An initial take on the Timberwolves’ new logo

On Tuesday night, the Timberwolves released the fourth primary logo in the franchise’s 28-year history.

When the Timberwolves announced that they would be revealing a new logo on April 11th, it didn’t come as a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention to the Wolves over the past couple of seasons. Owner Glen Taylor had previously all but stated that it was happening for the 2017-18 season, and with all NBA teams moving from Adidas to Nike next season, the timing was perfect.

Add in the Target Center renovations, back-to-back Rookie of the Year award-winners, and a new boss in both the front office and on the sideline in Tom Thibodeau, and it all makes sense.

But when the logo reveal was teased by the team, the presence of a lime-ish green in the released graphics caught some by surprise. After all, green was essentially eliminated from the team’s color palette when the last major jersey shift took place after Kevin Love’s rookie season.

Now, the logo has been released, and it’s an intriguing blend of the original Wolves’ logo from 1989 and the most-recent alternate logo, found in the corner of the current court design and really only used (on occasion) by ESPN.

Here is a video tweeted out by the Timberwolves to show the evolution of the franchise’s logos.

My take it? I like it. The obvious caveat is that this logo will direct the new uniforms and court design, and depending on the turn that those take, well, I very well could be singing a different tune.

But if you did any research at all on the folks in charge of the redesign (no, it’s not a rebrand), you would have read that Rodney Richardson and his company, RARE Design, have had a hand in a number of redesigns that relied heavily on team history and the storyline of the franchise. Heck, even the video series put out by the Wolves focused on this.

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In other words, to expect a complete and utter overhaul was unrealistic. Yes, it may not be different enough, but at least we got rid of the fake-fierce wolf in the trees, although the KG-centric memories it evokes are very real.

The lime-y color is an obvious hearkening to the original logo and jerseys, but it is interesting to me that the design team didn’t draw more on that era. Of course, the teams were always lousy, so there could have been a resistance to go too heavily in that direction.

As mentioned, the biggest test will be the jerseys, and, in my opinion, the court. If Richardson’s past work is any indication (read: the Atlanta Hawks), the green could be extremely prominent in the latter. As long as the former are radically different than the current set and aren’t too prominently green (save for a potentially awesome and rarely-used alternate), they could be great.

So yeah, this logo release was somewhat underwhelming. But not surprising, and certainly not bad. There’s so much yet to come, and I’ll withhold final judgement until that time.

But please, check out the legit video the Timberwolves released, narrated by some of the better local artists the Twin Cities have to offer.

See, what did I tell you? If that doesn’t get you hyped up, I can’t help you.