T'Wolves minority owners Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore have gained a minority investor in Dyal Capital as they “try to finalize their deal to take majority ownership” of the team and the WNBA Lynx from Glen Taylor, according to a source cited by Williams and Hine of the Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE. The percentage of Dyal’s minority stake was “not disclosed.” The company is a fund managed by a division of publicly traded Blue Owl Capital. The $1.5B acquisition by Lore and Rodriguez was “set to close by the end of March.” Sources say that the acquisition should “still close on schedule,” but the full list of investors has “not been disclosed.” Carlyle Group “decided not to move forward in a deal that would have provided structural financing to Lore and Rodriguez.” Dyal was formed in 2020 as a partnership with the NBA “to provide institutional capital to the NBA ecosystem” and is “used to acquire minority equity stakes from minority shareholders of NBA teams.” As such, its ownership stake “does not require NBA approval.” The fund has previously invested in the Kings, Hawks and Suns. In 2022, Dyal acquired a 6% equity stake in the Hawks from nine existing minority shareholders (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 3/20).
STEALING SECRETS: In Minneapolis, Walsh and Hine reported a criminal complaint filed yesterday stated that a work hard drive holding “sensitive strategic team information” was stolen from the Target Center office of T’Wolves EVP/ Basketball Operations Sachin Gupta and “copied last month by a disgruntled subordinate.” Gupta got the hard drive back a little more than a week later but not before “roughly 5,700 files were copied” that held employment and player contracts, "as well as strategic NBA information." Gupta is head of the analytics department and has “sensitive, proprietary data in his possession” that the T’Wolves conceal from other teams, like information about players and decision-making, contracts or trade negotiations. The dissemination of information of that nature to other teams could be damaging to the success of the T’Wolves. According to the complaint, a search of an apartment turned up “several hard drives, a computer, three tablets and multiple USB drives.” Police then determined that one of the devices "contained all the information from [Gupta's] hard drive” (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 3/20).
