WAKEANT wrote:Warriors Analyst wrote:bondom34 wrote:He's been the same player this season as every other season by most any measure.
I've done this elsewhere. But:
He's the same guy, with a new jersey. In fact, this not only isn't terribly out of line, it's not even his best overall season by most means if any. So yeah, gonna say its the jersey because nothing else seems much different.
So here's something I've been thinking a lot about: how different is Wiggins' offensive role this year from his TWolves days with KAT? It's widely known and accepted that Wiggins is overpaid and is not a great offensive player, in part because of fluctuating aggression, a weak handle, and an inconsistent jumpshot. I will not dispute any of that.
But I think this Warriors team is offensively a lot closer to the KAT TWolves than they are to the Warriors of yore. It's well documented that Wiggins ranks very poorly by the impact metrics as a first or second option. Hell, even his year as a third option with the Butler Wolves he ranked poorly, although I'm inclined to think that Wiggins' bad jumper + Thibs being a very rudimentary offensive coach and sticking Wiggins in the corner was a terrible idea. So is it any surprise that Wiggins impact numbers on offense are pretty much in line with his Wolves days if he's basically playing the same role: 2nd option to a 99th percentile shooter at their position with little to no spacing around them?
I think most of us can agree that Wiggins would look a lot better if Klay was on the Warriors. Prior to Klay's injury, I expected something around 18-20 points a game, 4 boards, 3-4 assists (more on that later) on 48/37/70 ish splits. I'm surprised to say, that's more or less what we're getting, minus two assists and plus two percentage points on his 3 ball. There's two things that I thought would be a lot better this year that really haven't been, in large part because of Kerr's coaching/the Warriors' spacing: Wiggins' 2P% and his assists.
I ran some numbers a while back and in the games without Wiseman (many of which have also been without Paschall), Wiggins shoots 54% 2P. As a point of reference, that's actually higher than what Steph shot in 2014-15 and 2016-17. That's only two points short of what KD is doing this year. It's not elite, but it's pretty damn solid. In games with Wiseman, that number goes down to 52% ish. On the season, Wiggins is at 51.6% on 2P%, which is a career high, but only half a percentage point above what he did the two years prior.
There's some obvious room for growth here and I think that number should be higher for a few reasons. I'm inclined to think that Wiggins playing in a quasi-motion system with lots of sets where he can get opportunistic cuts has bumped up his 2P% ever so slightly. I expected Wiggins to be at least at 54% on 2P with Klay healthy, which is what he's doing without Wiseman. Assuming some improvement from Wiseman, additional shooting next year on the roster, 20-25 minutes of Klay for 75% of the year, there's no reason Wiggins can't bump that number up to 56% ish, which is really good 2P efficiency.
But there's some deep issues with this Warriors team. Some of it is roster construction. Some of it is Kerr. Last night's game against the Bulls was very encouraging because it seems, hopefully, like it marked a turning point in Kerr deciding to... actually play his best players and commit to running PNR. As it stands, we only have 2 guys who play >20 minutes and shoot it at or above league average from three: Steph and Wiggins. And let's be real, does anyone believe Wiggins is a true 39% shooter? There's a very well documented Steph bump that ancillary players get on their 3P% when they're on the Warriors, although Oubre is seemingly immune to that Steph bump. But the point I'm making is that I don't think you're going to see defenders go over a screen on a Wiggins PNR anytime soon or close out with the fear of God when he shoots it in the corner.
Damion Lee and Mychal Mulder shoot 39% and 39.6% from three, but they've been in and out of the rotation -- more on that later -- and they're really the only two other pure shooters on this team. Bazemore is sitting at 39.3%, but his shots are mostly in the corners and he's very streaky. Poole is now a part of the rotation and though his average minutes are sitting at 17, he's going to be a 20-25 minute player for the rest of the season and he's a legitimate shooter, albeit a high volume and therefore high variance gunner.
Meanwhile, Kelly Oubre has been hovering at 30% for most of the last two months, Eric Paschall, who was mercifully excised from the rotation right before the trade deadline shoots it at 32%, Wiseman shoots it at 33% and has mostly stopped shooting them after shooting them a lot in the beginning of the season, and Wanamaker was shooting at 21.3%. Draymond's shooting issues are well documented. Wiggins/Paschall has a 99.8 ORTG and -8.4 net rating on 388 minutes this year, Wiggins/Wiseman 97.5 ORTG and -14.4 net rating in 496 minutes, Wiggins/Oubre 104.7 ORTG and -5.2 net rating on 889 minutes this year, Wiggins/Wanamaker 101.3 ORTG and -0.7 net rating in 400 minutes this year. There's a lot of noise in these numbers, obviously Wiggins/Oubre are getting a lot of numbers with the starters, Wiggins/Paschall is mostly a bench lineup, and Wiggins/Wiseman spent a lot of time in that starting lineup that was getting pummeled in the 1st quarters to start the season until Looney got his starting spot back.
But my point here is that Kerr has spent about 50 games trying to find lineup combos that make sense while trying to balance the egos and feelings of our prized rookie, Wiseman, our TPE get and potential FA returnee, Oubre, and the guy who scored the most points for us last year, Paschall. There have been some truly awful lineups getting big minutes and Kerr's decisions have been... maddening, to say the least. Defense has been overemphasized at the expense of floor spacing and while we nominally have a top 5 defense, good teams have made that defense look terrible. Lee and Mulder have been in and out of the rotation and pretty much every time Kerr has made a change to the rotation, they've been the ones getting less minutes as a result.
