Minnesota Timberwolves are again too low in League Pass Rankings

The Minnesota Timberwolves have mostly been a bottom-tier team in Zach Lowe’s League Pass Rankings over the past few years.

Finally, that ranking is starting to move upwards ever so slightly from where it has been in recent years, but it’s still a little lower than it will likely end up by the end of the season, as Lowe himself notes.

Minnesota Timberwolves are again too low in League Pass Rankings

Lowe’s rankings include five categories: highlight potential/star power, playing style/coaching, zeitgeist (do people care about the team), League Pass minutiae (jerseys, court design, announcers), and “unintentional comedy.”

He ranks each team on a scale of 1 to 10 in every category and then orders the teams based on their totals.

The Wolves ranked No. 19 on Lowe’s list, up from No. 21 last season. While it was only four years ago — at the start of Jimmy Butler’s first season — that Minnesota was all the way up at No. 10, they’ve been languishing in the bottom 10 for the past few seasons.

While No. 19 means that the Wolves are headed in the right direction, it’s still a little bit low.

The Timberwolves have plenty to be excited about this season. It starts, of course, with superstar big man Karl-Anthony Towns and Rookie of the Year runner-up Anthony Edwards, who represent reasons 1-A and 1-B why the Wolves are a fun team to watch on League Pass.

While Lowe doesn’t list each team’s score in the individual categories, one would imagine that the Wolves scored highly in the highlight potential/star power category. Playing style is tougher to figure, although Lowe notes that the Wolves “hit the gas and fired more 3s” after Chris Finch was hired as head coach.

The League Pass minutiae has to be a good ranking as well, with fantastic announcers, a clean court, and decent, non-controversial jerseys.

The zeitgeist and intentional comedy categories have to be where the Wolves were docked; Lowe mentions Patrick Beverley’s instigation, uh, skill as something to keep an eye on every night. Outside of that, it’s fair to imagine the Wolves as a middle-of-the-pack team in those categories.

Interestingly, Lowe literally says “there’s a good chance Minnesota will be one of the league’s 10 most entertaining teams,’ despite ranking them at No. 19.

Clearly, there’s still a lot that needs to go right for the Wolves in order for the national media to consider them “fun to watch,” and that’s fair. It’s a franchise that has seemingly been on the cusp of relevancy for much of the last several years but has only truly broken through when Butler was on the roster.

Now, with a healthy star trio of Towns, Edwards, and D’Angelo Russell, the Wolves could legitimately find themselves in the top 10 of most-watchable teams in the league by the time this season is all said and done.