Minnesota Sports Forum

Talking about who to trade wiggins for is too damn early. The kid is 20 games into his career. Guards the best wing every game and has the best wing defender guarding him every game since martin went down.

Nothing comes easy for wiggins every game as the defense is keyed on him. Watch the games, Wiggins man never leaves him to help unless we broke down their defense which is rare to never since rubio went down. Players go hard vs him since he is the number 1 pick. Heck kobe demanded that he guard wiggins when we play the lakers and the lakers usually let wes johnson guard the best wing of the other team to preserve kobe for their offense.

Can it be frustratating watching wiggins at times? yes, and thats because you know he can be so much more but he is just not there yet physically, mentally and experiece wise. Its not an attitude thing with him, its just a matter of gaining more experience and confidence. The kid play the right way and has a very good character. We have to be patient with him. His ball handling needs work and his body needs to mature and add bulk and strength. I'l say lets wait after year 3 before we talk about who we trade him for.

Ps. 1 man i wont trade wiggins for is kevin love. Wiggins is the only player I wanted us to trade love for and now that we got him, im not looking back at that trade 1 bit. Nothing vs love as he is a top 10 talent in my book but that trade for me went down the way it should for both parties.

How is there talk about trading this guy while a handful of oft injured guys continue to get fan support moving forward? 20 games into his career he isn't that far behind what KG was showing. If Shabazz has shown progress with half the ability, I'd say Wiggins should be allowed even more patience. Which isn't saying much considering how Lil praise Muhammed gets.

The real question here is. When does his value around the league decrease and you have to decide it is at its peak or if you should hold on. I think he has a lot of promise yet and is valued around the league, but if at what point does he turn into a another Derrick Williams that the hope runs out and at what time would have been the best time to trade him?

At this point Wiggins has one quality we've begged for since the Kg days. An ability to affect games solely on the defensive end. That alone makes him leaps and bounds better than the Williams and Johnsons of the league. Those guys showed nothing that made them stand out . Wiggins deserves some time. Mc Grady didn't stand out his first year either but everyone saw the potential. Not saying their equal players but when u see the athleticism u know it will come out in a positive way in some form.

bleedspeed177 wrote:The real question here is. When does his value around the league decrease and you have to decide it is at its peak or if you should hold on. I think he has a lot of promise yet and is valued around the league, but if at what point does he turn into a another Derrick Williams that the hope runs out and at what time would have been the best time to trade him?

Thats a question that is too early to ask bleed. I will be willing to bet everything that wiggins will not be another derrick williams. Come on now. Seeing wiggins in his first 20 games, you can tell that he belong as a starter in the league. After 1 season of dw, you still dont know if he can a regular rotation guy or what position he is best at.

Wiggins value will keep going up after a couple of season. The kid will make it.

A lot of people are overlooking the fact that he is a 19 yr old teen rookie. Still has not develop his body to its peak. Has played majority of his nba games with only 1 nba level pg and a few more with no real pg.(zach still has ways to go to be considered a nba level pg). He has had the best wing defender guard him with martin out. Never had his man leave him. These are facts that a lot here overlook. Add that wiggins is already our best perimeter defender. He is also playing on the team that has lost its 3 best offensive players(pek, martin, rubio for his playmaking). He has been the mark man on the scouting report. He has done a reasonably good job so far. These talk about his value and who to trade him for is just too early.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Camden wrote:"He is scoring over ten points a game effortlessly, and while not getting any respect from officials."

Ehh, this isn't really true. His offense to this point isn't effortless. It's tough. It comes on mid-range jumpers (step-backs, pull-ups, off pin downs) and in post-up opportunities. He mostly settles for tough jumpers. I'd get it if he was a menace in transition and/or killing it on the glass by using his physical gifts, but he's not. And his handle, or lack thereof, keeps him away from the rim. That's why his spin move begins too early resulting in floaters instead of dunks/layups.

And offensively, he's averaging about 5 FTAs per game. That's not too shabby for a rookie.

Is it another example of hope skewing what everybody else is seeing?

Wiggins is 13th on the team in TS% at 46%. So as Camden notes, his scoring is definitely not "effortless"... it's more like "painfully difficult" at this point. The league average for TS% is 54%...

We all know that Wiggins has talent. He's a freak in some ways. But, his on-court performance right now is closer to the worst in the league than it is the best. Actually, that's not giving a lot of average players enough respect. Wiggins' PER is below 9.

Yes. He's young. And he's raw. And he's playing with bad players on a bad team. But it would be disingenuous to claim he's going to be alright based on anything we've seen from him yet. We're still in the "but he has so much promise" camp at this point because he's simply not been very good.

We have about 60 games to hopefully see improvement. And then you hope for more improvement in year 2. And then more... and more...

But it's not a guarantee. Not even close.

Actually it would be disingenuous to claim you haven't seen anything from Wiggins to support my claim. You are complaining about a 46% TS% for a rookie with 20 games under his belt, but yet Drummond is a center who sets up 4 feet from the hoop and has a TS% of 48. I think there is more to be concerned about than just his FT shooting.

I can't believe you actually used PER as part of your argument!

Lopez is on a much better team, and can actually make his FT's at a nice clip, while filling the role asked of him. Drummond seems to have almost zero BB IQ from what I have witnessed, and looks like a guy that will end up filling a similar role.

sjm34 wrote:

Camden wrote:It's fair to throw into the mix that Wall and Beal both had much better handles than Wiggins does when they were his age. Did Saunders have something to do with the improvement? Sure, I won't doubt that, but there has to be something to work with. For instance, I bet Saunders helps LaVine grow immensely. Zach has a capable handle that can be made better. Wiggins has a very poor handle. Can he go from below average to average or better? That's the franchise question.

