Is Andrew Wiggins Really That Bad?

[artsncrafts]

I will take him on the Raps if they attach some first round picks

[Prospect Dong]

It's basically a rudy gay situation when he was being overpaid, he just is not worth the money he is on. He isn't a horrible player he just is not a star player and should not be making over like 10-15 mil a year.

Gay was never really overpaid. That's why he was traded for small positive value twice. On his max deal, which grew a lot slower than the cap, he was somewhere just north of neutral value. You weren't excited about paying him that much, but you could talk yourself into it if your team otherwise struggled to use its cap space productively - like the Kings, the Grizzlies or the pre-Massai Raps. And he earned that money before spacing, and therefore shooting, became such a vital part of a volume scorer's appeal.

Wiggins would have to improve a lot to match what Gay - who wasn't really bad at anything - brought to a team. That's probably his best case scenario.

[dhsilv2]

He is only viewed as so bad because he makes far far to much money. If he was a 10 to 15 mill a year guy the hate wouldnt be so strong

Yes it would. The guy has not had a single NBA season where he had a VORP that was possessive.

RPM rank by year

2019 264
2018 322
2017 262
2016 229
2015 272

Basketball reference uses WS to come up with players who have had similar careers. His closest comps.

Bill Calhoun
Ed Conlin
Larry McNeill
T.J. Warren
Mike O'Koren
Bison Dele
Antoine Carr
Andrea Bargnani
James Jones
David Benoit

Now that list isn't GOD awful (I recall Antoine Carr has pretty ok as a rotation guy at one point), but here's the thing, his worst WS was last year at 0.6, his second worst is a tie between his rookie year and 2 years ago. He's actually getting worse!

if this idiot was making 10 million a year, it might still be the worst production to cost player in the league. I'll go further, rookies are almost universally under paid, Wiggins didn't earn his rookie deal.

[Klomp]

The bulk of the criticism comes from two areas:

1. Pre-College Hype
Everyone back then was proclaiming him to be the next all-world talent. Since he never developed into that, it must mean he's a horrible player, right?

2. Lack of understanding of the different max contract scales
He's on a max contract, so it must mean he's paid as much as the superstars, right? If so, and since he's not as good as them, it must mean he's a horrible player.

[artsncrafts]

He is only viewed as so bad because he makes far far to much money. If he was a 10 to 15 mill a year guy the hate wouldnt be so strong

Yes it would. The guy has not had a single NBA season where he had a VORP that was possessive.

RPM rank by year

2019 264
2018 322
2017 262
2016 229
2015 272

Basketball reference uses WS to come up with players who have had similar careers. His closest comps.

Bill Calhoun
Ed Conlin
Larry McNeill
T.J. Warren
Mike O'Koren
Bison Dele
Antoine Carr
Andrea Bargnani
James Jones
David Benoit

Now that list isn't GOD awful (I recall Antoine Carr has pretty ok as a rotation guy at one point), but here's the thing, his worst WS was last year at 0.6, his second worst is a tie between his rookie year and 2 years ago. He's actually getting worse!

if this idiot was making 10 million a year, it might still be the worst production to cost player in the league. I'll go further, rookies are almost universally under paid, Wiggins didn't earn his rookie deal.

Bargnani was actually pretty good for a 13 game stint in the middle of his career.

[Slim Tubby]

The hate on this kid is out of control. Is he grossly overpaid for his overall production? Absolutely. Does he really not care about basketball that much? None of us know yet many pretend they do. People are wired differently. I think it's obvious that he doesn't have the killer instinct that many lesser talented players have that outperform him.

Would anyone on this board have turned down the Max offer from Taylor? Hell no. He's seems like a really good kid that just doesn't make basketball the center of his life for whatever reason. He's never in trouble off the court yet the constant character attacks continue and are completely unwarranted.

As a Wolves fan, I wouldn't trade a nickel for this kid with that contract if I'm another team but he takes too much heat considering the good person he seems to be in life.


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[TheNewEra]

Any trade for Wiggins should involve Culver and multiple unprotected 1st

[KnicksGadfly]

The bulk of the criticism comes from two areas:

1. Pre-College Hype
Everyone back then was proclaiming him to be the next all-world talent. Since he never developed into that, it must mean he's a horrible player, right?

2. Lack of understanding of the different max contract scales
He's on a max contract, so it must mean he's paid as much as the superstars, right? If so, and since he's not as good as them, it must mean he's a horrible player.

Nah, he's just a horrible player

[HeartBreakKid]

The bulk of the criticism comes from two areas:

1. Pre-College Hype
Everyone back then was proclaiming him to be the next all-world talent. Since he never developed into that, it must mean he's a horrible player, right?

