Minnesota Timberwolves Power Rankings Round-Up: Week 4

The Minnesota Timberwolves just snapped a seven-game losing streak and Karl-Anthony Towns is back. How is that reflected in the power rankings?

The Minnesota Timberwolves started the season 2-1 and were ranked accordingly the last time we checked in on various published power rankings from around the basketball blogosphere.

After Karl-Anthony Towns‘ dislocated wrist suffered the Saturday after Christmas, the Wolves lose seven consecutive games, including an overtime loss to the San Antonio SPurs this weekend in Towns’ return.

But the Wolves bounced back with a win over those same Spurs on Sunday while Towns sat out the second half of a back-to-back and Josh Okogie returned from a six-game absence of his own.

While the Wolves still have the worst record in the Western Conference and the league’s worst point differential, there’s light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a healthy roster. Did the folks compiling league-wide power rankings feel that way?

The Minnesota Timberwolves are a bottom-three team in the NBA

Short answer: no.

The Wolves ranked No. 28 or lower in four of the five sites that we pulled rankings from. We’ll start by looking at the most optimistic of the lot.

Indeed, it was Colin Ward-Henninger of CBS Sports, who thought most-fondly of the Wolves a couple of weeks ago, that had them ranked higher than anyone else. Ward-Henninger ranked Minnesota No. 27, which is actually up three spots from their last-place ranking a week ago.

The Athletic’s Zach Harper has the Wolves ranked No. 28 (subscription required), also bringing them up from No. 30 from last week. In his words, it’s a “line of credit” due to Towns’ return. Fair enough.

ESPN’s panel of analysts also has the Wolves at No. 28, citing the encouraging back-to-back weekend performances. For some reason, Minnesota was ranked No. 24 on this list just last week.

There were two sites that plopped the Wolves in the No. 30 slot. Bleacher Report’ Mo Dakhil cites the seven-game losing streak as the reason that Minnesota is in last and places some blame on Ricky Rubio, who is scoring far less than he did last year in Phoenix.

NBA.com’s John Schuchmann has the Wolves No. 30 for the second consecutive week. He also notes that the Wolves have the league’s worst net rating (-9.3) but that they only have two games over the next seven days and won’t have a back-to-back set for a couple of weeks, allowing time for Towns to get fully back up to speed.

The Wolves have Memphis upcoming twice this week. The Grizzlies are only a half-game ahead of Minnesota in the cellar of the Western Conference, and there isn’t any indication that last year’s Rookie of the Year Ja Morant will be able to suit up to face the Wolves.

While Memphis largely dominated the two games that the squads played in the preseason, the regular season is a different animal.

If the Wolves can play offensively as they did in Saturday’s overtime loss to the Spurs and compete defensively as they did on Sunday when they won and held the Spurs to 88 points, they should have a shot at sweeping the two games and rising just a bit in next week’s power rankings.