Explain One Play: Andrew Wiggins Tries Out The Harrison Barnes Playbook
Video analysis from my heart to yours.
A list of all Explain One Play articles and videos is at The new Explain One Play index.
When the Warriors acquired Andrew Wiggins, it was natural to compare him to Harrison Barnes as a complement to the core of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
My first thought in the shocking early moments of the trade news:
They are approximately the same size, though Harrison Barnes is stronger and sturdier.
We can see in Wiggins's first four games that the Warriors have been trying him out in Harrison Barnes's old role in the weakside corner. This is a quick video study of how Wiggins has run actions from Barnes's old playbook with some early promise. Though it's very early, he seems comfortable serving as a weakside spot-up shooter, attacking close-outs, running off pindowns and countering top-locking with baseline backdoor cuts.
Here is a key slide of stats from the video:
Stats from the wonderful Basketball Reference.
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Strong work Eric! My vote for good mix between video and didactic text. Keep it up. If Wiggins does as well as you do we will be enjoying your writing around game 92 of next year...
Wiggins seems like he could be more the wing that the Warriors wanted out of Barnes. Unlike HB, Wiggins seems to have a much more usable 1st step to attack closeouts, with maybe a little better handle and vision to get some assists as a secondary ballhandler on the wing.
But jury's still out on whether Wiggins can (or should) be the smallball 4 that HB was.