2. Lack of understanding of the different max contract scales
He's on a max contract, so it must mean he's paid as much as the superstars, right? If so, and since he's not as good as them, it must mean he's a horrible player.

he's also below average on all of the major facets of basketball. that helps.

timberwolves fans are honestly embarrassing themselves by saying "oh hes only bad for his contract". this is why people should not assume that homers know how good their own players are.

[XxIronChainzxX]

Thibodeau stunted his growth along with the trade for Jimmy Butler.

Nope. Thibodeau saw how useless his empty ass stats were and that's why he traded for Jimmy Butler.

No IQ, no ballhandling, no passing, no defense, no rebounding. He only scores so much because he literally has no idea what to do with the ball when he gets it except to shoot it. And because of his poor ballhandling and IQ, he isn't even good at that.

For reference.

3 year RAPM (16-19)

OFF: +2.7
DEF: -1.4
TOT: +1.29

3 year BPM (16-19)
OFF: -0.8
DEF: -1.9
TOT: -2.7

I can't believe I'm going to be the Andrew Wiggins guy...but methinks another team should try to buy low on him. Especially if they aren't planning on being competitive soon anyways. His PPG is not the shining light, but his RAPM is a little glimmer of hope.

Nah I'm pretty sure that just shows how useless RAPM is. And I'm not sure why you're bringing up his BPM because that is an awful BPM for a minimum guy, let alone a maximum guy. That's literally one of the worst BPMs among rotation players in the league.

RAPM is RAPM. If you think it's useless, no point in trying to convince you if that's your stance, you're not even interested in learning.

I brought up his BPM precisely because it is bad. That was the point of my initial post. People constantly cite Wiggins as a poor analytics player who post ups superficial stats. His BPM, for example, has been brought up more than once.

But not analytics hate him. The one glimmer of hope for Wiggins is his pure RAPM...which is interesting because that's the measure you'd least expect to favor him. It's certainly something that slipped past me.

You can't blindly rely on a metric. It's either a metric that accords well with observation and therefore is useful at the margin because it gives you counterintuitive or unexpected conclusions, or it's a metric whose underlying methodology is so sound you trust it over observation.

Slavishly adhering to a metric doesn't help. Let's say I come up with PAYNE - a metric that tracks how close you are to Cameron Payne. It's going to rank a bunch of scrubs really well - this is not unexpected because all it does is measure them against a scrub. I can use a lot of really elaborate math to make the comparison - but it's a dumb metric because it's conceptually flawed.

[Leslie Forman]

Sure, but statistics are not here to read like gospel. You should always consider the context, and this is the context. Wiggins has stats that indicate that he's a very poor player...but his lineup data is actually not bad. This is the opposite story of what people put into his narrative.

It's interesting, that's all.

It's really not. If he was, like, top-10 in RAPM for some crazy reason, that would be interesting. Going from, say, top-250 or so in one stat to top-150 or so in a different stat is just noise.

You really wanna blow $30million a year for the next four years on that one stat that still isn't actually even that good? Really? Tim Hardaway Jr. is waaaay above him. He's up there with Horford and Beal. You wanna trade for him too? Maybe throw a max offer sheet to Raul Neto? Of course not.

The bulk of the criticism comes from two areas:

1. Pre-College Hype
Everyone back then was proclaiming him to be the next all-world talent. Since he never developed into that, it must mean he's a horrible player, right?

No. That is the exact opposite of what happens with these overhyped star high schooler/mediocre pros. The high school hype is literally the only reason he went #1 and still gets random stragglers saying "maybe so-and-so should take a chance on him." Harrison Barnes is still overrated because of his damn high school hype. People still think Jahlil Okafor might not be absolutely awful.

He wasn't any better than, say, Kelly Oubre in college. Like Oubre, he was really just a raw kid who should have been taken in the teens. His ballhandling, playmaking, and all-around IQ looked awful back then too and everybody just ignored it.

Hell he shouldn't have even been rookie of the year. Mirotic was way better than him. But again, because of the hype, Wiggins got to be a #1 option and play 35+ MPG immediately even though he was terrible.

[Ill News]

When I hear the name Andrew Wiggins, the first words that pop up in my head are "underwhelming" and "disappointing." He has the athletic profile of a star, minus the actual willingness and drive to improve and succeed. The fact that he's always healthy has to be considered one of his weaknesses now, since he's always a negative when he's on the court.

[iggymcfrack]

What's up with people's hate on this guy? What's he so bad at? His FG% isn't atrocious although I haven't seem him play a whole lot.

He doesn’t get to the line and he takes a ton of bad 2s instead of shooting 3s. Also his FG% really isn’t very good. When you account for all that, he ranked 259th in TS% out of 276 players who played at least 1000 minutes. He’s very inefficient.

