WISEMAN EXPECTATIONS: Year 1

[clyde21]

can we agree that Wiseman's value is already down?

you try to trade Wiseman right now straight up with the Kings for Hali or with the Spurs for Vassell and the response will be a resounding no.

[KevinMcreynolds]

wut

Vassell is a very ordinary rotation player, if we made that trade I would stop watching basketball.

And I don't know why his value would be down. He's been exactly as advertised, a skilled and athletic big man for his size and completely lost on defense.

[Mylie10]

Why is everyone so adamant that Steph is going to fall off this mystical cliff in two years? I mean you guys have no idea.

It’s Friggen crazy talk

i'm not, I am giving this core another 4-5 year window

but again not really my point...what does Wiseman look like to you in this offense in 3 years? his archetype and awkward fit on this team and in this offense is not gonna change.

and I don't know if I am willing to wait 3 years watching it play out while his value plummets.

I’ve heard you say this a hundred times. And it’s a valid point I guess because we are so early into this.

However.....look what Utah is doing. They have Gobert who is a better defender than Wise, but Wiseman already showing offense that Gobert ever had.

They have surrounded him with tons of shooters and guys who can pass the ball. And every single good team has a legit big man. Not some of the good teams....every single one. I guess you could say the Nets, but please no other team can follow their pattern.

So Wiseman surrounded by great shooting and players with the ability to pass the ball will be a dominant player.

And you’ve continually pigeon holed him as strictly a rim runner. The kid has shown the flashes of game that is gonna be there as he matures. Both shooting, driving, handle, etc.

Not sure why you don’t think he will improve across the board....and don’t you think he knows where the league is going?

I mean he used his trainers to allow him to play outside of the lane. So they completely switched the way they trained him.

[Mylie10]

By al accounts the Mavs came calling for either Wiseman or the Minny pick or both.

[clyde21]

non of his peripheral skills are scalable, sure can he handle a bit? but what does that mean to me? are you gonna have him run half-court sets? again you guys keep listing appetizers without mentioning anything about the main course. what's gonna earn him minutes is not the fact that he can hit a random 3 every couple of games or he can handle in a straight line for 20 feet, what's gonna get him minutes is either 1) being a force defensively and 2) being able to create opportunities on offense without being a high usage diver

unfortunately, I don't see either of these things happening...so you guys can talk about 'hes still young let's wait and see', and that's fine and it makes sense on the surface, but know that it also comes with a huge risk that you guys should be calculating for if it doesn't work out that way you see it.

all of this would have been way easier had Myers been way more deliberate with the pick in getting a guy that can contribute on a rookie deal that's actually a good fit with this personnel and scheme...Wiseman was not a guy that made you say 'we have to pick this guy regardless of fit he's that good'.

[clyde21]

By al accounts the Mavs came calling for either Wiseman or the Minny pick or both.

they can F off, just because I want to trade Wiseman doesn't mean I am willing to settle for a bad deal...I have very little faith that Zingers can be healthy long term, and when he's been on the court he's looked like a shell of himself.

[tarantism]

So Wiseman is too high usage but Beal is a perfect fit. Got it.

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[876Stephen]

So Wiseman is too high usage but Beal is a perfect fit. Got it.

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Beal is a guard who who can score at all three levels efficiently, handle and play make and play off ball. He is a perfect fit in our offense. His usage would scale back obviously with Curry but it would be pretty seamless transition in my opinion. If Curry,Kd and Klay can work, then Curry,Beal, Klay can definitely work

[HiRez]

So Wiseman is too high usage but Beal is a perfect fit. Got it.

To be fair though, Beal is putting up 33/5/5, Wiseman is...well...not. I'm not a big fan of mortgaging all our assets for Beal, but you can't deny he's a guy who can immediately dominate and put up numbers. Wiseman at this point is at best a minor plus factor and at worst a significant negative factor. It always comes back to the present vs. the future argument, but right now Wiseman isn't giving us much useful and probably won't for the rest of the year, quite possibly next year either.

But if we trade Wiseman and the MIN pick and Oubre right now for Beal, my feeling is we make the playoffs, lose our pick, and probably still get bounced before the Finals, where does that get us? I do believe Wiseman's value has dropped somewhat since draft day. He's still a valuable trade asset, but I continue to believe holding on to him and developing is the better path to a payout, either as a keeper or trade bait with higher value.

Even though this team is overachieving, this is essentially still a lost year with Klay out. Perfect time to get Wiseman acclimated to the NBA, win not too many games and keep our pick, go into the offseason fully loaded with multiple picks and with a returning Klay.

