Minnesota Sports Forum

Does anybody really think the Timberwolves were getting THIS Wiggins?

He's been really good in Golden State. And there are reasons for that...

1) Wiggins is talented.
2) Golden State has Steph Curry. And Klay Thompson. And Draymond Greed. And Steve Kerr. Minnesota mostly had guys like Towns, Okogie, Gorgui Dieng and Saunders and others.
3) Golden State offers a championship culture built on teamwork, movement, defense, professionalism and accountability. Same ownership. Same front office. Same coaching staff. They have an IDENTITY. Minnesota offered arguably the league's worst and most dysfunctional organization when he was here. No consistency. No leadership. No identity.
4) Does that absolve Wiggins for the team's struggles or his regression in Minnesota? NO. Not entirely. When it's made public that the owner has to plead with the soon-to-be max contract guy to try to play harder or to keep improving... it's a black mark on both the owner and the player. Extremely embarrassing.
5) Wiggins simply wasn't THIS Wiggins in Minnesota. And he wasn't going to be. There was too much sordid history, ingrained ways of thinking/playing and stagnation to expect anything else.

So while some can try to suck themselves off for either claiming Wiggins was a bust or a hidden star... I'm gonna chime in and fellate myself for actually calling this scenario from the beginning.

You take a talented player and put him in the most favorable situation/franchise in the league and it's very likely he'll thrive. But it's also true that the Timberwolves had to unload the Wiggins that played here because it was a sunk cost.

Those in the know always knew it was going to look something like this (although not to this degree where Andrew Wiggins is the best player on the court in the most pivotal game of the 2022 season.

So congrats Wiggins!
And fuck you Timberwolves for fucking it up with him. And fuck Wiggins for refusing to stop taking 22 step in jump shots and being lackadaisical and having more games with 1 rebound than games with 13+ rebounds while collecting an unearned max contract.

Both things are true.

I guess it has a different effect when Steph and Draymond look you in the eye.

I didn't mean to trigger the old debate about Wiggins and whether he should have been traded. :) All I'll say is that there are two sides to that debate. No doubt that Wiggins underachieved while here. His production and effort fluctuated substantially game to game. But there's also no doubt he had a bad team around him along with a lack of coaching and front office continuity. Moreover, Wolves head coaches continued to make relatively poor use of him by putting the ball in his hands and expecting him to create for himself and others. It's interesting to speculate how the more mature Wiggins today would perform with the current Wolves team (minus DLO), which now includes Ant, Beverley, Prince and a more mature (but still too immature) KAT along with a really good head coach in Finch. No one can answer that question definitively. But that's the question that ultimately emerges from the old debate.

Wiggins grossly underachieved relative to his talent while here and now he's playing with Golden State like the guy Flip believed he was drafting back in 2014. Would we be watching the current Wiggins alongside Ant, KAT, Beverley, etc. under head coach Finch? I don't know. But there's nothing wrong with pondering that question and there's no definitive answer one way or the other.

lipoli390 wrote:I didn't mean to trigger the old debate about Wiggins and whether he should have been traded. :) All I'll say is that there are two sides to that debate. No doubt that Wiggins underachieved while here. His production and effort fluctuated substantially game to game. But there's also no doubt he had a bad team around him along with a lack of coaching and front office continuity. Moreover, Wolves head coaches continued to make relatively poor use of him by putting the ball in his hands and expecting him to create for himself and others. It's interesting to speculate how the more mature Wiggins today would perform with the current Wolves team (minus DLO), which now includes Ant, Beverley, Prince and a more mature (but still too immature) KAT along with a really good head coach in Finch. No one can answer that question definitively. But that's the question that ultimately emerges from the old debate.

Wiggins grossly underachieved relative to his talent while here and now he's playing with Golden State like the guy Flip believed he was drafting back in 2014. Would we be watching the current Wiggins alongside Ant, KAT, Beverley, etc. under head coach Finch? I don't know. But there's nothing wrong with pondering that question and there's no definitive answer one way or the other.

Lip, I have to push back on a few things you mentioned here even though I can certainly appreciate your attempt at mediation.

There indeed is two sides to the Andrew Wiggins discussion -- a rational side and an irrational side. The former relies on observing Wiggins over six seasons of his career -- watching him fluctuate between an All-Star talent and a player that didn't deserve nor always appear like he wanted NBA minutes. Over six seasons he showed no actual improvement in his game, but rather tangible regression by the time he left. He was on a downward trajectory in Minnesota despite four different head coaches and numerous veteran teammates rotating through the organization. All of them noted the supreme gifts he possesses while none of them could squeeze him into becoming the winning player he was expected to be. Wiggins has to be held accountable for all of that.

Secondly, Minnesota repeatedly put the ball in Wiggins' hands because that was the only way to consistently engage him offensively. The Wolves didn't have two or three Hall of Famers for him to defer to. They didn't have the figures in place required to force him to play a lesser role like the one he's thrived in with Golden State. There wasn't a core of stars for him to fit alongside. Too often Wiggins would simply disappear from games when he was off the ball, which resulted in forcing him to play on ball just to try and get production from him. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

The Wiggins of today has adapted his game around Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson. Wondering how that player fits on this current Wolves team is an imperfect experiment because the factors that forced him to evolve into that player never would have transpired had he not been traded in the first place. He needed the change of scenery. He needed to play alongside great players with whom he could defer to. He needed the trade just as much, if not more, than the Wolves. Minnesota just wasn't going to get this version of him simply by keeping him around.

