The Andrew Wiggins Conundrum will define the Warriors' season
SAN FRANCISCO >> It's a simple question with a not-so-simple answer:
Is it better to be inactive or active and volatile?
Call it the Andrew Wiggins Conundrum.
We saw both sides of the Warriors wing on March 20, and I'm not sure either helps the Warriors right now.
For the first 45 minutes of the game against the Spurs, the Warriors had the passive Wiggins. He was a Milford Man — neither seen nor heard. Yes, there was a post-up here, a couple of rebounds there, but he was 3-for-11 on the floor and eminently forgettable in the contest.
But in the final moments of a close contest, Wiggins took over the game. The Warriors needed someone to do it.
A tough shot in the lane to tie the game at 101, a fadeaway 11-footer to keep the Warriors in it one possession later, a big steal, and then a fateful trip to the free-throw line in a tied game with 3 seconds to play (even if it was on a phantom foul).
It was all pretty good. Impressive, even.
Then came the bad. Wiggins made the first free-throw — 108-107 Warriors — and missed the second. He's shooting 54% from the line since Jan. 1.
Another “bizarre” — to steal Steve Kerr's phrasing — foul call on the attempt to rebound put the Spurs on the line with 2.4 seconds to play.
Jakob Poeltl made the first but missed the second, and Wiggins failed to put a body on Dejounte Murray as the ball bounced off the rim. Amid a ruck, Murray knocked the ball to his teammate, Keldon Johnson, and the Spurs scored the go-ahead basket with 0.3 seconds to play. It would hold.
What Wiggins gave, Wiggins took away.
And I legitimately can't tell you if that's an inauspicious start to this Steph Curry-free stretch of basketball.
What I do know is this: If the Warriors are going to be successful over the next two-plus weeks without Curry in the lineup, the team's second-highest-paid player will need to be part of that success. Neutrality — whether through pacifism or chaos (we saw both) — is not an option.
Yet all signs point to the Warriors conceding that Wiggins won't be a factor for this team during their most trying days.
That, I know, is not good.
The result had me thinking back to a week ago, when the Warriors had their dynastic trio together for the first time and they whopped up on the Washington Wizards at Chase Center.
The post-game comments were strong and the energy was unimpeachably positive.
Draymond Green guaranteed a championship after the contest. Yeah. That happened.
A whole lot of back-patting. A whole lot of positivity. And absolutely no Andrew Wiggins.
The Warriors wing was out sick. But his absence wasn't felt. It wasn't even acknowledged. After months of Warriors players and coaches pining to be at full-strength, they won a game where they didn't have Wiggins and decided “We're good.”
Did Wiggins really slip everyone's mind that night? I doubt it.
In the nine games he's played since the All-star break, Wiggins is shooting 39 percent from the floor and 30 percent from beyond the arc. He's averaging 14 points per game over that stretch and has a net rating of plus-0.7.
It's all exceptionally unremarkable.
But zoom out, it becomes downright peculiar.
Before Wiggins was named an All-star starter, he was averaging 18 points per game on a true shooting percentage of 58.1.
And, indeed, those are legitimate borderline Allstar numbers.
But since that evening of vindication for Wiggins and the Warriors, he has faded. He has the worst true shooting percentage on the team at 51.1 percent over that stretch and his rebound percentage is closer to Steph Curry and Jordan Poole's than it is to Jonathan Kuminga's. The Warriors are 9-9 in the games that he has played.
Is this a slump or something larger? The Warriors stopped using the first term a while ago, and I think that's telling.
After all, a head coach can only ask someone to be aggressive so many times before failure is on them.
But this is the exact moment the Warriors need Wiggins to be everything he can be. They cannot win without Curry if Wiggins does not play well.
And no one knows what kind of Wiggins the Warriors will receive on any given night.
That's the Wiggins Conundrum.
And so long as it continues to confound, it's a huge problem for the Warriors.