NBA mascot power rankings, best past and present

6. Crunch the Wolf: Minnesota Timberwolves

Whose idea was it to name the Minnesota Timberwolves mascot Crunch? Sure, wolves are omnivores who primarily feast on other animals, but they don’t exactly chow down on a bucket of fried chicken.

They couldn’t think of any other name? It’s a wolf, not a great white shark. Of course, this is the same franchise that gave Andrew Wiggins a max contract before knowing whether he was going to be good (spoiler: he’s not) and violated NBA rules to sign draft bust Joe Smith — a move that ultimately caused them to waste Kevin Garnett’s prime.

Anyway, Crunch came to be not long after the Timberwolves entered the league in 1989. His official backstory paints him as a wolf from northern Minnesota who developed an affinity for basketball to the point where he built his own hoop out of pine cones and birch bark.

Eventually, the Timberwolves brought him on as their mascot — though if they brought him in as a player, it wouldn’t have been worse than that time they took Johnny Flynn over Stephen Curry — and aside from a couple of fluke incidents, namely running into Karl-Anthony Towns’ father during a stunt in 2017, the canine has stood out as one of the league’s best mascots, winning the 2012 Mascot of the Year.