For the past several months, Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor has been looking for a buyer for the club who would originally own a portion of the team and then eventually would take over majority ownership. But after not finding a suitable partner, Taylor changed his mind and bought the stock holdings of six partners who wanted out. “I was looking at bringing somebody else in to do that, and it never worked out,” Taylor said. “So I just had told the partners that wanted to sell out, that had been with me for about 18 years, that if they wanted to sell out that I would buy their stock. I had about half of them do that, the other half stayed in. I just left that option up to them. They made their decisions, and everybody is happy with how it worked out.” So now with the hiring of Flip Saunders as president of basketball operations, Taylor seems more involved than ever and he is probably more excited about this draft than any in recent memory. The Timberwolves will go into Thursday’s draft with two first-round choices and two second-round picks. With the abundance of draft choices, Taylor was asked if he and Saunders have talked about trading up or down. “Well, we’re willing to do that, and I know that Flip has talked to some teams,” Taylor said. “But it has to be that we could trade up to where we could get the exact player that we want to get. I don’t know if that is going to work out. But we’re looking at all options. We’re willing to trade up or trade down in order to land the players that we need.” Taylor was asked about the caliber of talent in this draft. “There are a lot of good guys out there but not exceptional,” he said. “They don’t talk about a player coming in and changing the franchise or being a major star. … It just takes a good eye of trying to figure out which one of these players might develop over time.” - See more at:http://www.startribune.com/sports/wolves/212702781.html
