The Impending Prime of Andrew Wiggins
The implication that the Warriors can have two timeline at once deserves scoffed at, but only lightly so. When the second timeline was finally given up on with the James Wiseman and Jordan Poole trades, the question everyone asked was “why even try in the first place?”.
That’s not what the question should have been, though. What people should have been asking instead was “who really is the second timeline?”. The answer to that question wasn’t Wiseman, Poole, or even Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody, although those two will play a key part in it moving forward.
The second timeline is the 28-year-old All-Star who’s been one of the premier two-way players in the league since his arrival in Golden State. He missed most of last season due to a personal issue in his family, but prior to that he had 7 seasons out of his career 9 where he played a minimum of 71 games. He’s improved his three point shooting almost every year, including an almost 5% jump between the year he got to the Bay and his first full season as a Warrior. While he probably shouldn’t have been an All-Star starter in 2022, he deserved the nod as an All-Star in general in a lot of ways.
That’s right. The second timeline is Andrew Wiggins, and it looks like he’s ready to start making the leap where he gets that type of recognition.
Wiggins’s 2022 season was capped off with a Finals run against statistically the top defense in league history where he was the clear-cut second best player on the team, and was an x-factor all the way through the playoffs. He was drafted for his freakish athleticism and ability to be a franchise player, and was widely labeled a bust in his Minnesota years because he didn’t live up to that. But what Wiggins brings to the Warriors is the ideal role for him: He can do everything on the court, from creating his own shot to playing efficiently off-ball to locking up the opposing team’s top scorer to vacuuming up rebounds left and right. While he profiles as a franchise scorer, letting him come into his own in that regard is exactly what he needs at this point in his career, and his stint in Golden State helps to make him the most complete player he can be.
Last season sold him short because of how much time he missed. The season before is plenty telling of what he’s capable of, so we’ll highlight what makes him such a special player on the verge of taking that next step. Taking over 4 catch-and-shoot threes a game, he drilled 41% of them, a great mark for a guy who shot 39% from the arc that same year. His effective field goal percentage on shots where he took 0 dribbles was 63%, and where he took 1 dribble it was 57%. He made the wide open shots especially, drilling 47% of them (including 46% from three) while also not being afraid to body up defenders to the tune of 59% when defenders were within 0 to 2 feet of him.
Where he really showed out as a playmaker, outside of the highlight-reel dunks and buttery-smooth midrange turnarounds, was on the defensive side of the ball. There was not type of shot or distance of shot that he contested where he allowed his assignment to outshoot his own percentages on those types of shots or distances, recording negative differentials in every category tracked by the NBA’s official statistics website. The highlight was his general defensive field goal percentage of 43%, providing a major complement to defensive centerpiece Draymond Green and being a major reason, alongside Gary Payton II, that the Warriors recorded historic defensive ratings in the 2022 season. Wiggs himself captured a 105.4 defensive rating, including a ridiculous 101.8 at the Chase Center. His net rating skyrocketed at home as well, a whole +12.8 which nears the upper echelons of impact. He was a major contributor to last season’s best lineup in the league, the key lead defender on the perimeter and taking on some of the toughest assignments night in and night out.
The individual stats aside, Wiggins is clearly loved in the locker room. He’s only been talked about as a class act with a great work ethic in his new role, erasing former rumors that he was problematic in some ways with the Timberwolves. He took arguably a major paycut to ensure the Warriors had salary flexibility to improve. And he put up all those numbers at the age of 26, putting that season on par with younger emerging stars like De’Aaron Fox and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He’s 28 now, meaning his prime is still to come if the history of the NBA has taught us anything.
While the expectations for Andrew Wiggins should be tempered in accordance with his role, there’s no reason to believe that he couldn’t exceed those expectations and be the second best player on the Warriors next year. He’d make his contract look like a bargain, and really have people reconsidering what the true second timeline they should have put into tandem focus with the core 3 could’ve been. He’ll be a Warrior for the next 3 years at least, and when the time comes, he’ll be worth every penny of whatever contract he commands, even if he’s not the Warriors #1 at that point.
(Photo credit: Jacob Kupferman / Getty Images)