Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez held their first press conference since taking over as the majority owners of the Timberwolves and Lynx on Friday in Las Vegas, the site of NBA Summer League.

The two delivered statements and fielded a number of questions from local and national media members alike.

Here are a few things that stood out:

Roster building

Lore and Rodriguez were specifically asked Friday about “new owner syndrome” — a made-up disease in which new sports owners make unwise decisions out of haste shortly after purchasing a franchise.

But the new ownership duo thinks it’s well positioned to avoid such an error, partly because they’ve been around the organization for years now amid the ownership transition. They already made a splash with the hiring of Tim Connelly as Timberwolves president of basketball operations and were proponents of the Rudy Gobert trade.

And they don’t feel a need for any more fireworks in the near future just in the name of shaking it up.

“We’re being very methodical about the decisions we make,” Lore said. “We’re thinking, in every decision, what’s in the best interest of the long-term, sustained culture of winning?”

That’s not an easy thing to achieve in today’s NBA given the new, strict salary-cap rules. But Lore and Rodriguez have plans for how to navigate the waters.

Rodriguez spoke of the value of continuity, which he called one of the “arbitrages” of the league. But keeping a team together likely requires paying a luxury tax, perhaps even a hefty one. Lore claims they’re fine with that, likening that investment to the financial losses startup companies endure early in their building process.

“Because it’s creating enterprised value over the long term,” he said. “And I think that’s the way we think about it. Investing in the team, in winning, creates long-term franchise value. And it’s not over the next three to five years, but 10, 20, the next 50 years even. We’re prepared to invest, we’re prepared to lose money to create a winning culture, a sustainable winning culture.”

A new arena

Rodriguez noted that new, upgraded arenas may have been vanity features back when he was playing in Major League Baseball. But he no longer feels as though that’s the case.

“Today, it’s a necessity,” Rodriguez told reporters. “If you want to compete at the level we want to compete, year in and year out, a new arena is what our fans deserve.”

Lore and Rodriguez are in the “very, very early stages” of a plan to get a new basketball arena in Minneapolis to replace an aging Target Center.

“Talk about community service,” Rodriguez said, “an arena is an anchor to the community.”

KG comeback?

Kevin Garnett is, as Lore put it, “the GOAT (greatest of all time)” in the Timberwolves organization. But Garnett’s presence within the franchise has waned significantly since the passing of Flip Saunders, as Garnett and Glen Taylor’s relationship was frequently sour.

Will the entrance of two new majority owners pave the path for Garnett’s “return” to the Timberwolves in some capacity?

“We have a tremendous amount of respect for KG and everything he’s accomplished, and we would love to get closer to him,” Lore told reporters. “We know the fans want to see that, and we want to see that, too.”

Added Rodriguez: “Anything that’s important to our fan base is going to be important to us. Obviously, he means a great deal to our fan base, and Marc and I are going to be working on that.”

New ticketing system

The Timberwolves and Lynx announced a multi-year agreement with Jump — a ticketing company founded by Lore and Rodriguez.

The team’s release described Jump as “the only unified fan experience and ticketing platform purpose-built for professional sports teams.”

Fans using the app will be able to purchase and manage tickets. And, in an interesting new feature, Lore said fans in the lower bowl — even sitting courtside — can put up their tickets for auction if they’re leaving a game early, and other fans in the arena can purchase them for a discounted price to move closer to the action.

“As a startup founder, it’s all about innovation, it’s about being disruptive and not doing things the conventional way,” Lore said. “We’ve got a clean slate here to rethink how things are done, not just accept how they’re done. We have big ideas on how to innovate, how to do things in a way that will separate us from others.”

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Following an unsuccessful bargaining session on Friday, striking union members with SEIU Healthcare MN & IA at HealthPartners Stillwater Medical Group say they plan to vote again later this month on whether to hold a longer unfair labor practice strike.

The group’s current four-day strike is scheduled to conclude at 7 a.m. Saturday, with Urgent Care employees returning to work this weekend and the rest of the group returning to work on Monday.

Susan Ribanszky, a certified medical assistant in family medicine and SEIU Healthcare MN & IA bargaining team member, said Friday that she and other union members were frustrated with HealthPartners’ latest offer. Friday’s bargaining session was the eighth bargaining session between the two groups.

HealthPartners “asked for us to come back in to bargain this morning,” she said. “We came in hopeful to reach an agreement. They presented us with a proposal that did not move forward on even one item from what they had proposed the last time we met last week. The only move they made, in fact, was backwards: they put back on the table an employer proposal regarding PTO and holidays that they had previously agreed to drop.”