Paschall finally got pulled from the rotation, which bumped up Oubre to the backup 4 (thank god!) and should have happened a while back. Paschall/Wiseman has a -23.6 net rating in 96 minutes, Paschall/Oubre has a -19.3 net rating in 275 minutes, Paschall/Poole has a -13.9 net rating in 137 minutes, Paschall/Looney is -13.7 in 93 minutes, Paschall/Wanamaker was -8.6 in 417 minutes, Paschall/Wiggins is -8.4 in 388 minutes. There's only 4 Paschall two man combos with positive net ratings: Paschall/Steph, Paschall/Dray, Paschall/Mulder, and Paschall/Bazemore. His presence makes the rotation complicated because he's a non-shooting 4 who is best as a small ball 5 who gets to ISO over and over again. That obviously clashes with Wiggins and Oubre and Wiseman (and to a lesser extent Dray, but it's not really relevant because Draymond and Paschall have only ever really played together in closing lineups with Steph where Paschall isn't going ISO ball), all of whom are mediocre shooters who don't have the highest IQ's.
On top of that, Kerr decided to kibosh Wanamaker, which thrilled Warriors fans because we assumed Poole would get to run point guard next to Damion Lee or Bazemore and instead... Kerr was reluctant to give Poole ball handling duties and put in Nico Mannion at PG. Nico is up to 40% on threes in a small sample size, but he can't finish or shoot in the midrange, so defenses still don't respect him and he's a terrible defender right now. Kerr's big rotational adjustment managed to take out Wanamaker, our worst offensive player, and somehow make our offense and defense worse and teams went zone against our bench lineups and carving them up on the other end. Wiggins was the first one to get run next to Poole/Mannion until Steve decided to try Oubre in those lineups. Their net rating was -3.9 in 28 minutes, but um... they had a 82.2 ORTG, which would be 30 points below league average. It's a terrible fit for Wiggins, who is best with the ball in his hands next to shooters and the results were predictably bad: defenses don't guard Mannion with respect and Wiggins isn't respected as a floor spacer and now you have two guys above Wiggins in the ball handling hierarchy.
It was literally only last night that Kerr did what a lot of us have been begging for and let Poole run the second unit as the point guard and went small with Lee, Baze, and Oubre as the 2/3/4. Poole had a meh game and bricked a bunch of threes, but the rejiggered rotations kept Wiggins and Oubre apart for about 12 minutes and gave Wiggins additional minutes with Steph and Bazemore (lineups with Bazemore and the starters generally perform pretty well, much better with Looney and much worse with Wiseman though). And the best thing Kerr did last night was commit to running a lot of PNR, which usually consist of 18% of our offensive possessions. Last night the number was 40% and this was our depth chart:
Steph/Poole/Mannion
Oubre/Lee/Mulder
Wiggins/Bazemore
Green/Oubre
Wiseman/Looney/Green
Wiggins played really well last night and had 21 points and 5 assists. At this point I know better than to expect any consistency in his shooting or claim that he's turned a corner as a shooter. What's important to me is the efficiency and passing. When Kerr plays shooters and lets Wiggins PNR or ISO at the top of the key, he looks a lot better. Not $35 million better, but a totally useful offensive player. When Kerr does not play shooters, those Wiggins PNR and ISO's stall out and we get a barrage of lame ass stepbacks and futile drives into traffic (anecdotally, I've noticed that Wiggins gets a very tough whistle when drives to the hoop and draws contact and I've wondered if that's put him off of driving). And somehow, Wiggins is shooting a career high 2P% while taking less shots from less than three feet (albeit on a career high 69%) and less free throws than he ever has. I truly believe that's an issue with the scheme and Kerr's rotations.
It does seem that Kerr is fully committed to Oubre as the backup 4, which is great because it means no more Paschall. But what I really hope is that Kerr has turned a corner and decided to commit to PNR, particularly with Wiseman on the court. There's been an unconscionable amount of Wiseman postups this year and far too many instances of Wiggins trying to drive from the top of the key, only for Wiseman to flash middle and try and fail to seal his man, at which point the lane is too clogged for Wiggins to get all the way.
To sum this all up, Wiggins is mostly the same player as ever on offense, but I don't really think that's his fault. I'd argue that this Warriors team, up until this point in the season, has been closer to the KAT TWolves than the the high octane shooting offenses that we expect the Warriors to have under Kerr. In these circumstances, I don't think it's particularly surprising that Wiggins has had the same negligible offensive impact as he has for most of his career. I do think there's a path to slightly better offensive production if Kerr commits to spread PNR and shooting, at which point I think we will see Wiggins' 2P% and his assists have an uptick. I'll be watching those numbers for the rest of the year with last night's game against the Bulls as my marker for a revamped rotation/offensive scheme.
What I'm especially curious about next year is how Wiggins looks with Klay and hopefully, a more cohesive lineup/scheme. I think Wiggins as a third option in a quasi-motion scheme with good spacing should be totally bearable and I'd expect his offensive impact numbers to look better than in years past. He'll never earn his contract, but he's been useful to us this year and even with his limited skillset, there's a path to him being a helpful, if not good, offensive player for us in the right circumstances. Am I happy about the Warriors having to build a roster with Wiggins' limitations in mind? God no. But I'm also not lusting to pay the widely agreed upon price of picks/Wiseman to get off of Wiggins.
This post lost me when I saw he was listed as a PF....Wiggins has never played PF
Where do I list Wiggins as a PF? I say very clearly that Oubre is now getting minutes as the backup 4. In any event, I’m pretty sure we’ve played at least some minutes this year with Wiggins and Baze at the 3/4, but I would have to check to confirm. Besides, there would be only a nominal difference between who is the 3 and who is the 4 in that lineup.