[Mylie10]

By al accounts the Mavs came calling for either Wiseman or the Minny pick or both.

they can F off, just because I want to trade Wiseman doesn't mean I am willing to settle for a bad deal...I have very little faith that Zingers can be healthy long term, and when he's been on the court he's looked like a shell of himself.

Right on Clyde lol!!

[Mylie10]

So Wiseman is too high usage but Beal is a perfect fit. Got it.

Sent from my LM-X220PM using RealGM mobile app

Considering our scoring issues other than Steph or Paschall shouldn’t we be ok with another high scoring high usage guy?

Beal is nice, but not worth dumping the future for. Seriously guys. Overpaying for question marks is what bad teams do.

Simmons is a logical guy to go after, but even then you don’t overpay for a guy who can’t shoot from range.

Siakam makes tons of sense for us, but again not worth an overpay.

The deals you guys propose need to make some sense right?

[clyde21]

So Wiseman is too high usage but Beal is a perfect fit. Got it.

Sent from my LM-X220PM using RealGM mobile app

lol...please show me where I said anywhere I wanted a Beal trade. you might be confusing me with someone else.

also...'high usage' for a guy like Beal is way different than 'high usage' for Wiseman.

[Mylie10]

So Wiseman is too high usage but Beal is a perfect fit. Got it.

Sent from my LM-X220PM using RealGM mobile app

Beal is a guard who who can score at all three levels efficiently, handle and play make and play off ball. He is a perfect fit in our offense. His usage would scale back obviously with Curry but it would be pretty seamless transition in my opinion. If Curry,Kd and Klay can work, then Curry,Beal, Klay can definitely work

No one thinks Beal wouldn’t help our offense. I bet you not one person would say our offense doesn’t need him.

However, when talking trades and titles you have to factor in everything. Not just how epic he scores the ball.

And the reference to Beals usage has to do with some people complaining about Wiseman’s usage.

To me the usage of any scorer is fine. Because Steph can’t do it alone.

We have proven we can play defense.

We have proven we can’t rebound the ball to get the actual stop.

We have proven Steph and Draymond work. We have not found solutions to the rest of the team in regards to offense because the overall roster is so flawed.

Expecting us to take one guy and add him, while also diminishing what little depth we have to do so.....and adding in our future in great draft picks......it has to be no brainer deals or no dice!

Beal at his cost isn’t a no brainer

[Warriors Analyst]

im having trouble envisioning how he's gonna be worthy of the 2nd overall pick in a few years...what exactly is he going to be doing in our offense outside rolling and lob catching (and even that he has such bad bad hands)?

defensively he'll be fine, but doubtful game changing.

i just really don't understand the fit at all, and my confidence is waning even more with every game.

honestly, we need to start thinking about selling high at this point (I know a lot of people don't want to hear this on this board)...but if you wait a couple of years you might torpedo his trade value if all he's gonna be is just rim diver and a guy who can't create much on his own.

I think his value won't be much higher than it is right now in the foreseeable future. Fair or not, he's going to be compared against LaMelo and the more the Hornets look decent with LaMelo playing well, Wiseman is going to look bad by comparison.

But I'm mostly with you Clyde. I didn't feel super confident about any one guy in the draft except for maybe Patrick Williams, but I was certain of one thing and that was that I wanted the Warriors to avoid Wiseman.

I was pretty anti-Wiseman for a few reasons. 1. I thought he had poor feel for the game and wouldn't be nearly as NBA ready as his most optimistic supporters. 2. Most rookies aren't good on defense so I didn't think he would help at all against AD or Jokic in the next few years. 3. Solid defensive C's are cheap in free agency and even the ones with floor stretching ability aren't that expensive (take a lot of Gasol or Ibaka's contracts. 4. Almost every year some team takes a flier on an athletic big late in the first round or early second round and they'd probably take about as long to develop as Wiseman.

If I'd known that Wiseman had terrible hands, I would have been even more against the pick.

Through 25 games or so of Wiseman, I don't see a superstar ceiling and I certainly do not see a player who will be ready to play closing minutes in the playoffs this year or the next.

