Stop the madness now. Just because Andrew Wiggins has acquitted himself against the Boston Celtics better than pretty much anyone could've anticipated doesn't mean he'd be a worthy Finals MVP. Steph Curry is a shoo-in for that elusive honor should the Golden State Warriors win the title, and could have a convincing argument for it even if Boston beats the odds to take the last two games of the NBA Finals.
There's no need for hyperbole about Wiggins' performance anyway. Reality provides more than enough to evidence to deduce just how significant his stellar play on both sides of the ball has been to the Warriors with a championship on the line. Much of the irrational drumbeat about Wiggins winning Finals MVP stems from the fact he's easily surpassed expectations versus Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and the Celtics, too.
Curry, though, is hardly surprised by his oft-criticized teammate's two-way influence on the game's biggest stage.
“It's amazing what you do with opportunity,” Curry said of Wiggins on Wednesday. “Take away the comparisons, the narratives around him as a number one pick, what everybody wanted him to be, his first six years in the league looked like. There's a reason we wanted him here. There's a reason that trade made sense for us. There was a high hope that he would be able to figure it out at this level in terms of taking his scoring ability, his athleticism, his defensive potential, just taking it to another notch.”
Steve Kerr always knew Wiggins was capable of being an impact player under these circumstances, too. What even the Warriors head coach wasn't aware of is just how pivotal the notoriously rebounding-averse wing—who's never averaged more than 5.1 boards per game during the regular season— would be on the glass throughout his team's playoff run.
“The rebounding surprised me. He's really turned it up in every series,” Kerr said, smiling. “I'm 100% going to hold that against him next year in the regular season. If he's not rebounding, I'm going to remind him he's proven it now so there's no excuse.”
Wiggins is averaging 18.4 and 9.4 rebounds in 38.3 minutes per game during the Finals, leading Golden State in those last two categories. He's consistently made life hard on Tatum and Brown as a one-on-one defender, and the Warriors' defensive rating spikes from 103.1 to 112.5 when he's on the bench, per NBA.com/stats.
Golden State, clearly, wouldn't be one win away from a championship without Wiggins. While that hardly means he should win Finals MVP, it's still a ringing endorsement of Wiggins' evolution into a winning player—one Golden State's best player and head coach, apparently, never much doubted.
“It's just amazing to see things working out in his favor,” Curry said, “in terms of kind of dispelling all the narratives around him and who he is as a basketball player right in front of your eyes.”
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