Trade that got Wiggins looks like genius now
Andrew Wigggins’ viral moment against Luka Doncic in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals Sunday night had staying power. Well more than 12 hours after Wiggins glided through the key and hammered home an emphatic dunk over Doncic, social media, sportstalk radio and ESPN were still abuzz about the sequence.
As time passed, the national conversation turned from the slam itself to what it represented. That lasting image of Wiggins soaring over the NBA’s wunderkind offered striking, visual proof of what many already had come to realize: Once a scapegoat for the Timberwolves’ dysfunction, Wiggins is suddenly a bona fide playoff difference-maker.
If the Warriors win their first NBA title since 2018 in a few weeks, Wiggins will deserve much of the credit. And so, too, will general manager Bob Myers, who had to do the seemingly impossible: manage without salary-cap space to parlay Kevin Durant’s departure into two franchise cornerstones — one for the present (Wiggins) and another for the future (Jonathan Kuminga).
This season has cemented that move with Minnesota at the 2020 deadline as perhaps the greatest trade in Warriors history. As Wiggins helps vault the franchise back onto the sport’s biggest stage, Kuminga offers plenty of optimism for Golden State’s long-term future.
“I think the Wiggins trade is the key to all of this,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said Monday. “I don’t know where we’d be without him defensively, with his work on Luka and every other top wing that we have to face. I think that move was just kind of the key move that Bob and the front office made to getting us back to having a playoff-ready roster.”
What makes all this even more noteworthy is that Myers
“I think the Wiggins trade is the key to all of this. I don’t know where we’d be without him defensively.” Steve Kerr, Warriors head coach
was widely criticized when he dealt D’Angelo Russell, Jacob Evans III and Omari Spellman to Minnesota for Wiggins, a top-three-protected 2021 firstround pick and a 2021 secondround pick. Given Wiggins’ reputation as an overpaid ball hog, pundits called that trade an act of desperation on the Warriors’ part.
Fox Sports 1’s Nick Wright went so far as to proclaim on live TV that Wiggins was a “bad basketball player,” and that Stephen Curry would never make another NBA Finals. Even Warriors diehards worried that there might be some truth to what Wright was saying.
Less than seven months earlier, the team losing Durant — one of the best players in the world — dealt a future firstround pick to the Nets as part of a sign-and-trade. To accommodate Russell’s four-year, $117 million maximum contract, the Warriors sent Andre Iguodala and a lightly protected 2023 first-round pick to the Grizzlies. Then there was the fact that the sign-and-trade with Brooklyn significantly limited Golden State’s spending power.
In the wake of the Russell acquisition, the Warriors had about $10 million to sign six more players. Anyone who lambasted Myers for that complex move, however, didn’t see the bigger picture.
Contrary to what the Warriors might have said at the time, Russell was acquired as a trade chip. They had no other way to add a player of Russell’s caliber when Durant decided to leave for the Nets. Though Russell was an odd fit on Golden State because he took the ball out of Curry’s hands, he figured to have enough luster from his 2019 All-Star appearance with Brooklyn to warrant decent offers.
By flipping Russell to the Timberwolves — after just 33 games — for Wiggins and two future draft picks, Myers got what he had eyed since the previous summer: a legitimate starting small forward to pair with Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. It didn’t matter to Myers that Wiggins was considered inefficient and overpaid. With the Warriors, he would need to be simply a better version of what Harrison Barnes was to their 2014-15 championship team.
Though Wiggins struggled at times as the face of Minnesota’s franchise, he projected as an overqualified No. 3 option on Golden State who could knock down spot-up jumpers, attack closeouts, run the break and play hard on defense. What made Myers even more excited were the possibilities with the Timberwolves’ top-three-protected 2021 first-round pick.
In the hours leading up to that 2020 deadline, Myers negotiated with Minnesota President Gersson Rosas about the selection’s protections. It was important to Myers that the pick have no worse than a topthree protection. That 2021 draft was supposed to be topheavy, and he wanted to ensure that the Warriors got a potential franchise building block who could help lead the team once Curry, Thompson and Green retire.
More than two years later, the Russell-Wiggins trade has worked out better than Myers could have anticipated.
Wiggins, fresh off his first All-Star appearance, is a twoway force who makes life difficult on opponents’ top scorers and consumes offensive possessions when the Warriors need a spark. His 13.2 NET rating this postseason ranks second on the team behind Otto Porter Jr. (15.0). With Wiggins on him for much of the West finals, Doncic has posted a plus-minus of minus-61 in 113 minutes.
Meanwhile, Kuminga — the player the Warriors obtained with that top-three-protected pick from Minnesota — projects as a potential perennial All-Star. Though the 19-yearold rookie has oscillated in and out of the rotation in the playoffs, he showed enough scoring upside in the regular season for many to think he was a steal with the No. 7 selection in this year’s draft.
And Russell? During the Timberwolves’ first-round series against the Grizzlies, he labored so much that he was benched during crunch time of Game 6 in favor of Jordan McLaughlin.
Such an apparent fleecing of Minnesota speaks to Myers’ keen understanding of what makes a good trade. It’s not about what a player has done in the past, but rather what he can provide in the future.
Years from now, when NBA historians evaluate the RussellWiggins deal, they might judge it the best trade Golden State has ever made. That would be high praise. In 2011, the Warriors acquired Troy Murphy and the 2012 second-round pick that became Green in a deal that sent Dan Gadzuric and Brandan Wright to the Nets. A year later, Golden State landed Iguodala from the Nuggets in a three-team sign-and-trade.
But as far as doing more with less, perhaps no deal compares with what Myers did to get Wiggins and Kuminga. Consider this: Instead of letting Durant leave for nothing, Myers somehow, some way, got two players who serve the Warriors’ short-term and long-term aims.
The heist has become so glaring that even Wright tweeted Sunday that his 2020 Fox Sports 1 appearance ridiculing the Wiggins acquisition was “my most regrettable television take.”
“Bob’s amazing,” Kerr said.