you, you don’t need to buy wedding invites anymore and you can do a lot of the type of specialty printing that Glen does on your own. Word around town is that his post-it note business lost a big contract and there are layoffs on the horizon.
Taylor’s business sense may be working against him with the Wolves. Taylor Corp is a series of businesses that fall under a single umbrella and he does a great deal of delegation to his presidents. You can see this attitude in some of his quotes about the team. He’s not a knee jerk type of guy and you can tell he believes in long term investments. He places what he feels are competent people on the job and…well, that seems to be it.
Other than that, he drives a very nice car and I’ve almost run over his trash can on trash day. At this point in his life he spends more time donating money to worthy causes than he does with the day-to-day of his business. It’s weird how he seems to be so out to lunch with the Wolves.
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Is his business related to 3M of post-it fame?
The former Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company who is now anything but, and rather a multinational conglomerate of innovative companies?
That...
…I don’t know. My daughter’s best friend’s mom works there and they always have a ton of post it notes. I don’t know if they work with 3M. I’ll ask.
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I know Mankato
sort of… Don’t know if I mentioned it previously but I am female and I grew up loving the Betsy-Tacy books. (I’m sort of an elder statesman, if you will). Someday I WILL visit and get to walk up the Big Hill.
Thanks, everyone, for your comments. It helps me to get a bigger picture of your franchise. Some of it sounds awfully familiar and parallels the Blazers under Paul Allen’s ownership. His advisers all came from his company Vulcan – so of course were known as the Vulcans. They were way too business oriented and paid no attention to the fan base. Unfortunately Allen’s strengths were not necessarily personnel choices nor business decisions and he made some big errors, both with his businesses and the Blazers. But he has made some great hires for the Blazers in the last few years, bought back the arena he’d put into bankruptcy, and once again has a high popularity rating (I’d guess.)
Also, on another personal note, I once lived across a side street from a gated community in Seattle. I used to watch my cat slip through the fence over there and it just amused to know that my middle class cat was consorting with big money.
"That's what Prizzy do." - B.Roy 12/02/08
Well...
…I’ve driven up the big hill many times and I’ve taken my daughters over to the Betsy/Tacy houses. They are in the “ratty” party of town. Not because of crime or anything but rather because the university used to be “down the hill” and all of the big houses were rented out to college students who trashed the place. Now that the university is up on the hilltop the houses are very cheap and run down. You can get an absolutely massive house for very little. They take work and a lot of people have fixed them up but there are some doozies over there still. Kato is well known for Besty and Tacy, the Vikings training camp, a horrible native American massacre, and it was the “big city” on Little House on the Prairie.
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Garnett's first extension...
…actually caused the NBA lockout in 1999. It was just so out-of-whack with anything else to that point that it caused the rest of the owners to panic. Hence the capped individual contracts we have today.
I’m not sure about the personnel. I don’t think he meddles in draft picks or anything, but I suspect he had something to do with the Joe Smith secret deal fiasco. I also believe he swung for low-hanging fruit for a while after the team’s run to the Western Conference Finals (I heard him on a couple interviews stating their goal was to “catch Denver”) which likely led to the team holding onto Garnett for as long as they did (killing much of their leverage), as well as some of their desperate free agent and trade moves (cluttering the roster to the point they’re just now getting out of it).
Locally, Taylor was exceedingly popular early in his tenure as owner (he probably saved the team from relocating, and his willingness to spend money was welcomed by a lot of fans). Now, I think it’s safe to say he’s seen as a big part of the problem. He’s surrounded himself with a small group of advisors that has become known as the “country club,” locally. They’re all extremely isolated, tend to trust only themselves, and most have a long history of failure in the NBA (McHale, Rob Babcock, Randy Wittman). The general sense is Taylor isn’t all that comfortable/knowledgable, basketball-wise, working with people outside this group, and hence the general inertia of the team.
A year or two ago it was thought Taylor was (in his way) finally showing some urgency about McHale’s lackluster track record by announcing the team would be run more by a front office of consensus, with Taylor taking a more active role in the decision-making. Whether this is a positive thing has yet to be seen.
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