Timberwolves shut out of Ringer’s Top-20 NBA Players list

While the Minnesota Timberwolves may not have performed in the 2022-23 NBA season in a way that matched high expectations, there certainly were numerous individual performances that stood out. But there is a bias among NBA fans, which bleeds over to NBA pundits and analysts, that tends to diminish the performances of NBA stars in the league based on the performance of the team.

So it is that the underwhelming season for the Minnesota Timberwolves has led to underwhelming recognition for the players. That’s disappointing, as we had already shown that Timberwolves star shooting guard Anthony Edwards was a thorn in the side of the Denver Nuggets throughout their best-of-seven series in Round 1 of the 2023 NBA Playoffs. But that level of excellence seems to have gone undetected, at least based on the latest NBA player rankings by RingerNBA.

Timberwolves score 6 in Top 105, but . . .

There are no arguments from the list in terms of the Top-ranked player, C Nikola Jokic. But the rankings of the Minnesota Timberwolves players who made the list are suspect:

So who did make the list?

• Rank      Name                                  Position
  
• 24           Anthony Edwards            Guard (SG)
• 31           Karl-Anthony Towns       Big (PF/C)
• 52           Rudy Gobert                      Big (Center)
• 75           Jaden McDaniels              Forward
• 76           Mike Conley Jr.                  Guard (PG)
• 105        Kyle Anderson                   Forward

While there is plenty to smile over with the fact that the current starting five players on the Minnesota Timberwolves roster all made the Top-100, and if you throw in Timberwolves sixth-man Kyle Anderson, you have a six-pack of Timberwolves players getting recognized, I would argue that Anthony Edwards is simply underestimated in this list.

Is it enough to place two Timberwolves among the Top 50, five players in the Top 100? Perhaps, and it may be that I’m just being a bit snarky as I await my morning coffee to ‘kick in.’  But the two young players on the Timberwolves roster to make this list, both Anthony Edwards and his teammate Jaden McDaniels, were not done any favors at all.

Anthony Edwards was a player who got better each week throughout the 2022-23 NBA season, while Jaden McDaniels should have been named to the NBA All-Defensive Team in 2023.

While the inclusion of six Minnesota Timberwolves players among the top 105 players in the NBA is a huge accomplishment, the Timberwolves benefited significantly from the development of both Edwards and McDaniels to earn a berth in the NBA Playoffs. Hopefully, the Minnesota Timberwolves will three-peat back to the playoffs in 2024, and give both players a chance to be more accurately appreciated a year from now.