Right on time, Wiggins is playing like an all-star
Former first pick overall, Canadian seems to be hitting his stride
Wiggins won’t be an all-star this season. Not in the Western Conference. But he’s playing like one
Something clicked for Andrew Wiggins a month ago.
The Warriors wing’s explosion — 35 points, 74 per cent shooting, a monstrous slam — against his former team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, on Nov. 10 was anything but normal.
Sure, Wiggins had posted big games before in his eight-year National Basketball Association career. But they were one-offs, fleeting glimpses of his immense talent that teased more than inspired. Not this one, though. Because, since that game against the Timberwolves, after which Warriors general manager Bob Myers joked he didn’t know Wiggins could do “that,” he’s played like, well, that.
Wiggins won’t be an all-star this season. Not in the Western Conference. But he’s playing like one — a reliable and confident option for the Dubs on both ends of the floor.
He’s fully activated and fully actualizing those lofty goals that have been — fairly or not — put on his talented shoulders since before he went to Kansas as a one-and-done player.
He’s no Kevin Durant. Not even close. So the Warriors aren’t asking him to be.
All they want him to be is a tenacious on-ball defender, a constant mover on offence, and a solid catchand-shoot option to space the floor for Steph Curry.
In short, a better version of the 2014-2016 Harrison Barnes.
And Wiggins is doing all of that with his trademark ease.
Since that huge game against Minnesota, Wiggins has gone for 25-plus points five more times, including Monday night in a spectacular performance — he was 8-of-10 from behind the arc — in the Warriors’ blowout win over the Orlando Magic.
In all, over his past 14 games heading into a home contest with the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday night, Wiggins is averaging 21 points per game on a hyperefficient 52 per cent shooting. He’s made 47 per cent of his five three-point attempts per game during that stretch.
Add in his stellar defence — he has a defensive rating of 99.3 since Minnesota — and he has the NBA’s sixth-best net rating of high-minute players over the past month.
His peers at the top of that chart? Giannis Antetokounmpo, Rudy Gobert, dramatically underrated point guards Jrue Holiday and Patty Mills, and Curry. That’s an elite class of two-way players — guys every competent organization would want on their team.
Not bad for a guy who was deemed to have the worst contract in the NBA before he arrived in San Francisco. Wiggins’ emergence makes it so the Warriors can afford a bad night — or two — from Curry. They can handle Jordan Poole having a poor shooting night.
There’s another viable offensive option: The shots might not always fall, but the Warriors are rightly trusting Wiggins to be active and aggressive on the offensive end.
The biggest difference for Wiggins over the past few weeks has been his catch-and-shoot game.
Last year, his first full season with the Warriors and serious time alongside Steph Curry, Wiggins had 3.7 catch-and-shoot attempts per game and he knocked down 38.7 per cent of those shots. That’s a whole lot of meh for a player with such a nice shooting stroke.
This season, before the Minnesota game, Wiggins had upped the catch-and-shoot attempts to four per game. The shooting percentage, though, was in the same ballpark — 37 per cent. The shot looked stiff, forced, a bit robotic.
But, since Nov. 10, Wiggins is getting up an extra catch-and-shoot opportunity every two games and is knocking down 46 per cent of those shots — all three-pointers.
In turn, he has a better effective field goal percentage on catch-andshoot opportunities than Curry.
That won’t last. This is a cold streak for Wardell.
But Wiggins’ hot streak might have staying power. The confidence and fluidity of his shot hints this form might last for a long, long time. Folks have been fooled before, but this is no longer a small sample size. This form might just be the new normal for Wiggins.