Save for the occasional flashes of a three point shot, Wiseman has mostly confirmed my worst fears of him. His hands are a huge, glaring red flag. Not even Festus' hands were this bad. If he's not able to catch the ball consistently outside of lobs, it limits his effectiveness as a rim runner and he won't spook defenses into dropping everything to tag him when he rolls. Wiseman also shies from contact and has a really poor sense of how to operate in the post. There've been a few nice spin moves, but many more instances of him facing up and spinning himself into a hook shot where he's moving away from the basket or simply fading on a jumper out of the midpost. He's also had a few instances of taking fading hook shots off of offensive rebounds, rather than putting his defender under the rim and using his massive body to force contact. The aversion to contact combined with his bad hands is very troubling. I don't remember a player fixing bad hands or a guy who hates contact ever turning into a physical beast It can be brought out in moments, Harry B showed us that, but I think generally you have hands/a willingness to play physical or you don't.

Some disturbing Wiseman stats:

He's shooting 31.8% on catch and shoot shots and 28.6% on pull ups. That number decreases to 27% and 25% when you filter it for only two point field goal attempts, which I think is worth doing consider he's mostly excised the three point shot from his game. From the 5-9 feet distance Wiseman is shooting 26.3%, 10-14 feet at 18.8%, 15-19 feet at 30.4%, and 20-24 feet at 35%. His non restricted area paint percentage is 25.%. He's shooting 31.3% from midrange, 32.6% on jumpshots, 48.1% on layups, and 33% on hook shots. Factor all that in with his 63% FT, and I think it's safe to say that his three point shooting might well be an outlier on a small sample size.

If you look at Steph's 2 man combos this year, the lineup with lowest net rating that's received significant minutes (Curry/Chriss and Curry/Mannion aren't included here) is Steph/Wiseman, which has a -7.5 net rating. The offensive rating of the Steph/Wiseman combo is 103.5, which is really bad. The only other two Steph combos that have offensive ratings <110 are Steph/Oubre and Steph/JTA. The only other Steph combos with a negative net rating are Steph/Oubre: -1.2, Steph/Paschall: -1.3, and Steph/Poole: -5.9, but that lineup has only played 7 minutes.

I want you all to take a moment to think about these objectively. When James Wiseman shares the court with Steph, our offense tanks. Steph Curry -- the singular most incredible offensive force of the last two decades, the man who has turned garbage lineups with 0 spacing playable deep in the playoffs, the man whose oncourt presence typically bumps up his teammate's shooting efficiency by 4-5% TS -- has been unable to produce a LEAGUE AVERAGE offensive rating with our prized rookie on the court. Wiseman's minutes with Steph are producing offense that is 9 points below league average. That's absolutely ridiculous.

The Wiseman fans here seemed to think he'd be a plug and play. That's very obviously not the case. People thought he'd just step into the Javale role -- I think several people were adamant he'd be better than us as a rookie than Javale was for us -- and crush lobs and be part of a killer offense. People thought he'd be better than DeAndre Jordan, who makes $10 million and is widely considered to be overpaid. There was even a poster who earnestly believed Wiseman would be better as a rookie than present day Myles Turner! My god. Wiseman is a project. He's got a long way to go before he'll be useful against good teams.

I do realize that he has considerable physical gifts and that those gifts allow him to get some very easy buckets, but I do think that most athletic 7 footers would be doing just as well feasting on lobs and duck-ins with Steph and Draymond. Yes, Wiseman is 19, but Jarrett Allen was 19 as a rookie and his impact stats were far better than Wiseman's were and he was a late first round pick. Isiah Stewart and Precious Achiuwa are more impactful to winning than Wiseman is at this point as rookies. Both of them were late first rounders.

I for one, don't think he's worth the investment and I believe that the longer he is on this team, the more glaring his flaws will become and the harder it will be to get a superstar with Wiseman as a centerpiece of a trade package. It becomes more obvious with each game that his hands are terrible. He's not good enough to stay on the court defensively against good teams, so it's not like he's getting many chances to show teams he can play winning basketball. He'll get run in garbage time, sure, but his trade value would increase if he was playing 15-20 effective minutes a game for a playoff team. Right now, he's playing 15-20 minutes that are very hit and miss, he tanks our offense when he plays with Steph, and he has trouble catching the ball.

I will say this though, I'm not as worried about his defense long term as much as I am with his offense. I think he'll be a good, but not spectacular defender by year three or four, but he's not super switchable and I think I'd still probably trust Looney -- whatever is left of his body in two year -- more against the Luka and Harden and Dame types in the playoffs. But he's not going to be Gobert or Bam on defense and with his offensive limitations, that lowers his ceiling. I just don't see a superstar here and I see someone who won't be playing up to the value of his contract until year 3 or 4. And then once that happens, you have to decide how much to pay him. Does anyone really think Wiseman will be worth his max extension value by year 4? I'm pretty sure he'll ask for that, because any good agent will ask that for a top 3 draft pick. But if Wiseman continues down on this path, you're looking at someone whose trade value will diminish as people realize his ceiling is has some limits and that they'll be the ones that have to pay him.

