For Warriors’ Wiggins, the noise has faded away.
For Wiggins, with goal clearly in sight, it’s time to get to work
SAN cRANaiSaO >> Just days after sitting on a sunshine-soaked beach in the Bahamas, Andrew Wiggins is in the backseat of a black SUV, tugging on his sweatpants and thumbing through his phone. When he looks up, he peers out the window and at the skyscrapers of San Francisco. “I’m not really a city guy,” Wiggins said in February, a few days after the All-Star break. “I like to have my space, some quiet.”
Now, as the Warriors hold their first group practices in nine months this week, Wiggins has had about as much space and quiet as anyone could take. For months, he was stuck at home like so many others as the coronavirus batters the country. Wiggins, 25, occupied himself by working out, spending time with his daughter and playing “Call of Duty.”
It’s been a whirlwind year for Wiggins, who was traded from the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Warriors in February and played all of 12 games before the NBA season was postponed after a player tested positive for COVID-19 in March. Just as he was finding his footing in Golden State, the basketball court was taken away from him. As he retakes the court with his teammates during training camp, he will work to be better
on it than he ever has been before.
“I want to be an All-Star,” Wiggins told me. “That’s always been a goal of mine is to be an All- Star, being on a winning team.”
In his six NBA seasons, Wiggins has been on just one team with a winning record — the 47-win Timberwolves that lost in five games to the Houston Rockets in the first round of the 2018 playoffs.
“We had one good year, then we kind of went back,” Wigg ins said. “Teams change. Some people were on the team, and then they weren’t.”
One of those people was Jimmy Butler, the mercurial forward who played for four teams in the last four years but has emerged as a reliable culture-setter with the Miami Heat, who lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2020 Finals. After helping guide Minnesota to the playoffs in 2017-18, Butler played 10 games before
he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers in 2018 after he clashed with players, coaches, management and ownership.
Though Wiggins is far from the agitator Butler prides himself in being, he did appreciate that sort of leadership — despite a 2018 report that Butler reportedly ridiculed Wiggins and teammate Karl-Anthony Towns during a practice by calling them “soft.”
“He’s a great leader. He’s someone who holds you accountable, someone who is going to make you play harder and it speaks for itself,” Wiggins said of Butler. “You’re seeing what he’s doing out there in Miami, he’s going to lead you on and off the court in the right direction.”
The season following their playoff berth, the Timberwolves slid to 11th in the West and had the conference’s second-worst record in 2019 before trading Wiggins and a protected 2021 first-round pick to the Warriors for D’Angelo Russell and two other players. Both teams exchanged players with bloated salaries
and uninspired reputations.
Questions about Wiggins’s work ethic have dogged him since he played at Vaughan Secondar y School in Ontario, Canada, when his soft- spoken nature and tendency to float through games led to opposing fans heckling “Overrated” at him three years before he was taken No. 1 in the 2014 draft. In college at Kansas, scouts wondered why the kid nicknamed “Maple Jordan” didn’t always play with MJ’s killer instinct.
“That’s just Wiggins’ personality,” said Robert Covington, who played with Wiggins in Minnesota before also getting traded at the deadline. He acknowledged that Wiggins’ reputation for being “soft” can precede him. “I thought that (too) until I actually saw him go after it.”
Wiggins’ new teammates and coaches echo similar sentiments. There’s an understanding that, with three more years left on his maximum-salary contract, Wiggins will benefit from Golden State’s experienced core that has two
MVP awards, a Defensive Player of the Year award and 14 All-Star appearances between them.
“One of the things that helps anybody that comes into this building is when they watch Steph Curry working out, watching Klay ( Thompson) working out, and Draymond (Green) bringing his energy,” said Warriors assistant coach Aaron Miles, who works closely with Wiggins. “When we have those types of superstars working a certain type of way, most people are going to elevate.”
As he did with Butler, Wiggins aims to take advantage of his new leadership. Though last season he played just 72 total minutes with Green, 27 minutes with Curry and zero with Thompson, he quickly appreciated the culture of a team that had just ripped off five straight Finals appearances.
All the Warriors will ask Wiggins to do is make open 3-pointers, cut to the basket and play consistent defense. The latter will take a commitment to playing
with energ y, and Steve Kerr’s motion offense will be more complex than any offense Wiggins has previously played, but should result in better opportunities than he had in Minnesota.
“This, for me, is a lot better,” Wiggins said. “I don’t have to come off of three pick- and-rolls, two pickand-rolls. This is more just passing and cutting, and more easy shots.”
But Thompson’s seasonending Achilles tear could thrust more responsibility onto Wiggins. The Warriors, without a proven No. 2 scorer, will need Wiggins or Kelly Oubre, Jr. (acquired by trade last month) to score more efficiently and become a go-to option on offense.
To prepare for this season, Wiggins trained in Los Angeles, where he added muscle and worked on his ball-handling and 3-point shooting. Kerr, whose interactions with Wiggins over the last few months was limited to sparse texts and a one-time voluntary workout, expects Wiggins to play a major role. “He’s one of
our best players,” Kerr said. “We’re counting on him to have a great season.”
These days, questions about his lack of killer instinct, stumbles at previous stops and fit with the Warriors seem trivial, even as the fan-less Dec. 22 start of a 72-game season nears. As the once bustling San Francisco re- enters a lockdown in the wake of another coronav ir us spike, the noise has faded to quiet. It may not be ideal, but it could be the circumstance in which Wiggins can finally thrive.
WISEMAN WATCHES, GREEN ABSENT >> After missing the first day of training camp after testing positive for the coronavirus, James Wiseman was allowed to watch the Warriors practice Tuesday from a balcony above the practice court. Though Wiseman can’t practice, the Warriors have tasked him with watching film.
Wiseman may be closer to returning than Green, who also missed the first day of training camp after a positive coronavirus test but was not allowed in the arena Tuesday.