Mount Rushless: Glen Taylor of the Minnesota Timberwolves
There is a saying that one should give a person their flowers while they’re still able to around to smell them. With news that this beloved column is losing one of the Mount Rushless titans, this had to get done before Mr. Taylor is no longer the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves basketball franchise. This has to be a great feeling for Alex Rodriguez, Marc Lore, and company.
Yes, they join the exclusive country club that is NBA - well Big 4 sports in general - ownership but the true celebration is that the bar for success could not be set ANY lower.
If you, lovely reader, are new to this Mount Rushless thing it is where we celebrate the beauty of failure and dysfunction that only the head of the fish can provide to a sports franchise. If a player is mediocre, he or she is promptly disposed of being traded, cut, or my favorite phrase that should extend to all sports - designated for assignment.
Same with a coach, the issues with the team may not be any fault of his or her own but once enough players have been jettisoned this person is next up on the chopping block. But whoever truly holds the signer of the checks accountable? This column is who. It’s hard work but someone’s gotta do it.
A fun quirk about sports ownership is that these rich, white billionaires are not the stars of the operation. So mostly the average fan knows very little about this person - despite the fact that this may be the biggest determinant of the success of this team you are a fan of. If the owner of your favorite team is flying under the radar, that’s a good thing.
If we know who the owner of your team is, more times than not it is because their actions are Mount Rushless worthy more than it is because they’re this shining light of exceptional ownership.
And that’s where we get to Glen Taylor, because there’s really no reason whatsoever why I should know who the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves is. Glen is a legend in these Minnesota streets. He turned a college job at a local print shop into a multinational conglomerate.
He parlayed this fame and fortune into a nice political run in the Minnesota state senate and then boom, popped out in the late summer of 1994 with big cash - about $90 million or so - to purchase his hometown basketball franchise.
As is the case with Mount Rushless, the story of Glen Taylor’s ownership isn’t completely doom and gloom. The 1989 expansion franchise hadn’t won more than 29 games in the five seasons of their existence prior to Taylor’s arrival.
In Year Two, Taylor would bring in Minnesota’s crown jewel - and NBA legend - Kevin McHale to be the team’s general manager. McHale would also bring along another former Minnesota Golden Gopher under him, Flip Saunders. After dismissing head coach Bill Blair after 20 games into the 1995-96 campaign Saunders was given the keys to the car that included the Timberwolves new toy - the fifth overall pick from that summer’s draft, Kevin Garnett.