(Know who has a decent handle? Jabari Parker. Okay, okay, I'm done.)

Considering they are both half his size, I would expect them to have better handles. You might want to go back and look at their first 20 games before you start putting them on that pedestal. Trust me, it wasn't any better than AW, and in Beals' case, considerably worse.

By effortless, I mean he can pull up and get his jumper off against anybody. The effort comes when trying to drive to basket.

Jabari is so good that until about the last 5 games, he was less efficient offensively than AW was, and that was supposed to be a no-contest. Just like the difference in their D, which actually is a no-contest. Young shut Parker down man on man, and Young is absolutely atrocious on D.

And let's not forget that Wall, Beal, and Parker are playing in the Leastern conference.

I would argue that our coaching staff is screwing AW up by continually harping on him to be more aggressive. Almost every time AW gets the ball on the wing, the defense automatically roles a big over to help, including SA. AW should be passing that ball off in that situation, like he was doing earlier in the season, rather than driving into a packed painted area.

- Not sure why size is brought into the conversation when talking about a player's handle. All three players in question have to be able to get to the rim. One's a PG, the other's a SG and the last is a SG/SF. Height difference by a grand total of 5 inches (at most) isn't enough to make it OK that Wiggins can't put it on the deck. 6'4, 6'5 and 6'8. Also, arguing that Wiggins had a better or same handle as either one of them is downright laughable to me as that's just not true, even when they were rookies.

- Sure, Wiggins can rise up and get an inefficient mid-range jumper off over most. Bravo to him. It comes with no dribble move previous to the shot other than a step back or a jab step. My point is it seems like every one of those shots are contested. LaVine too takes mid-range jumpers, but I'd say that he gets off much cleaner looks than Wiggins simply because he makes the defender put weight on his heels. So, even with your definition of "effortless", it's a stretch to say how he gets his 11 PPG is a positive to this point.

- Jabari's the leading scoring rookie, I believe, with 49% shooting from the floor. He's more efficient than Wiggins and the reason why is because he can get to the rim. Positional difference is no excuse either. Scoring is still a skill, and there are no excuses for why Carmelo Anthony's a better scorer than Paul George. It's just the way it is. And you can mouth off that Young is a poor defender, but it's not true, and I'm surprised you see differently. Young has played good perimeter defense, played the P&R well and has been our best help defender. His weakness lies in battling larger forwards on the block. He is what he is, though, and it's not a poor defender as you say. As for the Parker Vs Young matchup, that's not easy for any rook and Young beat him. But as you like to remind everyone, these are really young kids just 20 games in.

- Playing in the East has nothing to do with how affective a player's dribble is or how confident/aggressive a player's mental makeup is. These are my biggest concerns with Wiggins and they'd be relevant even if Wiggins was in Milwaukee.

- Not sure why you're blaming the staff for Wiggins not passing out of double teams. I'm sure he's known that concept since high school. Wiggins also attempts cross court skip passes when there's no pass to be made and it results in turnovers. That's a middle school hoops concept. Maybe Wiggins has a poor feel to the game, and you're right. I would agree.

The good thing is that he's still a youngin'. As long as he gradually improves, then I'm OK with it. My stance was that I would rather have Jabari (15 PPG/7 RPG/2 APG per36) instead of Andrew. My intention wasn't to start ANOTHER debate about these two, but I answered the thread's question, and I've layed out my reason's why.

At the end of the day, Minnesota has Wiggins and Milwaukee has Parker. Nothing said in this forum will change that, but I won't go overly homer to justify why "our guy" is better.

"Heck kobe demanded that he guard wiggins when we play the lakers and the lakers usually let wes johnson guard the best wing of the other team to preserve kobe for their offense."

Why do I remember Kobe coming off Wiggins and sticking LaVine? Andrew also got ripped twice in that first half from high dribbles alone, which loops us all the way back to the big problem at hand. We have a super-athlete that can't take full advantage of his physical gifts because he doesn't have even an average NBA handle.

To cut this debate short, let's all hope that our star prospect improves like we want him to. As a fan of the Wolves, I hope I'm wrong and Andrew reaches his highest ceiling.

Are you serious cam?? Did you even watch the lakers game? If you did, you'l know that kobe guarded wiggins majority if not all of their time together. Wes usually defend the best wing player for the lakers so kobe can save energy for offense. Kobe wanted to guard wiggins and wanted the challenge. Wes was guarding brewer.

If you watch the game you will also know that lavine ssooting lights out was the reason we won the game. So kobe switched to lavine in the clutch to try to stop the red hot lavine. That doesn't take away that he wanted to guard wiggins from the start and did so. Other teams put their best wing defender on wiggins as well. You pointing out that kobe switched to the red hot lavine late in the game in that 1 game is trying to justify what exactly? That's you trying to pull something out of thin air.

To cut this debate short. Its way damn early to try to talk who you trade wiggins for and his value. Its the type of thinking that set a franchise back.

Jabari is averaging 12.5 PPG and 1.7 APG's to Wiggins' 11.9 PPG and 1.3 APG's. I'll never compare their rebounding until Jabari plays on the wing because defending 4's just puts you in better positions for rebounds than being out on the perimeter. Jabari is better at 2's and Wiggins is better at 3's. Defense goes to Wiggins because he is not only a lot better at it on a fundamental level, but he also is doing it with much tougher assignments than Jabari and being a perimeter defender is harder than a post defender to begin with. These stats include Wiggins' recent skid and Jabari's recent surge which was needed to close the gap for Parker. Jabari has been no better than Wiggins so I don't see how anyone can praise Parker's future and diminish Wiggins'. Wiggins has been and continues to be right on Parker's heels statistically offensively which makes him the better player overall because of the gap in defensive capabilities.