For the first time in six months, the Warriors got a microscopic glimpse Tuesday night of Andrew Wiggins during an NBA game. They didn’t expect much and didn’t get much because it scraped off a considerable amount of rust.
But the presence of Wiggins and position provided a pre-season glimpse of what’s possible. And reasonable.
Wiggins did not start at his usual position of small forward, but at shooting guard, where he never started a regular season game for Golden State. He shared the backcourt with point guard Stephen Curry, a role made legendary by the two-way talents of peak Klay Thompson.
Curry and Wiggins made up two-fifths of a lineup — along with Jonathan Kuminga, Draymond Green and Trayce Jackson-Davis — that might be the most balanced the Warriors could assemble.
“The key is JK and Wiggs running the court,” coach Steve Kerr told reporters in Las Vegas after a 111-97 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers at T-Mobile Arena. “It puts a lot of pressure on the teams. And they set the right tone tonight, the way they went down, with or without the ball, they went. I really like the way these two guys played and the impact they can have with their athleticism and strength.
Wiggins played 21 minutes, finishing with 11 points on 3-of-9 shooting from the field, including 0-of-3 from distance. He was 5 of 5 from the line and added an assist and a steal.
The tiny sample size of Golden State’s fifth starting lineup through five games offered nothing declarative — much less definitive — mainly because Wiggins, who missed most of training camp, was new in action.
Kerr has visualized a possible Curry-Wiggins backcourt for most of the year, since then recognizing the increasing likelihood of Klay Thompson leaving Golden State. Kerr has long viewed Thompson and Wiggins, of similar size and two-way ability, as interchangeable wings; this was an opportunity to examine this notion.
While Wiggins will never be the dead-eyed shooter that Thompson is, he is now a better defender on the ball. He has the tools to do a decent to great job against most point guards in the league, and that was one of Golden State’s most visible weaknesses last season. General manager Mike Dunleavy addressed that topic in July by signing De’Anthony Melton, an elite defender at the point of attack. Gary Payton II, who missed most of last season, is another Hellcat on the ball.
But Wiggins is tidier and offers greater offensive versatility. Since joining the Warriors in February 2020, he is 38.1% from beyond the arc. Not Klay, but very solid. In 2021-22, when Wiggins made the Western Conference All-Star team, he shot 39.3% from deep. Again, not Klay, but more than acceptable.
One of Kerr’s many clear messages to Wiggins is to increase his 3-point shooting volume.
“I told him before: six 3-pointers a game,” Kerr told NBC Sports Bay Area’s Kerith Burke last week. “He’s a very good 3-point shooter. It was down a bit last year. But since he’s been here – 39, 40 percent. I want a lot of threes and I want a lot of attacks to the rim. He shot over 80 percent from the foul line in the second half of last year.
“He looks really comfortable in all aspects of the game. And let’s face it, with Klay gone, we need him to step up and be our second scorer after Steph, and we know he is perfectly capable of it.
If Wiggins shoots six more threes per game, that gives more space to Kuminga, whose 3-ball looks better but could still be secondary to his ability to attack the rim. Both were in the starting lineup because Kerr’s dream scenario is to play them together – having two athletic 6-foot-7 wings to challenge opponents on both ends.
While Melton is a legitimate scoring threat, it’s a stretch to expect him to approach 20 points per game. That’s more than double his career average. And GP2 is a defensive player who is good for a few corner triples, but not big scores.
Wiggins, on the other hand, averages 18.5 points per game during his career. He topped the 20 per game mark four times during his 10-year career, all while playing with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
With Thompson gone, Wiggins is no longer a good third option for scoring. The question is that he now becomes a good second option. He has the tools, and now he must make the most of them.
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