Why MLB Star Alex Rodriguez Bought the Minnesota Timberwolves

Why would you want to buy a team in a sport that you're not as famous for? Why not buy a baseball team? Well, it's funny you say that. One of the guys that I loved growing up, who's now a friend and a mentor, is Magic Johnson. And we often laugh about that. He was a basketball legend, and he owns a baseball team with the Dodgers. And I played baseball for so many years, and I own a basketball team. The truth is, we tried to make a run at the Mets. And we had a hell of a run. And we came second to Steve Cohen, who's doing an incredible job. And then we kind of one door shut, and this door opened. And Mark and I, my partner Mark Lurie, we moved very quickly. Within seven days, we understood all the levers we can pull. We understood that sports was more than just baseball or basketball. That is this kind of 360 media, entertainment, sports enterprise. So once we saw the Mets deal, that fell apart. We were able to move very quickly. Shake hands almost within seven days with Glenn Taylor, and the rest is history. So many times in the investment world, you see people making a good deal. And once they make a good deal, people say, well, you should do another deal. Today, the deal you've done with the Minnesota Timberwolves seems to be, from the outside, a very, very attractive deal. Because recently, a team was sold for $4 billion, the Phoenix Suns. And another team, a partial sale at roughly, I think, a $3.5 billion valuation. You bought a team for about $1.5 billion. So $1.5, $3.5, $4 billion. You seem like you have a pretty good deal there. So are you thinking of doing more deals? Are people calling you up and saying, I'll give you some money to invest? We have a lot of phone calls inbounds that some we take, some we don't. There's a lot of great friends, titans like yourself in the industry that are intrigued about sports. They're intrigued about our deal, about the structure. But what people don't talk about, David, is it took me 25 years to get to a deal like that. My partner, Mark Laurie, has been one of the greatest entrepreneurs in e-commerce for the last 25 years. And we both have worked hard, and it was kind of the perfect storm for us. And again, I think at the time, it was a very fair price coming out of COVID. We didn't know if this COVID was going to last two years or five years or forever. I mean, it was a very scary time, and we stepped up, and it's worked out well. Now, we're also not sellers. So, you know, you mentioned some really big and fancy numbers, but we want to have this asset for generations and generations.