San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
‘I’M JUST HAPPY MY MOM IS OK’
Amid rookie challenges, Warriors’ Patrick Baldwin Jr. takes solace in Shawn’s cancer remission
Shawn Baldwin naps on Warriors game days so she can stay up to watch her only son, Patrick Jr., on TV at the family home in Milwaukee. But even then, she often falls asleep before the final buzzer.
“I get worn out at the end of the day,” said Shawn, who is in remission from breast cancer. “The time-zone difference is a little tricky.”
Seeing Patrick, 20, in a Golden State Warriors uniform has only reinforced Shawn’s belief that things happen for a reason. If not for the worst season of his life both on and off the court, Patrick wouldn’t have slid in the draft and landed in an ideal situation with the defending NBA champions.
A 6-foot-9 forward with a 7-2 wingspan and smooth shooting stroke, he offers the Warriors’ frontcourt a reliable floor-spacer off the bench. Baldwin’s 43.2% clip on a high per-minute volume of 3-point attempts suggests that Golden State might have unearthed yet another gem late in the first round.
Halfway through his rookie season, all the scouting reports labeling him a “bust” and a “disappointment” already look silly. Scouts, though, had to evaluate Baldwin without necessary context. When he fell to the Warriors at No. 28 in June, no NBA front office knew the extent of his challenges.
It wasn’t just the well-documented ankle injury, COVID-19 bout or defensive attention that contributed to Baldwin’s ugly stats playing for his father, Pat Sr., at Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In July 2021, four months before the Panthers’ season opener, Baldwin learned that his mother had breast cancer.
For as long as he could remember, Shawn had seemed invincible: a 6-foot-2 former college volleyball star who was always there for her four kids and never complained when her husband’s coaching career forced them to move again. When Shawn began to lose her hair as she cycled through chemotherapy treatments, Baldwin had a hard time seeing her so frail.
“She’s the type of person who always comes across like everything is fine,” Baldwin said. “Even when she was fighting that battle, she just had a smile on her face like there was nothing to worry about with her. But deep down, we knew what she was going through.”
It didn’t help that he couldn’t even hug his mother. Though Baldwin’s dorm was just a few miles from home, most of their conversations were limited to FaceTime because doctors didn’t want Shawn to risk
“When I learned for sure that she was going to be all right, it was like, ‘I’m living the dream. Everything else is just extra.’ ” Patrick Baldwin Jr., Warriors forward, on his mother Shawn’s cancer fight
getting sicker. On the few occasions Shawn attended games, she sat away from other fans, staying long enough for her husband and son to see her in the stands before she headed home to rest.
During those uncertain times, Shawn wanted the family to maintain some semblance of routine. What was supposed to be a feel-good experience — the chance for her eldest child to play college basketball for his dad — had become difficult. In addition to worrying about Shawn’s well-being, Patrick Jr. and Pat Sr. were plagued by unmet expectations.
When Patrick Jr. committed to Wisconsin-Milwaukee the previous May over such blueblood programs as Duke, Kentucky and North Carolina, many assumed he would dominate mid-major competition, lead the Panthers to their first NCAA Tournament since 2014 and go in the top 10 of the NBA draft.
Before the pandemic shuttered gyms and an ankle injury cut short his senior season, he had been the top-ranked player in his high school class. Baldwin’s upside was so obvious that, as an eighth-grader, he became the youngest player to ever receive a scholarship offer from thenDuke coach Mike Krzyzewski.
So when Baldwin looked overwhelmed against the likes of Bowling Green and Purdue-Fort Wayne, talent evaluators rushed to judgment. In a pre-draft interview with CBS Sports, one anonymous scout said, “Maybe he never was a good shooter. Maybe it was a lazy evaluation. … He does take a lot of bad shots, and he’s never going to be a great finisher, either.”
Throughout last season, Shawn avoided social media. Baldwin’s numbers — 12.1 points on 34.4% shooting (26.6% from 3point range), 1.5 assists and 2.1 turnovers in just 11 games for a team that finished 10-22 — only told part of the story. Many scouts now recognize that Wisconsin-Milwaukee was the worst possible fit for a player who has long been at his best as a complementary option.
