The Financing Questions That Stopped Top Rank’s New Orleans Timberwolves

On February 11, 1994, NBA commissioner David Stern announced mediation over money owed on the Target Center in Minneapolis. The announcement placed the Timberwolves’ future inside an arena debt dispute before any owner had formally announced a move. The franchise’s ownership was seeking an entity willing to purchase the remaining $73 million on the building’s mortgage. The problem was therefore attached to the place where the team played: the arena’s debt had become part of the question of who could own the club and where it could operate.

Within two weeks, the possible solution had acquired a destination. By February 23 and 24, Top Rank had signed a letter of intent to purchase the Timberwolves and move them to New Orleans if the Target Center debt issues were not resolved. Fred Hofheinz and Bob Arum were associated with the proposal. The language of the arrangement joined two separate financial propositions: a Minnesota mortgage that required attention and a New Orleans market that would need a new professional arena. The franchise could leave Minneapolis, but only through an ownership plan capable of satisfying the league.

Top Rank was not approaching the NBA as a conventional local buyer promising continuity. Its proposal treated relocation as part of the purchase itself. The team’s value lay not only in its players, contracts, and league membership, but in the right to carry that membership into another city. New Orleans offered the proposed destination; Minneapolis supplied the troubled arena relationship that had opened the door. For the Timberwolves’ existing owners, a sale could address the financial pressure surrounding Target Center. For the league, the sale raised a separate question: whether the people promising to fund it could demonstrate the money before taking the team across state lines.

On May 23, Top Rank bought the Timberwolves for $152.5 million, with the stated intention of moving the franchise to New Orleans. The purchase transformed the proposal from a conditional letter into an ownership transaction awaiting league approval. A price had been agreed, a buyer had been identified, and a destination had been named. Yet the NBA’s approval system remained in place. Ownership of a franchise was not simply a private exchange of money and property; it was a change in the league’s membership, subject to review by the institution whose schedule, markets, and territorial arrangements the new owner would enter.

The financing plan presented to the league contained several elements that required confirmation. It included $40 million from unknown investors and as much as $76.25 million in bank loans for which commitments had not been obtained. At least another $50 million was tied to undisclosed sources and projected revenue from a New Orleans arena that did not yet exist. These figures did not amount to a proven fraud finding. They did, however, describe a purchase whose funding depended in important part on parties not publicly identified, loans not yet committed, and income expected from a future building.

Top Rank’s own relocation paperwork gave the league a clearer view of the proposed partnership. Fred Hofheinz was identified as the sole Top Rank stockholder. John O’Quinn, a Houston lawyer, and Robert Higley, a stockbroker, were identified as major partners. The filing placed names and roles around the transaction, but the central financial questions remained. The issue before the NBA was not merely whether the group wanted New Orleans. It was whether the proposed ownership could support the purchase and the relocated operation with funds that were committed, traceable, and sufficient.

On June 6, Top Rank filed the formal paperwork seeking permission to move the Timberwolves to New Orleans for the 1994–95 season. The proposed timetable left little room between approval and relocation. The franchise had been purchased in May; now the NBA was being asked to authorize a new home before the next season began. The filing converted a private transaction into a league-administered proceeding. Minneapolis, the Target Center debt, the proposed New Orleans arena, and the financing package were now joined in one decision made by NBA officials rather than by the buyer and seller alone.

The first decisive answer came on June 15. The NBA relocation committee voted unanimously to block the sale of the franchise to Top Rank. The committee’s action stopped the transaction at the point where the proposed buyer needed institutional consent. The questions surrounding the financing plan determined the outcome: the unidentified investors, uncommitted bank loans, undisclosed sources, and projected arena revenue had not supplied the league with the confidence it required. The vote did not send the Timberwolves to New Orleans. It prevented Top Rank from completing the change in league membership that its purchase was intended to achieve.

Six days later, on June 21, the NBA officially denied the sale of the franchise to Top Rank. The denial fixed the boundary of the episode. Top Rank had bought the Timberwolves and sought to move them, but the league rejected the transaction before the proposed 1994–95 relocation could occur. The New Orleans plan ended in an administrative decision, not in a departing team. The Timberwolves remained in Minneapolis, and the arena debt dispute that had helped open the sale process did not produce the transfer of the franchise to another city.

The later public identity of Top Rank belonged more securely to boxing than to the NBA. On September 3, 2009, an ESPN.com headline placed the company in a discussion of fights, a reminder that the group’s sports interests continued along a different route from the one proposed in Minnesota. New Orleans eventually became an NBA city, but not through the 1994 Timberwolves transaction. That year’s enduring arrangement was simpler and more specific: the league’s approval power, exercised over financing questions, kept the franchise in Minneapolis and ended Top Rank’s attempt to move it.