A HealthPartners statement said the organization values all of its colleagues, including those represented by SEIU.

“We will continue offering market-competitive wages and benefits, and we have a fair contract proposal on the table. We’re hopeful that we can resume negotiations as soon as the union is ready,” the statement said.

Ribanszky said the Stillwater union members are “united in demanding equal pay for equal work, to get the same wage increases other HealthPartners employees doing the same jobs at other clinics already receive.”

Workers were joined on the picket line this week by Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Attorney General Keith Ellison.

The union consists of more than 80 workers including licensed practical nurses, certified medical assistants and other service-unit healthcare positions in the family medicine, OB/GYN, pediatrics and specialties departments at the clinic.

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JACOB LAKE, Ariz. (AP) — Visitors and staff at two national parks in the U.S. West have been evacuated because of wildfires.

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Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, about 260 miles southwest of Denver, closed Thursday morning after lightning sparked blazes on both rims, the park said. The wildfire on the South Rim has burned 2.5 square miles , with no containment of the perimeter. The park is closed until further notice.

The conditions there have been ripe for wildfire with hot temperatures, low humidity, gusty winds and dry vegetation, the park said, adding that weather remained a concern Friday.

Firefighters saved the visitor center along the South Rim by removing dry vegetation and coating the building in a layer of protective material, fire officials said. Small aircrafts from Colorado’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control dropped retardant from the sky Friday while ground crews tried to contain the burn.

The Grand Canyon’s North Rim in Arizona also closed Thursday because of a wildfire on adjacent Bureau of Land Management land near Jacob Lake. The Coconino County Sheriff’s Office said it helped evacuate people from an area north of Jacob Lake and campers in the Kaibab National Forest nearby.

This photo provided by Melinda Rich shows smoke from a wildfire behind the Jacob Lake Inn in Jacob Lake, Ariz., on Thursday, July 10, 2025. (Melinda Rich via AP)

The fire began Wednesday evening after a thunderstorm moved through the area, fire officials said. It has burned about 1.5 square miles with zero containment.

About 500 visitors who planned to stay in the park overnight were evacuated Thursday night, Grand Canyon spokesperson Joelle Baird said. Employees and residents on the North Rim were told to shelter in place.

Authorities say a new acquaintance sleeping in a car in a family’s yard climbed into a 12-year-old girl’s bedroom window and tried to sexually assault her.

Thammathorn Laohalertdecha, of St. Paul, who turns 26 on Saturday, was charged Thursday in Ramsey County District Court with first-degree attempted criminal sexual conduct, second-degree criminal sexual contact and burglary, according to the criminal complaint.

Thammathorn Laohalertdecha (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

The criminal complaint gave the following details of the incident:

Police say shortly after midnight on Wednesday, they were called to a house in the 390th block of Blair Avenue in St. Paul on reports that a man had broken into a girl’s bedroom through her window and tried to sexually assault her while holding a hand over her mouth.

The girl screamed and punched him and called family members on her phone during the struggle.

A family member who was alerted to the attack by the girl’s muffled screams came into the bedroom and charged the man, who tried to crawl back out the window. Instead, family members captured him and dragged him outside of the house into the backyard. When one family member let go of the man, allegedly so another family member could strike him with a piece of wood, Laohalertdecha managed to run away and down the alley.

During the investigation, authorities learned that a family member had met Laohalertdecha earlier in the week through a mutual friend. He was helping the man get a car and some money. During that process he took a picture of the man’s identification from Thailand so he could help sell him a car. He told police that Laohalertdecha was homeless and he was letting him sleep in a car in their yard but that he didn’t have permission to come into the house, even to use the restroom.

At one point, Laohalertdecha allegedly asked to speak to the 12-year-old girl but was told that she was a child.

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Later in the day on July 9, Laohalertdecha reached out to the family member who let him sleep in the car and said he wanted to meet to discuss what had happened. Laohalertdecha said he was on the 300 block of Hatch Avenue.

The family member called police, who went to the location and arrested Laohalertdecha. He refused to speak to the police.

Laohalertdecha was charged with one count of first-degree attempted criminal sexual conduct with someone under 14, one count of second-degree criminal sexual contact with someone under 14 and one count of first-degree burglary with assault on a person. He is being held on $200,000 bail.

No attorney for Laohalertdecha is listed on the criminal complaint.