For much of the Minnesota Timberwolves‘ history, they have sat at extremes. Either they are excellent, a playoff team sporting a top 10 player in the league, or absolutely terrible, scrounging around the bottom of the league, somewhere between irrelevant and appetite spoiling.
Their jerseys are not far from the same situation.
While the Wolves certainly have the glorious tree jerseys and the oft underappreciated
Purple Reign and Earned alternates, they also have the heinous brown Muskies ones and the Donald Duck-inspired sailor suits. To that end, a rebrand has been a long time coming.
Well, we got that reimagining today. After a teaser post nearly two weeks ago, we have finally gotten exactly what we were hoping for. The new jerseys are a combination of the jerseys the Wolves were known for — the trees, the verdant greens, and 90s blues — and a commitment to a more modern look.
Gone are the Jurassic Park-inspired lettering, replaced with a more refined attempt at the same look. The new logo takes the color scheme from the throwback whites the Wolves wore the past two years, and applies it to a remade circular logo (I know, I know, we’re sick of circles.)
Jerseys usually define eras. The original trees were unquestionably made and remembered for Kevin Garnett. The next jerseys were of, and by Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio, before a rookie, Andrew Wiggins, spurred on the most recent rebrand before this one.
With the last real tie to those jerseys now leading the New York Knicks to a 2-0 lead in the Finals (Love you, KAT), this is closing the book on that generation of Wolves basketball and setting the stage for the primes of Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDaniels, Naz Reid, and whoever else is set to join the fold when the offseason officially kicks off.
Either way, they’ll be wearing some beautiful bits of cloth, up there with the best jerseys in the league.
The Timberwolves also released their updated logo and court to go along with the new jerseys.
The Wolves released their new branding in front a crowd of 7,000 people at Target Center on Sunday.
It wasn’t that long ago that a crowd of that size would have been a half-decent showing at a Timberwolves game. Now, a huge number of people are showing up in June just to see what the new uniforms and logo are going to be.
On the court, the Wolves have been in their new era for a while, winning five playoff series in the last three seasons. Now, they have an updated brand identity to go with it.
