THREE.TextSprite | Optimally displays the text as a sprite | Data Manipulation library

I'm trying to make a database of words where the most important words are closer to the top of the sphere and the less important are further away. So I created a sphere with enough vertices for each word, created a list of those vertices in order of distance from the top of the sphere, and placed the text sprites at the positions of the vertices in order of that sorted list.

Video version: https://i.gyazo.com/aabaf0b4a26f4413dc6a0ebafab2b4bd.mp4

Sounded like a good plan in my head, but clearly the geometry of a sphere causes the words to be further spread out the further away from the top they are. I need a result that looks like a somewhat even distribution across the surface. It doesn't have to be perfect, just visually closer than this.

How can I achieve the desired effect?

Here are the relevant methods: