What to know about Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, soon-to-be owners of Timberwolves

Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore, who became fast friends during the pandemic, are about to become majority owners of the Timberwolves and Lynx in a $1.5 billion deal.

Rodriguez was trying to buy the New York Mets in 2020 when a friend told him: “You have to meet this Walmart guy,” Lore.

“We kind of hit it off right away,” Rodriguez said last year on his podcast, the Deal. “We’re both New Yorkers, we both have two daughters, we both come from humble beginnings, and I was like: I don’t know what this meeting is about, but I want to do something with Marc.”

Five years later, Rodriguez and Lore are close friends and business partners, and co-founded the private equity firm VCP Ventures.

The pair quickly found common ground when they first met over Zoom during the pandemic, but they followed vastly different paths on their way to buying Minnesota’s NBA and WNBA franchises.

Lore is a self-described “serial entrepreneur” and onetime Walmart executive who founded and sold several online retail businesses on his way to becoming a billionaire. Gwyneth Paltrow once called him “an e-commerce wizard.”

Lore ( pronounced Lor-ee) left a $500,000 salary as a bank vice president when he was 27 in the late 1990s to become an entrepreneur. His first company was an online marketplace for sports collectibles, the Pit, which sold for $6 million in 2001.

He made the bulk of his fortune selling Jet.com to Walmart in 2016 and has become an exemplar for start-up founders.

“I take a lot of pride in being more on the empathetic side of being a leader,” Lore said on Rodriguez’s podcast. “You have to create the right culture. Culture in a start-up is not ping pong tables and stuff like that, it really is about how you treat people and the value system of the organization.”

Rodriguez is likely the better-known of the duo, at least among sports fans, since he spent decades as a major league slugger and was best known as a Yankee. The 14-time All-Star hit 696 home runs and a record 25 grand slams in his career.

Among Twins fans, Rodriguez was reviled for contributing to many of Minnesota’s record string of playoff losses. A-Rod hit 16-41 (.390) across three playoff series between the Yankees and the Twins in 2004, 2009 and 2010.

Younger baseball followers might know him better as a Fox Sports analyst.

As a businessman, Rodriguez has built up a $1 billion portfolio of real estate and equity holdings through A-Rod Corp.

Here’s some background on the next owners of the Wolves and Lynx from company biographies and media reports.

Marc Lore

Age: 54

Hometown: New York City

Net worth: $2.9 billion

Education: Bucknell University graduate; attended but did not graduate from Wharton School of Business.

Companies: Diapers.com, which sold to Amazon for $550 million in 2011. Founded Jet.com, which Walmart bought for $3.3 billion in 2016. Founded food delivery start-up Wonder, which acquired Blue Apron and GrubHub.

Extra tidbits: Served as CEO of Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce business from 2016 to 2021, and chairs the foundation backing the futuristic city of Telosa, still in the conceptual stage.

Alex Rodriguez

Age: 49

Hometown: Born in New York City, raised in Miami

Net worth: $350 million

Baseball highlights: Drafted first overall by the Seattle Mariners in 1993, the shortstop and heavy hitter went on to play for the Texas Rangers and switched to third base for the New York Yankees, where he won a World Series in 2009 and served a season-long suspension over performance-enhancing drugs in 2014. Set several contract records and earned $475 million from baseball salaries before retiring in 2016 and moving into broadcasting.

Business interests: Founded A-Rod Corp. in 1995, which has invested heavily in real estate and in notable companies like Snapchat, Acorns, UFC Gym and Hims & Hers.