Keep or Cut? Part 2: the cogs - Andrew Wiggins
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Keep or Cut? Part 2: the cogs - Andrew Wiggins
Curry and Thompson's will return to fix most of everything, but righting the ship is going to also require tinkering around some key edges.
The Golden State Warriors shiny new Chase Center Arena is closed, costing the team “tens of millions of dollars.” A global pandemic has officially been declared, which brings to light the dichotomy of sports: so meaningless, and yet so important. Low wage workers living paycheck to paycheck across all sorts of service industries are facing life-altering lost wages, and people are literally fighting for their lives.
So yeah, it feels a little silly to be worried about, or even interested in a basketball game.
And yet for those of us shut in, keeping our social distance, these basketball games are a welcome escape. For all it’s silliness, sports is a unifying force at its core. That’s why we are here to discuss some of the biggest decisions facing the team moving forward.
I’d also like to take a moment to personally thank Eric Apricot for keeping everything flowing around here while I hunkered down in my emotional hermit cave with my family. I’m back now, so let’s talk basketball!
Who (and what) are we talking about?
Firstly, we are not talking about the stars. Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green aren’t going anywhere. We’ve already covered the peripheral players in Part 1 of this series, so that leaves a few of our developing young players: Andrew Wiggins, Eric Paschall, and Kevon Looney.
Separately from those known players, the Warriors also have some options to change the roster from the outside: the draft, mid level, and the enormous traded player exception from the Andre Iguodala trade.
Andrew Wiggins
I was skeptical about the signing of Wiggins, to put it mildly. And yet, his play in the limited amount of time with the team assuaged a lot of doubts. In around 34 minutes per game the small forward scored 19.4 points (46% from the field, 34% from beyond the arc), 4.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and a very nice 1.3 steals and 1.4 blocks.
More importantly, as I wrote back when the NBA was still happening, is the improvements that Wiggins demonstrated in his short time with Golden State. Take a look at his rate stats:
While the data has to be taken with a “small sample size” caveat, it’s impossible to ignore that drastic, holistic improvements that the Small Forward demonstrated under the Golden State banner. Andrew Wiggins played just 403 minutes in a Warriors uniform (less than Jacob Evans) in the 2019-2020 season.
However, that’s still around 11 games worth if we assume 36 minutes per contest; and given the remarkable jump in production it’s hard to not form some sort of opinion of Wiggins’ game changing for the best while playing for the Warriors. This is also one of those cases where the advanced statistics match up precisely with what our eyeballs have told us. It’s not just that Wiggins is making a freak play here or there, his output fundamentally shifted into a higher gear once he arrived.
The Warriors would be extremely happy with that demonstrated level of production, and barring some miraculous big move, it’s reasonable to expect Wiggins to return. Enormous contract aside, Golden State has rightly pointed out that Wiggins fills a position of need, and offers the sort of size, speed, and defensive versatility that the Warriors will want out of their starting small forward.
As Steve Kerr said about the max contract player, back in February (via Monte Poole):
“People have said he’s overrated, for a couple years. He’s become underrated. If you look at what he does, if you look at his size, if you look at the way he defends, the guy is a damn good NBA player. It seems people have forgotten that.”
He’s a keeper. The only way the Warriors move on from Wiggins is in pursuit of a top tier talent (think: All Star).
Keep or Cut? Part 2: the cogs - Andrew Wiggins
So 1st of all I really enjoy these articles. Even though none of us have any say in what will happen, it's fun to speculate. That being said, I thought it was a much more interesting discussion in part 1 as all those players are somewhat borderline while it is highly unlikely to impossible that either Ender Wiggins or Looney gets cut or traded. They're not cutting either as they couldn't replace their salary due to cap rules. Both are pretty low value right now on the trade market but with the possibility to be much higher later after more time with the team.
Ender still has a pretty bad rep around the league (as aplayer not as a person) and if we're not yet sold by his small sample size you can be damned sure other teams are not. That means we'd have to pay to trade him (like the Wolves had to pay us with 2 picks). On the other hand if we keep him and what we saw in our small sample turns out to be true he fits in really well. That means he has more value to us than anyone else right now.
Looney is basically the same but because he is injured. I think general perception is that he can't stay healthy so teams don't value him much. Again no one will trade us anything and we'd have to pay to trade him (picks, salary, something). On the other hand, if he can get healthy with the time off, he is worth way more than his current salary. especially to us. Again that means no reason to trade him and just hope he gets healthy.
That leaves Paschall. We like him. Everybody else does. We're not cutting him. He's super cheap. I like him and I think the organization likes him so you'd have to get something pretty valuable for him. But he's definitely the most interesting case to examine. I don't have a sense of his worth, but he's kind of unique and if he can improve his D and, as he has been saying in all those interviews, his 3, I'd say you'd have to pay us a lot for him so I think he also stays.
(I don't believe in the Giannis wet dream, but I guess, who knows. That would sure change the calculus...)
Keep Wiggins? But haven't you heard? We're trading him for Giannis!