Also he’s terrible at rebounding, passing, and playing defense. And he’s lazy. He doesn’t move off the ball. He doesn’t set screens. Which means he’s good at........ oh right, nothing. Also he’s entering his 6th NBA season and he hasn’t improved one whit since high school. Yet somehow there are still people who want to pretend like maybe he’s not a terrible albatross contract making $120MM the next 4 years.

[Dave Meltzer]

I still can't believe I watched this last year. Calling him the 6th best 2 way player in the league.

Watch on YouTube

[Pelon chingon]

Wolves should bench him to see if that lights a fire underneath him. Hes a sunk cost anyways its not like they are going to bamboozle another team into trading for him.

[Leslie Forman]

He has the athletic profile of a star

Here's the thing - he doesn't. He's only a star at jumping high. He isn't any more of an NBA athlete than Jeremy Evans or Hamidou Diallo.

He's taken 6578 shots in the NBA and his only move is dribble, spin left, ????? That's it. 6 years removed from high school and that's still all he's got.

[Prospect Dong]

The bulk of the criticism comes from two areas:

1. Pre-College Hype
Everyone back then was proclaiming him to be the next all-world talent. Since he never developed into that, it must mean he's a horrible player, right?

2. Lack of understanding of the different max contract scales
He's on a max contract, so it must mean he's paid as much as the superstars, right? If so, and since he's not as good as them, it must mean he's a horrible player.

These are part of the problem. But most of it is just that he's vastly overpaid even relative to the contract he is on. I argue above that he'd need to make significant improvements to be as good as TJ Warren, and that no one would take Warren and his $12m average salary for free. He's not an NBA-level starter right now, though he's young enough that he could become one. That's probably his realistic ceiling at this point.

[Slim Tubby]

The bulk of the criticism comes from two areas:

1. Pre-College Hype
Everyone back then was proclaiming him to be the next all-world talent. Since he never developed into that, it must mean he's a horrible player, right?

2. Lack of understanding of the different max contract scales
He's on a max contract, so it must mean he's paid as much as the superstars, right? If so, and since he's not as good as them, it must mean he's a horrible player.

he's also below average on all of the major facets of basketball. that helps.

timberwolves fans are honestly embarrassing themselves by saying "oh hes only bad for his contract". this is why people should not assume that homers know how good their own players are.

Klomp is far from a homer when it comes to analyzing players from the team he supports. Take a gander over to MN board and you'll find a completely different perspective than the picture you paint here.

Perhaps you should do some research first before making a derogatory remark about an entire fan base. It makes you look quite simple.


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[bargnanimvp]

It's basically a rudy gay situation when he was being overpaid, he just is not worth the money he is on. He isn't a horrible player he just is not a star player and should not be making over like 10-15 mil a year.

Gay was never really overpaid. That's why he was traded for small positive value twice. On his max deal, which grew a lot slower than the cap, he was somewhere just north of neutral value. You weren't excited about paying him that much, but you could talk yourself into it if your team otherwise struggled to use its cap space productively - like the Kings, the Grizzlies or the pre-Massai Raps. And he earned that money before spacing, and therefore shooting, became such a vital part of a volume scorer's appeal.

Wiggins would have to improve a lot to match what Gay - who wasn't really bad at anything - brought to a team. That's probably his best case scenario.

Disagree, there was a period of a couple of seasons where people laughed at his pay and said he'd be solid if you halved it. But true he isn't as bad at anything as Wiggins is at some things

[Prospect Dong]

It's basically a rudy gay situation when he was being overpaid, he just is not worth the money he is on. He isn't a horrible player he just is not a star player and should not be making over like 10-15 mil a year.

Gay was never really overpaid. That's why he was traded for small positive value twice. On his max deal, which grew a lot slower than the cap, he was somewhere just north of neutral value. You weren't excited about paying him that much, but you could talk yourself into it if your team otherwise struggled to use its cap space productively - like the Kings, the Grizzlies or the pre-Massai Raps. And he earned that money before spacing, and therefore shooting, became such a vital part of a volume scorer's appeal.

Wiggins would have to improve a lot to match what Gay - who wasn't really bad at anything - brought to a team. That's probably his best case scenario.

Disagree, there was a period of a couple of seasons where people laughed at his pay and said he'd be solid if you halved it. But true he isn't as bad at anything as Wiggins is at some things

A lot of casual fans, and some of the serious ones, think everyone is overpaid. They're mostly wrong. One good test is whether, when a player gets traded, his team gets something of value back, or needs to send additional value. It's possible Gay was overpaid by the end of his time with the Kings - he'd declined somewhat by then and the league had moved away from his game - but both times he was moved the receiving team sent something of (small) value back.