Wiggins tuning out noise, dialing up Warriors culture
SAN FRANCISCO >> Just days after sitting on a sunshinesoaked 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 Rus
sell 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 energy, 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.