Andrew Wiggins is back in the Golden State Warriors' starting lineup, opening his team's last three games after initially getting benched in mid-December. The Dubs have gone 1-2 since Wiggins returned to the starting five, using a dominant second half to beat the Chicago Bulls before falling to the Milwaukee Bucks without Stephen Curry and getting outplayed by the decimated Memphis Grizzlies on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Golden State four-game road trip concludes on Wednesday with a battle against the Utah Jazz, the hottest team in basketball. Don't be surprised if Wiggins remains in the Warriors' ever-changing starting unit in Salt Lake City, Steve Kerr still searching for a group that gives them an optimal blend of on-ball defense, supporting scoring punch and two-way versatility.
Those attributes were hallmarks of Wiggins' influence in Golden State before 2023-24 tipped off. He cemented himself as arguably the game's best non-star wing during the Warriors' 2022 championship run, locking down Jayson Tatum while serving as a dynamic secondary scorer behind Stephen Curry with the Larry O'Brien Trophy on the line. Nearly halfway through a tumultuous regular season for the Dubs, it's more than fair to wonder whether that peak version of Wiggins exists anymore.
As Golden State's labors continue leading up to a potentially transformational trade deadline, though, Steve Kerr believes the narrative surrounding Andrew Wiggins' game needs changing.
“I can tell you that watching the tape from last night, watching him in Chicago, watching him over the previous months, I think he’s much different now than where he was in the beginning of the season,” he said of Wiggins during a Tuesday appearance on 95.7 The Game. “I think he was out of rhythm to start the year after missing so much of last year. I think he got off to a slow start and it kinda snowballed on him, but I think over the last month or so he’s played a lot better. He’s had a couple games where obviously he’s struggled with his shot, but he’s competing, he was into the ball all night last night, sprinting the floor, attacking the rim. I think Wiggs is playing a lot better, personally.”
Steve Kerr believes Warriors' problems go far past Andrew Wiggins
There's no doubt Andrew Wiggins is playing with more activity, intensity and physicality than he did during an overtly passive start to 2023-24. He helped spearhead Golden State's second-half comeback against the Bulls by hounding a red-hot Coby White across the floor defensively, and has been far more aggressive picking his spots an off-ball cutter and overall penetrator. At least some of the otherworldly quick-twitch athleticism that made Wiggins the No. 1 pick of the 2014 NBA Draft is in there somewhere.
While the 28-year-old flashing those physical tools with more regularity of late is certainly an encouraging sign, it hasn't much changed Wiggins' numbers—and far more importantly, his impact on the Warriors.
Since returning to the lineup on Christmas after missing wins over the lowly Washington Wizards and Portland Trail Blazers due to illness, Wiggins is averaging 10.8 points, 3.3 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 25.8 minutes per game. He's shooting 42.7% overall and 28.6% from deep over that 11-game stretch, good for an ugly true shooting percentage of 50.8, a whopping eight points below league average.
Those individual marks are concerning by themselves, especially given both Kerr's opinion and the eye test lending some credence to the notion Wiggins has turned a corner since his disastrous start. But recent on-off metrics, troublingly, only support the prevailingly loud notion from fans and analysts alike that Wiggins might top the list of Golden State's many and layered problems.
The Warriors have been better with Wiggins on the bench than on the floor over that 11-game stint, his on-off net rating at -2.8, per NBA.com/stats. More telling? Golden State's assist percentage, assist-to-turnover ratio and rebounding rate are all team-bests with Wiggins out of the lineup, data that aligns with longstanding weaknesses of his game that have only been magnified this season.
Wiggins isn't knocking down open triples or consistently making defenses pay for face-guarding and sending two defenders to Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. He isn't quite playing the lockdown defense that made him the breakout star of the 2022 playoffs, and certainly not reliably rebounding at that same career-best level. He still doesn't look entirely comfortable functioning within the Warriors' offense, and his help defense has been a bigger issue than guarding the ball one-on-one.
Just like they have all season, impact numbers still paint Andrew Wiggins as one of the most damaging players in basketball. Is it any wonder he's become the primary scapegoat for the Warriors' struggles, the player fans are begging for the front office to move at the trade deadline? Don't bother explaining the justification behind that status to Kerr. He's refusing to single out Wiggins as the driving force behind Golden State's labors, sustained evidence otherwise be damned.
“I know it’s not showing as much and I know our fans are frustrated—we’re all frustrated,” Kerr said of Wiggins' improvement. “We’re losing games. So what happens is when you lose, everybody is going to try to find one answer. Maybe it’s the coach, maybe it’s one of the players, maybe it’s whatever. The reality is it’s always a lot of things. When you’re losing, when you’re in a bad way, it’s never one thing, it’s always a lot of things. And I think we all have to own it.”
He's not wrong. Neither are those who believe it's at least worth see what the Warriors have this season with Wiggins out of the picture before finally believing dreams of winning the title have already vanished. Either way, we're poised to figure out who's right about Wiggins once the trade deadline comes and goes on February 8th.
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