Saunders? Let's not forget to blame that dumbass Thibs for pushing Wiggs to be a primary scorer and then ballhandler (even with Ricky and Zach on the roster) with defense being an afterthought. I think "tough love" Sam would have developed Wiggs better than Thibs, but there is no question that someone like Atkinson or even Brooks, both of whom I preferred over Thibs, would have developed Wiggs better. The talent was always there and I never felt the organization had to trade Wiggs, especially for the garbage trade that Rosas did all in an effort to appease KAT.

I'm sorry this NBA playoff thread turned into a debate about Wiggins. But I'll make one last contribution to the debate with the following link to a Draymond Green post-game comment:

https://twitter.com/hoopshype/status/1536660059903692802?s=21

I'm not going to comment on Green's remark and I have nothing further to offer on Wiggins. He's the Wolves past. I'm focused on the Wolves' future - and on the current really fun playoff series.

Camden wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

Camden wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Well for the 5th or 6th option (as some of you have said), Wig is sure occupying center stage in these playoffs. He's also playing such good defense that he's getting more minutes than those 5 or 6 options ahead of him. Who was our 6th option this year, Beasley? Yeah I'd rather have Wig. I'd actually rather have Wig than our 3rd option who couldn't stay on the court in the first round. But I guess a handful of Wolves fans on a message board know better.

145-198 (.423) in 343 games... That's the Timberwolves' record with Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns leading the way over five (!) seasons. That also includes the 47-win season where Jimmy Butler did the heavy lifting while Wiggins hid in the corner. I guess things were just going to magically click for the guy in year seven and eight and we just didn't have enough patience waiting for him to turn it around after half a decade of poor results. We should have continued building with him despite the losses piling up. What a logical sentiment, especially after the relatively successful year this franchise just had. Good take, Cool. Two thumbs up.

You're embarrassing yourself. Please stop, I can't stand to watch you do it anymore.

The only embarrassing thing here is you continuing to pound the table for a guy that led the organization into the lottery nearly every year he was on the payroll. He's gone. The organization moved on and objectively got better -- not coincidentally. I just can't understand the continuous bitching from those that share your view after the team improved in large part because of that trade. I guess you prefer the ping pong balls.

I can see you're going to go down with the ship. Typical. Here's a couple links for you to enjoy while you live in your own fantasy world:

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10038597-dangelo-russell-trade-rumors-timberwolves-shopping-pg-ahead-of-2022-nba-draft

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10038641-warriors-andrew-wiggins-trade-paying-off-on-nbas-biggest-stage

I don't think either side on Wiggins was ever that far off from eachother even when he was with the Wolves, I just think because of the stakes people were really invested in their nuanced position.

I think the consensus here was always:
1. He was athletically talented with basketball skill warts (dribbling, shooting, and engagement with the game)
2. He underachieved for a #1 pick
3. He got overpaid
4. In spite of all this he was still talentwise somewhere between the 3rd to 5th best player on a good team

All of these things still seem true. Golden State had the luxury of putting him in an appropriate role. We did not. Dlo can do things for this team that Wiggins couldn't. It's kind of funny, if you listed the board consensus on DLo, it would be very similar to Wiggins.

Lip,

The reason this debate matters is because we're going through the same machinations regarding DLO right now.

Wiggins literally did what he was asked to do in a Timberwolves uniform. He took 20% more steps than anybody else on the team, played the most minutes, and recieved the HOT POTATO .

The reason this debate matters is because we're having it again with DLO. Wiggins has a clear role with GS. DLO is playing his new role very well with MN as a facilitator and defensive coach on the floor.

We need to learn that players with unique skill sets can take awhile to figure out what their role needs to be.

Wiggins doesn't look that much different in a GS UNI than he did with us.

leado01 wrote:Lip,

The reason this debate matters is because we're going through the same machinations regarding DLO right now.

Wiggins literally did what he was asked to do in a Timberwolves uniform. He took 20% more steps than anybody else on the team, played the most minutes, and recieved the HOT POTATO .

The reason this debate matters is because we're having it again with DLO. Wiggins has a clear role with GS. DLO is playing his new role very well with MN as a facilitator and defensive coach on the floor.

We need to learn that players with unique skill sets can take awhile to figure out what their role needs to be.

Wiggins doesn't look that much different in a GS UNI than he did with us.

But there are differences here. DLO has had two very good coaches in Atkinson and Finch who have maximized his strengths but Wiggins didn't have that until he was coached under Kerr. I am not surprised at all by Wiggins success on the Warriors. I don't see DLO being a good fit here unless he takes a lot less money and plays a sixth man role, and I just don't see DLO accepting that. He whined when he had to share the ball with Ricky and he was not thrilled with the idea of the Wolves drafting LaMelo Ball and sharing the ball. I don't want to accommodate DLO anymore, he is not a good fit and he is vastly overpaid.