SAN FRANCISCO — Talent always gets a chance. Usually several.
In his sixth NBA season, Andrew Wiggins — one of the most talented players in the league — has been blessed with as good a chance as there is conceivable to change the narrative around a career that was tabbed for greatness but has so far flatlined at middling.
Wiggins was part of the biggest deals that went down on trade deadline day roughly a month ago, as the former No.1 pick of the Minnesota Timberwolves was acquired by the Golden State Warriors for D’Angelo Russell, a former second-overall pick with his own gaps in his resume.
But Wiggins feels like the winner in the deal for joining one of the NBA’s most respected organizations after five-plus seasons with the chronically bumbling Timberwolves where he played for four different coaches and three different general managers.
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The injury-plagued Warriors are in the midst of a deep competitive swoon after three championships and five consecutive Finals appearances but they have every intention of returning to the title hunt next season when Klay Thompson (ACL) is back, Steph Curry hasn’t missed two-thirds of the season with a broken hand and Draymond Green (knee) is at full strength.
And they see Wiggins – who just turned 25 — as the key to regaining their momentum.
“Just in terms of, you know, his career and his skill set that he’s brought to our lineup, everybody talks about the fit and how he can fill a gap in our roster in terms of his length, his athleticism, the way he can play one-on-one basketball and get a really good shot,” Curry said Thursday as he prepared to play his first game with his new teammate after being out since Oct. 30th with a broken hand. “His speed, just being able to cut and move without the basketball, that type of stuff, the way we like to play, you see flashes of it.”
It depends on what you are looking for, of course.
Wiggins is nine games into his career with the Warriors and there have already been ups and downs. Through his first four, he looked reborn as he averaged 22.8 points per game on 58 per cent shooting, including 52.6 per cent from three. Through his next five, he’s averaged 18 points per game on 39 per cent shooting and 17.4 per cent from deep, although he raised some eyebrows with 10 assists – one off a career-high set earlier this season – in Golden State’s upset win over the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday.
The Warriors’ hope is that they can bring out the best in Wiggins, who still has three years and $95 million left on his contract after this season. With Curry and Green handling the bulk of the ball-handling and play-making and Thompson spreading the floor Wiggins – a career 20-points per game scorer — will find his way to his most efficient self as a wide-open spot-up shooter and uber-athletic off-ball cutter while being able to provide the Warriors with the kind of one-on-one, late-shot-clock scoring they used to rely on Kevin Durant for.
The Warriors don’t need Wiggins to be Durant but if he can do a reasonable impersonation of Harrison Barnes who started for them at small forward when they won their first championship in 2014-15 and when they went 73-9 and lost in Game 7 of the Finals in 2015-16, they’ll be thrilled.
Wiggins is already ecstatic.
“It feels good. It’s all love up here,” he said. “The energy is great, so I feel right at home… it’s all been positive here. Just learning, how they do things and what it’s like to be a part of a winning culture … I feel like it was time for a change and this is the best fit that could have happened for me, so I’m happy.”
The Warriors weren’t the only NBA team that wondered if a change of scenery would benefit Wiggins. Losing can wear on any player and there are development cues that get missed by young players in organizations that have lost regularly. It’s hard to develop winning habits in a vacuum.
In Golden State, Wiggins will have all the examples he could ever need.
“You’re talking about players who have won multiple championships and have been on top of the NBA for a long time,” Wiggins said of his new teammates. “Guys who bring a lot to the table. Watching and trying to learn from them.”
Can Wiggins incorporate the lessons and become a better defender and a more consistent performer rather? That will always be the question about him until he proves otherwise.
Even in the NBA players with Wiggins’ gifts – a strong, spidery six-foot-eight frame and the explosiveness of a sprinter — don’t come along often. If it wasn’t the Warriors, another team would have taken a chance to see if being around winning veterans without the weight that gets attached to a No. 1 overall pick wouldn’t have yielded different results than the largely empty stats Wiggins put up in Minnesota.
But it’s telling that with salaries being roughly equal between Wiggins and Russell the Timberwolves had to attach a lightly protected first-round pick the 2021 draft to grease the wheels on the trade.
If all goes well the deal could be a massive win for Golden State, given that Russell was not a good positional fit and has drawn his own share of criticism as a gifted player who has a knack for getting his numbers on teams that don’t do a lot of winning.
But it’s up to Wiggins now. Having landed in Golden State, Wiggins is getting another chance to be great, and it couldn’t come at a better time or in a better place. The rest is on him.
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