Scoggins: NBA schedule shows Timberwolves have made the league’s A-list

The NBA invited the Timberwolves to pull up a chair at the grown-ups table this week. The klutz has become one of the cool kids, and the league wants to showcase them to a global audience.

Feels weird but welcome, doesn’t it? The Wolves being viewed as a marquee attraction instead of a punchline.

The NBA released its schedule Thursday and no team saw a bigger increase in national TV appearances from last season than the occupants of Target Center.

Nearly one-third of Wolves games will be broadcast on national TV, including 18 on ABC, TNT or ESPN. The other seven national games will be carried by NBA TV.

By comparison, the Wolves had five games televised by ESPN or TNT last season and five on NBA TV.

That’s an increase of 15 national games, highest in the NBA, per ESPN.

What’s also noteworthy is not just how many but when. The NBA’s three most important regular-season dates are Opening Night, Christmas Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The Wolves are playing on all three.

The league turned Opening Night into a celebratory kickoff in the early 2000s by hosting a doubleheader that includes the defending champion. The Wolves were slotted into the nightcap against the Los Angeles Lakers.

They play in Dallas on Christmas Day in a rematch of the Western Conference finals, only the third time in franchise history the Wolves will suit up on Dec. 25.

The Wolves play in Memphis on MLK Day on Jan. 20.

A team’s rise to championship contender is rarely linear but more often a series of stages. This is a new stage for the Wolves. The spotlight is shining directly on them. Expectations have been adjusted.

More than anything, the dramatic increase in national TV games is a product of the Ant Effect. It’s good to have to a player as popular as Anthony Edwards.

No professional sports league promotes and markets its individual stars more effectively than the NBA. LeBron James and Steph Curry aren’t just superstars. They are their own mini corporations.

Stars guarantee big TV ratings. Big ratings guarantee massive revenue. The folks who count the NBA’s cash are no dummies.

Edwards is in the process of taking the torch from his Olympics teammates in becoming the next face of the league.

His high-flying dunks, megawatt smile and speak-his-mind interviews make Edwards ratings gold. He oozes charisma, on and off the court.

The Olympics experience has a chance to do wonders for Edwards’ maturation as a superstar. A critical piece of that process is being able to face the league’s elite players as an opponent during the season. The dazzling flurry Edwards had against Kevin Durant in the playoffs — trash-talking his basketball idol while backpedaling down court — felt like a seminal moment in Ant’s ascension.

The knowledge he gained from observation this summer with Team USA might bear fruit in ways more out of view. Edwards was surrounded by generational greatness in Paris. He got to live, train, practice, study and learn from LeBron, Curry and Durant.

If Edwards acted as a sponge, he left France with more than a gold medal. He got a front-row view to witness how some of the NBA’s all-time supreme talents go about their business, process the game and handle the responsibility of being an athlete with global fame.

Edwards celebrated his 23rd birthday at the Olympics. It’s easy to forget how young he still is sometimes. But he’s entering a new phase in his career, much like his team and organization.

The Wolves are getting star treatment from TV. They have one of the NBA’s best players and are considered a legitimate championship contender. This is new territory, indeed.