Minnesota Timberwolves: The rise and fall of Andrew Wiggins

The downfall

In the offseason leading up to Andrew Wiggins’ fourth season, the Timberwolves made a big splash, trading for Jimmy Butler.

The addition elevated the Wolves out west, with many expecting them to be a top-4 team in the conference.

And now with increased team success seemingly on the horizon, this projected to be the year Wiggins cemented himself as a true star that could be a vital part of a borderline contender.

However, things would not go as planned.

For the first half/two-thirds of the season, Minnesota was a top-4 team in the west (that would be derailed by a Jimmy Butler injury) but it wasn’t thanks to Wiggins’ stardom that the squad was having such success. Quite the opposite in fact.

Wiggins’ scoring did expectedly drop with the improved talent around him but what was more surprising was the fact that his efficiency dropped across the board as well. His free throw attempts were nearly cut in half and on top of that he didn’t show any improvement in any other area of his game.

Throughout that season, there appeared to be a growing rift between Jimmy Butler and the rest of the Wolves’ players, especially Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins.

As such a lot of the blame for Wiggins’ regression was placed on Butler’s shoulders on account of him being a “bad teammate” and for questioning Andrew’s toughness and work ethic.

So when Jimmy would be traded to Philadelphia only a few games into the 2018-19 season, people expected Wiggins to bounce back and become the player he once seemed primed to be.

But the opposite happened.

His box score numbers did increase slightly but his scoring was still nowhere near the level it was just a couple years prior. Also, his scoring efficiency reached a new low.

Since coming into the league Wiggins has been a volume scorer and last year, for players who attempted at least 16 shots per game, he ranked at or near the bottom for almost every major shooting category, including field goal percentage, 2-point percentage, total shot percentage, effective field goal percentage, and free throw percentage. In short, he became one of the worst shooters in the NBA.

He was a slightly better 3-point shooter but he still shot below league average from out there at a shade under 34 percent. In fact, he was only above-average as a corner 3 shooter. He struggled from everywhere else.

When it came to shooting at the rim, Wiggins shot around 57 percent and ranked right near the bottom for guys who attempted at least 4.5 shots at the basket. To put his 57 percent into perspective, the only guys to finish at a worse rate than him were smaller guards and other wing players like LeBron, Pascal Siakam and Ben Simmons all converted in the high 60s to low 70s at the rim.

If you take a step out from the basket into that kind of “floater range”, Andrew was, again one of the least efficient finishers and it didn’t get any prettier in the mid-range which is where a lot of Wiggins’ shot attempts came from as well.

So, what exactly has gone wrong for Andrew Wiggins? What can explain such an inexplicable and unexpected regression? Well, as it turns out there are several explanations. Let’s get into a few.