Golden State Warriors need to talk themselves into Andrew Wiggins

The Golden State Warriors need to talk themselves into Andrew Wiggins

After Kevin Durant agreed to turn his simple signing with Brooklyn into a sign-and-trade for D’Angelo Russell, the Golden State Warriors were salvaging something off a dire situation.

It was a bit like stealing all the valuables out of a luxury cruise ship before realising that said ship was the Titanic. Russell played two positions; positions played by the Warriors’ two best players, so that never really seemed like an ideal marriage.

But fast-forward a while and here we are, about to enter one of the most important offseasons in Warriors history with Andrew Wiggins on the roster after a trade deadline move that sent Russell to Minnesota.

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To keep the metaphor going, you’ve just stolen valuables on the Titanic but were one of the lucky few people to survive, getting carried to safety in New York City with a pocketful of jewelry. The jewelry being Wiggins and his contract, but at least you’re safely on the other side of the sign-and-trade, let’s see what can be made from it.

The great thing about Wiggins to Warriors fans was his contract. While sometimes called one of the worst in the league, it gives Bob Meyers a huge salary that could be swapped for a player on a similar contract whose more… deserving of it.

But with no real superstar on the trade market (so far), Warriors fans might have to get ready for a universe in which the young wing doesn’t get traded and he’s looking like he’ll be a part of next season’s title run.

So, what do the Golden State Warriors have in Andrew Wiggins?

Let’s start off by saying that he only played 12 games for the Dubs where he averaged 19.4 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 3.6 assists with 1.3 steals and 1.4 blocks.

Only one of those games was when he shared the court with Steph Curry and no matter how many times I watch those highlights, it’s so hard to try and glean something off one game.

Those numbers are slightly worse than the start of the season in Minnesota on similar minutes except for the block and steal numbers which are much higher. Although, on his debut for the Warriors, he tallied five steals, a number he hadn’t reached in a single game in four years.

While in Golden State, he shot slightly more mid-rangers and slightly less 3-point attempts according to Cleaning the Glass, but considering the teammates he had in those 12 games, it’s hard to expect him to warp his game to fit Ky Bowman and Marquese Chriss.

The on/off numbers treat him much more kindly with the Warriors with Cleaning the Glass giving him +8 expected wins if extrapolated out to an 82-game season and the team getting out in more with him on the floor and a near league-leading points added in transition off steals (there’s more of the sample size issue).

But the best thing about Wiggins’ Warriors tenure so far is assistant coach Ron Adams’ praise for him (subscription required).

If you’re thinking to yourself ‘oh well, he’s the coach, of course, he’s going to say good things about his players’, that would usually work, but try your hardest to find Adams saying good things about D’Angelo Russell. As a defensive coach, you could easily understand why he wouldn’t have a lot of nice things to say about the guard.

(There is this one quote from NBC Sports’ Monte Poole:

"“I’ve spent some time with D’Angelo, and I find him to be a really charming guy. I really like him as a person. He’s still young, still growing, but I like what I see. He’s going to help us.”"

I you think someone’s great on the court, how fast do you start talking about how much of a great character they are?)

Bob Meyers has also included (subscription required) Wiggins as one of the team’s “core four.”

He also added that the next few games would be really interesting to see how he fits next to Steph Curry. Thanks to a global pandemic throwing the NBA calendar off, we might have to wait until 22 December (or later) to see that properly, and even then that date’s not locked in.

But let’s imagine what Wiggins looks like next to Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.

In his six seasons with the Timberwolves, he was asked to do quite a lot. It was fair enough given he was the No. 1 overall pick but we all know he’s not getting drafted first if you redraft, not that he’s a failure, but he just isn’t the best player in the 2014 NBA Draft (Nikola Jokic is).

In Jimmy Butler’s lone full season in Minnesota, the 2017-18 season, Wiggins saw the lowest usage percentage since his rookie year as he obviously took a back seat to Jimmy and Karl-Anthony Towns as he came into his own as a star.

For the first time in his career, he had taken nearly a quarter of his shots from behind the arc as he was pushed down in the importance rankings amongst his teammates. He shot 33 percent from three that season and 67 percent at the rim, good for the top 83rd percentile among wings that year, according to Cleaning the Glass.

Sadly, like the rest of his career, his shooting chart was dominated by jacking up mid-range shots; the least efficient takes in the game. Out of all his shooting opportunities, 22.1 percent were catch-and-shoot, a growth from 14.3 percent the season prior, per NBA.com/stats.

Fast-forward to his 12 games with the Warriors, and that number is just a hair above 25 percent and his number of pull-ups (less efficient for him) decreases as well. This can be attributed, in part, to Steve Kerr’s system in Golden State with more passing and less stagnation in the offense.

But what really gets my juices flowing is that Steph is arguably better for his teammates than Jimmy Butler and I don’t just mean that in a not yelling at them at training/demanding a public trade sense.

Not may players have played next to two shooters as great as Steph and Klay and it’ll be world’s different to what Wiggins is used to as Minnesota with this season is the first time the Wolves weren’t in the bottom four in terms of frequency of 3’s and taking the least amount of shots from behind the arc three times in Wiggins’ career.

Throw in a fresh Draymond Green who excels at passing to the open man after the gravity of the shooting backcourt has warped the defence and we might see the former No. 1 overall pick take some of the most open shots of his life.

It’s hard to fill the shoes of the player before you, especially when you’re filling the shoes of one of the best scorers of all time, but if you look a little further back, the Warriors won 73 games while starting Harrison Barnes. That team was vastly different but feed Wiggins the Barnes diet of shots and maybe he’ll excel expectations.

Building on Barnes, maybe Ron Adams is right in his assessment and the wing is just a more athletic version with a higher ceiling. Not bad.

And if Harrison Barnes had to be the No. 1 option on a bad Minnesota team for a number of years, maybe he would’ve produced the same or worse. At least Wiggins will be asked to do less than he has in the past, think of it as a consolidation of what he does well.

Also, one final point to talk Warriors fans into Andrew Wiggins: he’ll be entering his age-25 season which happens to be the same age Victor Oladipo when he won the NBA’s Most Improved Player award.

I’m not saying anything on top of that (mostly because I’m fully prepared for this article to haunt me a year from now after it all crashes and burns) but, let’s just keep it in mind if Wiggins is the starting small forward in the 2020-21 season, whenever it begins.