It’s Time for Andrew Wiggins to Step it Up if the Wolves Want to Win

Wrote about Andrew Wiggins, who will have to change his game to adjust to new circumstances in Minnesota. An excerpt:

Wiggins cannot just continue along the same path his career has started on, because from now on he’ll be playing next Butler. The two are remarkably similar offensive players, with Wiggins as essentially a slightly poorer man’s version of his new teammate. Both players operate from largely the same areas of the floor. They both like to catch the ball, wait a beat, survey the defense, and then barrel their way to the rim, if possible. (They do it in different ways, with Butler using sheer strength and Wiggins using lithe agility, but they have the same goal when attacking off the dribble.) Neither is a particularly high-volume or high-percentage outside shooter, so both instead use their ability to get to the free-throw line as an efficiency booster. Butler just does all of those things a bit better than Wiggins does.

Given that Butler’s the better, more established player, it seems likely that Wiggins will be the one who is forced into adapting his game. What might that mean? More spot-up shooting, for sure, and more cutting action as well. Wiggins should actually do fine there — he came into the league with the knock that he was a broken shooter, but he knocked down 40 percent of 175 catch-and-shoot threes last season and is at 37.8 percent for his career, with his volume rising each season. Playing off Towns and Butler should yield easier looks than he’s gotten in the past, so he could even see another slight bump in his percentages. He’s also shown the ability to make the instinctual cut when the heart of the defense opens as a reaction to penetration or a Towns post-up. He should be able to take advantage of additional cracks in the foundation of defenses to find opportunities for easy baskets.

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