BUILT DIFFERENT

Sam Bak

The 2021-2022 NBA season has wrapped up with the Golden State Warriors closing out the Celtics in Boston, Thursday, June 16th. This is the fourth ring for Steph Curry and the Warriors in 8 years (their 6th trip to the finals), and the first since Kevin Durant’s departure to the Brooklyn Nets in the summer of 2019.

Although we are very used to seeing Golden State battling for the Larry O’Brien trophy in June, this Warriors championship squad feels very different despite the familiar nucleus of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green.

This 2021-22 team is nothing like the 2014-15 Warriors (coincidently the year Andrew Wiggins won Rookie of the Year), who, led by the first of Curry’s back-to-back MVP seasons, dominated, winning a league best 67 games, beating every playoff opponent and winning the title in 6 games or less. Nor is it like the 2016-17, or 2017-18 Warriors who will be remembered as two of the greatest basketball teams ever assembled.

After adding Kevin Durant, who was considered a top 3 player in the NBA to the already best team, those back-to-back chips were essentially inevitable, the rest of the NBA really stood no chance.

The Warriors run was completely different. This is the team who won a mere 15 games only 2 seasons ago, finishing dead last in the NBA in 2019-20, who lost in the play-in games last year, who’s time contending for championships seemed to be over. So how did this Warriors team turn it around so quickly? And what strategic maneuvers have allowed for this Golden State Warriors organization, to now look primed for a second chapter of their dynasty?

One big reason is Toronto’s own Andrew Wiggins. Wiggins arrived in the Bay Area halfway through the 2019-2020 NBA campaign, when the Minnesota Timberwolves traded their former No.1 overall pick (and an additional first round draft pick) to the Warriors for D’Angelo Russel, who had been previously acquired through the Kevin Durant sign-and-trade to the Nets. Wiggins played an instrumental role in this Warriors run, arguably being Golden State’s second most important player throughout much of the playoffs, and certainly in the finals.

Wiggins was often tasked with defending the best opposing player. For example, he played solid defence on one of the premier scorers in the NBA in Luka Doncic during the Western Conference Finals , then he locked up Jayson Tatum, holding the young Celtic’s star to a mere 37.5 field goal percentage when guarded by him throughout the finals. Wiggins' help on the offensive side of the ball can also not be understated. The forward averaged 18.5 points, the second most on the team during the final two rounds.

Wiggins ability to step up during key moments such as his 27 point, 11 rebound explosion in game 3 of the WCF, or his 26 point, 13 rebound performance in the pivotal game 5 of the finals, which allowed the Warriors to take control of the series despite an abysmal shooting night for Steph Curry. Wiggins also played the second most minutes (/gm & total) of any Warrior throughout the postseason, and was the team’s best rebounder, snatching nearly 8 (7.5) per game with that number jumping to 9 per game during the finals.

If you told fans and media members of the NBA before this season, maybe even postseason, that Andrew Wiggins would become an impactful, high energy/hustle guy, and key two-way player on a championship team, the majority of people would never talk to you about basketball again. This is because before this potentially career altering stint with Golden State, the consensus on Andrew Wiggins was that he was a guy, who despite having all the tools to be a franchise altering, perennial all-star, never could quite put all the pieces together due to inconsistencies and poor work ethic.

In other words, Andrew Wiggins’s Q-Rating could not have possibly been lower. So how did Wiggins, who was dubbed ‘Maple Jordan’ coming into the league, gain such a poor reputation among NBA consumers?

Well, part of it is just that. Andrew Wiggins was the number one prospect coming out of highschool, and after one year at Kansas, was drafted No.1 overall to the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2014. With a long, wiry frame, and explosive bounce and finishing ability, Wiggins was hailed as the most enticing, hyped up prospect since Lebron James was drafted first overall a decade before. He was saddled with these ridiculous expectations and viewed as a losing player when he failed to solve Minnesota’s legacy of losing.

To put this into context, the Timberwolves had not made the playoffs for 9 straight years before Wiggins was drafted, breaking .500 only one year during that stretch. Before that, the franchise made the playoffs 8 straight years! Unfortunately they only escaped the first round once in that entire span, losing in the conference finals in the 2003-04 season. They wouldn’t make it back to the playoffs until the 2017-18 season, this was Wiggins 4th year in the league, and his only trip to the playoffs throughout his 6 year tenure with the Wolves.

For these reasons I believe it’s unfair to hold Wiggins accountable for Minnesota’s continued failures after he was brought into the fold. So clearly, that can’t be the reason we so often hear Wiggins discussed as such a big disappointment, now let’s look at his production. Wiggins is a career 19.3 PPG scorer on 45% efficiency. He won the ROY in 2014-15, averaging 17 ppg his first year in the league.

In his sophomore season, Wiggins became a 20 PPG scorer, and in his third season was already scoring 23.6 PPG. After 2 years of declining production, averaging only 17 and 18 PPG respectively (these are the two Karl-Anthony Towns All-Star seasons), Wiggins was once again a 20 PPG scorer averaging 22 in his last half-season in Minnesota. Another mark of the disappointing draft pick is the guy whose career is plagued by injuries (A la Greg Oden etc.), this has also not been a knock on Wiggin’s career.

Instead, Wiggins missed only 1 game his first 4 years in the league, playing every single game 3/4 years, and never playing less than 70 games in a season throughout his entire 8 year career.

What these statistics show us is that Andrew Wiggins, although not being the generational talent he was once predicted to become, has been a very productive, durable, above-average starter in the NBA, and no-where near the ‘bust’ label we so often hear associated with his name. Following this title run with the Warriors, it’s also clear that at 27 years old, Wiggins still has his most-meaningful basketball ahead of him.

So how do we discuss Andrew Wiggins going forward? What criticism was fair, and what can we chalk up to a talented guy being drafted into a less than ideal situation. Whatever you may think of the guy, I think it is fair to say he still has a lot more to give, and Wiggins is set up for a very intriguing phase 2 of his career, especially if he stays in Golden State.