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The Golden State Warriors recalled James Wiseman from the G League. He’s set to play in the defending champions’ game against the Utah Jazz on Wednesday, too, contributing off the bench as the Warriors try and steal a road win without Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins.
But don’t take Wiseman’s return to the NBA and immediate re-insertion to Golden State’s lineup as any harbinger of his role to come for the season’s remainder. There’s even a good chance the former No. 2 overall pick spends more time down in Santa Cruz going forward.
“We’re just kinda taking it a day at a time depending on who’s healthy, how everything looks,” Steve Kerr said before Wednesday’s game of Wiseman’s status with Golden State. “The one thing I know for sure is that we need him to play. So if everyone’s healthy and we feel like we’re not gonna play him much in a game, we’d rather have him in Santa Cruz playing 35 minutes.”
Wiseman fell out of the rotation in early November after spending the first 10 games of 2022-23 as the Warriors’ backup center. He was assigned to the G League on November 15th, a few days after which Kerr finally stumbled upon a workable second unit—featuring Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins—that’s helped drive his team’s recent success.
James Wiseman has been recalled from the G League. What does that mean for his role with the Warriors? (via @armstrongwinter)https://t.co/7jseHd0HKm
— Warriors Nation (@WarriorNationCP) December 6, 2022
There’s just no role for Wiseman with the Warriors right now, and there won’t be in the future as long as they’re fully healthy. Rumors are swirling that Golden State has interest in Jakob Poeltl, too, and reporting suggest the San Antonio Spurs wouldn’t want Wiseman back in a theoretical trade.
Just because his big-picture status with the Warriors remains unchanged, though, doesn’t mean they’re displeased with the progress he showed in the G League.
“He’s done a really good job of spacing, getting to the dunker spot offensively, running the floor. He’s rebounding well. He’s doing a lot of good things,” Kerr said. “The whole point of the G League is just reps, reps, reps, and that’s what he needs [as a] player with very little experience.”
Those little things are exactly what Wiseman needs to do on a regular basis before becoming a rotational fixture for Golden State. But implementing them possession-by-possession takes time and experience that comes best in game action, all the more reason why Wiseman seems bound for another trip to the G League as the regular season wears on.