Luckily, Wiggins has some low-hanging fruit here. Further increasing his offensive efficiency would bolster his on-court value. What areas could Wiggins look to improve the most? Shootingĭespite improvement, Wiggins remains less efficient than the league-average player overall. However, still shy of his 25th birthday and possessing extraordinary athletic abilities, there is plenty of room to grow for Wiggins. 538 still places his 5-year market value at just above $58 million, well below his actual salary. This season looks to be a major turning point for him he’s now a positive force for the Timberwolves’ playoff hopes.ĭoes that mean Wiggins’ contract is justified? Likely not, even in light of his improvements. In past years, advanced stats have not been kind to Wiggins, often painting him as a negative overall for his team. Wiggins is undoubtedly playing the best basketball of his career and there aren’t any strong signs that it’s unsustainable. He has fundamentally changed his playing style for the better. That Wiggins increased efficiency is mostly from improved shot selection is likely a good thing he isn’t riding a hot shooting streak that will cool off. Wiggins remains a mediocre three-point shooter (just 33.6% this season), but the fact that he has maintained his percentage on substantially more attempts is a positive. As a result, he now shoots 6.6 three-pointers a game, against 4.8 last year and just 3.4 on his career average. This season, less than 9% of his shots are long two’s, and 32.2% are now three-pointers - the highest rate he has ever posted. Last season, 18.1% of his shot attempts were long two’s (and it peaked at over 25% in this third season). Wiggins has successfully converted most of his long two’s into three point attempts or shots closer to the basket. However, this past season his game looks much more modern. Wiggins plays an old-school game that relies heavily on long two’s and mid-range shots. It carries nearly all the difficulty of a three-point attempt with none of the reward. The “long two” has long been derided by the analytical types. These charts can be reproduced with the following code in R: library(ggplot2) ggplot(df, aes(fill=Distance, y=Value, x=Year)) + geom_bar(position = “fill”, stat=”identity”) + theme_classic() + labs(y = “Percentage of Shots Taken”, x = “Season”, caption = “Source: Basketball-Reference”) Before the start of the season, ESPN ranked the top one hundred players in the league Wiggins was left off the list entirely (an odd feat for someone earning about $27.5 million this year). Worst of all, his defensive potential has turned into nothing - in fact, advanced stats showed he was a decidedly negative presence on defense.Įven more concerning, there looked to be zero hope of improvement: his last two seasons had been his worst since entering the league. His scoring efficiency was poor (a career average True Shooting percentage of 52%, while the league average is above 55%). Sure, almost anyone would concede Wiggins could score some points - he carried a solid career average of 19.7 points per game. ![]() After 5 seasons in the NBA, Wiggins was beginning to look like a massive bust. Just this summer, Andrew Wiggins 5-year $148 million max contract was considered unmovable - some began to speculate it was among the worst contracts in the league. ![]() Wiggins’ progress seems to stop in its tracks, and his play noticeably regressed in many areas. Seeing this potential, the Minnesota Timberwolves gave Wiggins a massive contract extension, cementing him as a cornerstone of their young rebuild. After being taken first overall in the NBA draft, he won the Rookie of the Year award in his first NBA season, showing the potential to be one of the league’s premier two-way players. Coming into the league, Wiggins was a highly lauded high school and college prospect. Image by Frenchieinportland on Wikimedia CommonsĪndrew Wiggins’ basketball career has so far taken an arc resembling a roller-coaster.
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