ANDREW WIGGINS!
Andrew Wiggins, ladies and gentlemen. Andrew Wiggins! ANDREW WIGGINS!
Steph went 0/9 from three—the first game since 2018 where he didn’t make a three, that’s 233 straight—and Andrew Wiggins carried the Warriors. And he did it with a stuffed statsheet: 26 points, 13 rebounds, two steals and two assists on 12/23 shooting. His main defensive assignment was Jayson Tatum, who had a quasi-bounce-back game even though he’s still pressing in late moments.
It’s an incredible story; before Game 5, Wiggins odds of being the NBA Finals MVP jumped from +15000 to +1400. Steph is still in pole position, and I fully expect him to go berserk in Game 6, but damn… Andrew Wiggins!
It’s been a weird career for Wiggins, to say the least. He had an uneven single season at Kansas, a campaign where he dropped 41 on West Virginia (has Self ever leaned on one player’s offense so heavily in a given season?) but then ran away from the ball in an embarrassing tournament loss to Stanford, a game where KU did not make a three and I have to double-check that every time I type it because it’s so unbelievable.
He was drafted number one, only to be dealt; he never suited up for the Cavs, and was thus thrust into a doomed situation in Minnesota. He got a rep there as a gunner with a lackadaisical approach to defense, an overly laid-back player who could not rise to the level of his incredible athletic gifts. A trade away from Minnesota was assumed to be the Wolves cutting bait on the high-priced Wiggins, and wherever he went, his albatross contract would be fodder for another future trade. Oh, and he wouldn’t get the jab. The vibes were decidedly not immaculate.
The… opposite has happened? Whether this is a story about player improvement or team fit—Zach Lowe muses about this in a great piece breaking down the Warriors re-tool in the wake of Kevin Durant’s decision to go to Brooklyn—Wiggins has proved to be indispensable for a team one game away from an NBA Championship, a title that would completely reset the narrative of the NBA’s most influential team. It’s a mind-blowing development.
So let’s give it up to Wiggins. We won the title 71 days ago… IT ALL DOESN’T FEEL REAL.