Jarrett Allen just got traded for a 2nd round pick in the Harden trade and he's going to want at least $15 million in free agency this summer. If Wiseman by year 4 is only marginally better than Allen by virtue of having a three point shot -- go look at Allen's numbers and you'll realize that Wiseman might not be a more impactful player than Allen by year 4 -- how much does he go for in free agency? How much is he worth in a trade? I don't think any of you will like the answer.

EDIT: Another Wiseman thing I remembered. He's been called for goaltending several times this year for his hand touching the rim when he contests a shot. WTF?? I had never once seen that happen in my 15 + years of being an avid basketball watcher. None of our project bigs, scrub bigs, or athletic freak bigs with low IQ ever did that. Not Festus, not Javale, not rookie Biedrins, not Magic Randolph, not McAdoodoo, not Damion Jones.

[clyde21]

Jarrett Allen is a perfect example, and he wasn't drafted top 2, if people think Wiseman has more value than Allen on the open market you're kidding yourselves, and that's the entire point behind not picking someone with this archetype this high

can't believe we still gotta say this in 2021

[HiRez]

A pretty good argument, Warriors Analyst. I'm not totally with you because I think it's still too early, but you make good points. Overall among rookies, he's #5 in points, #2 in rebounds, and #1 in blocks (also #1 in fouls). That's not horrible for a project with almost no experience beyond high school ball. His TS% and EFG% are both better than LaMelo's as well. He does need to learn how to co-exist with Steph and be a catalyst instead of a boat anchor he needs to drag around. Grabbing more rebounds and making outlet passes would help. He should never be put in iso situations away from the rim right now IMO, it almost always works out badly while grinding the offense to a halt, Corey Maggette-style but without the freethrows at the end. Also, it's not always his fault, last night Steph delivered a pass that bounced right in front of Wiseman's feet, that's a tough thing for any 7 footer to do anything with, let alone a rookie.

The bad hands thing is what has disappointed me most about Wiseman so far. Yes, some of that is maybe overthinking, getting used to playing in the NBA, and knowing how his teammates deliver the ball, but the evidence keeps mounting that his hands and instincts are not in fact very good. He still seems surprised when a ball finds its way to him and he has trouble securing it even when he has both hands on it. Second, he's not nearly aggressive enough getting to the ball, he tends to just watch and wait when shots go up. I can't even count how many times another, often smaller, player has jumped in front of what should be his rebound and taken it from him (even his own teammates). I don't doubt some of that is fixable, and will come naturally in time, but is it enough, and will it happen soon enough?

He also takes to long to gather when contesting shots instead of going straight up (with his height a quick pop up is more valuable than a giant leap that takes time to wind up), it gives time for the offensive player to adjust, go around him, step back, etc. He needs to develop the element of surprise.

[DanLanghiOwnsAll]

He's a 19 year old project big man. If you're in a "win now" mentality then just say you aren't patient enough to deal with the growing pains of a rookie. We don't have to slander someone before their career has even gotten through half a season.

You guys would have traded a rookie Anthony Davis for Luol Deng or Carmelo with this logic.

[876Stephen]

He's a 19 year old project big man. If you're in a "win now" mentality then just say you aren't patient enough to deal with the growing pains of a rookie. We don't have to slander someone before their career has even gotten through half a season.

You guys would have traded a rookie Anthony Davis for Luol Deng or Carmelo with this logic.

Anthony Davis was an impact player from day 1. He was 2 or 3 years ahead of were Wiseman is at the same age especially defensively

If warrior fans are willing to sacrifice the remainder of steph,Klay and drays prime on the pie in the sky chance that Wiseman becomes the next Anthony Davis seems foolish to me.

[Mylie10]

Anthony Davis per 36 rookie year after a full year in college at a top program:

16.9 points, 10.2 rebounds, 2.2 blocks, 3.4 fouls

Not one three made for the year.

Wiseman per 36 rookie year 23 games since his 3 games in college:
21 points, 10.3 rebounds, 2.0 blocks 5.6 fouls shoots threes.

[ahmetmekin]

AD's rookie year: +2.5 bpm, +0.14 rpm
Wiseman as of today: -4.3 bpm, -1.5 rpm