Instead of working off screens for open jumpers like he had in AAU or with Team USA, Baldwin was asked to create his own offense amid a barrage of doubleand triple-teams. Then there were the health issues. In early February, shortly after he returned from a severe case of COVID, Baldwin was in such pain that he could barely walk for several days.
The left ankle injury he suffered as a high school senior had lingered. To compensate, Baldwin over-relied on his right leg, causing tendinitis. Three weeks after he shut down his son for the season, Pat Sr. was fired. The Panthers went 57-92 in his five seasons.
“The thing I always told Patrick was, ‘I don’t want you to feel like you have to save me or save my job,’ ” said Pat Sr., now an assistant coach at Georgetown. “I just wanted him to be a kid.”
Given how Patrick Jr.’s lone season at Wisconsin-Milwaukee unfolded, few would blame him for regretting his college decision. He doesn’t. Since his days sitting on Pat’s lap as a toddler during postgame interviews at Loyola (Chicago), Patrick Jr. had wanted to play for his dad at least once in his life.
There was also the fact that he got to stay close to home as Shawn navigated a blur of doctor’s appointments, overnight hospital stays and blood transfers. Even if Patrick Jr. had to keep his distance from her, he appreciated knowing that he was only a short drive away should anything happen.
For the first six months after Shawn was diagnosed, doctors weren’t sure whether she had stage 1 breast cancer or stage 3. It came as a huge relief for the family, then, when surgery in December 2021 revealed that she had stage 1.
But the process was still grueling. Whenever she sensed that her deteriorating physique was worrying Patrick Jr., Shawn reminded him, “It’s OK; this is a blessing in disguise. When I’m sick, the medicine is killing the cancer.”
In April 2021, after she first heard she had breast cancer, Shawn checked the family calendar. Several important milestones — Patrick Jr.’s high school graduation, Team USA Under-19 tryouts, two of her daughters’ birthdays — were coming in rapid succession.
There was also Patrick’s college commitment. Though Shawn had a hunch he would play for his dad at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he was still considering Duke.
The bad news would wait, Shawn decided, until all the milestones had passed.
“I just didn’t want to ruin my kids’ lives,” she said. “It was a really sobering moment as a parent to realize, ‘I have to tell them this, and their lives are going to be flipped upside down for probably the next year, year and a half.”
About 1½ years later, the Baldwins are beginning to reclaim some normalcy.
In May, several weeks before the Warriors drafted Patrick, Shawn learned that her cancer was in remission. Though she underwent another surgery last month and still takes medicine daily, she has felt good enough to visit San Francisco multiple times and see just how well Patrick has acclimated to pro life.
Thanks to a basketball IQ he developed tagging along to his dad’s practices and games as a kid, Baldwin grasped head coach Steve Kerr’s read-and-react offense quickly.
After he surrendered an easy layup to Magic forward Franz Wagner last week, Baldwin was walking toward the bench when Kerr asked if he knew what he did wrong. Without hesitation, Baldwin said, “Yeah. Wagner goes right.”
This was just the latest confirmation that Baldwin doesn’t carry himself like a rookie who played fewer than a dozen college games. During increased minutes over the past month, he made the Warriors believe he can become a key part of a winning franchise.
On a Wednesday in late December, Baldwin was practicing with Golden State’s G League affiliate in Santa Cruz when he got the call: Draymond Green and Donte DiVincenzo were questionable for that night’s game against Utah. The NBA club needed him.
A few hours later, there Baldwin was in the Warriors’ win over the Jazz, posting a team-best plus-13, 11 points and three rebounds in 13 minutes off the bench. In doing so, he showcased a keen understanding of when to shoot, when to pass and when to cut toward the rim.
“I think he’s got a really bright future,” Kerr said. “He’s skilled. He’s smart. He’s aware, and he works at it. He’s an exciting prospect, for sure.”
But in the immediate term, Baldwin must stay patient. The recent returns of Stephen Curry and Andrew Wiggins left minimal room in the rotation. As the Warriors slog through a five-city trip, Baldwin is toiling through his eighth G League stint.
No matter. If last year taught him anything, it’s that there are far bigger concerns in life than basketball.
“I’m just happy my mom is OK,” said Baldwin, who’s averaging 5.4 points and 1.6 rebounds through 13 NBA games. “When I learned for sure that she was going to be all right, it was like, ‘I’m living the dream. Everything else is just extra.’ ”