The Minnesota Timberwolves grabbed a convincing win over the Oklahoma City Thunder to grab their third straight win and third of the four meetings against their Northwest division foe.
This saw an all-around offensive performance from the Timberwolves that featured Andrew Wiggins getting the better of his individual matchup with All-Star forward Paul George. Following the game, Karl-Anthony Towns stated that he believes that his teammate doesn't receive the type of attention that he deserves, according to Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic.
Towns said Wiggins is "underappreciated" by the media. "I think he gets a lot of backlash that’s not worthy of him.”
He definitely outplayed PG tonight
— Jon Krawczynski (@JonKrawczynski) January 11, 2018
Through his first few years in the league, Wiggins has proven to be a reliable scorer averaging 20.0 points for his career. However, that has taken a backseat a bit this season with the arrival of a couple of All-Star talents in Jimmy Butler and Jeff Teague, who are both helping pick up that slack in that department for the Timberwolves this season.
In spite of that, Wiggins is still averaging 17.8 points per game on 43.2 percent shooting from the field. He has scored in double figures in 40 of the 43 games that he has played including scoring 20 or more points on 20 occasions. Wiggins also became the eighth youngest in league history to reach 5,000 career points at the start of the season.
The 22-year-old has clearly shown to be a formidable offensive talent, but he has yet to take that next step into stardom as an elite scorer. What he is oftentimes criticized for is his tendency to work primarily in isolation while his individual defense has been lackluster in many instances over his first four seasons. In many ways, this has overshadowed what he can do offensively that can positively impact the game.
It also doesn't help that he's playing with arguably the best young big man in the league in Towns alongside one of the top two-way players in Butler. What also must be taken into account is that he's only 22 years old and has plenty of time to develop his all-around game to be a more efficient player on both ends of the floor. In the meantime, he remains a critical piece to the puzzle for the Timberwolves success this season and beyond.
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