The Next Generation: Andrew Wiggins

Every season the draft brings a fresh infusion of talent to the NBA. In theory this is an even, steady process. In practice, hindsight and historical perspective show that there are borders and boundaries — talent doesn’t just arrive in the NBA, it arrives in generational waves. Sometimes we can’t see these aesthetic dividing lines for decades, sometimes you simply can’t miss them.

The present day NBA appears to be on the cusp of welcoming a remarkable new generation to its forefront — players who are not just incredible but incredibly unique. Players who will not just excel but transform the roles and responsibilities of basketball players as we understand them. Over the course of this week, The Step Back will be examining many of the players who could figure prominently in The Next Generation. Not every player we turn our attention to is destined to be a star, but all could play a role in defining the future of the NBA. Read the whole series here.

The Next Generation: Andrew Wiggins

Andrew Wiggins is going to break your heart.

There is no way around it. You might already be there, or it might be some random Thursday in the distant future, but Wiggins is going to disappoint you. He’s going to frustrate you and leave you with the bitter taste of his shortcomings. The thing is, that’s more about you than it is about him.

There is an argument to be made that NBA players are nothing more than failure machines. As a group, they miss more shots than they make. On average, they lose as often as they win. Nearly 500 players will take the court in any NBA season and only a dozen will be good enough to win a championship. Most just float through the season, sweating through brightly colored jerseys, getting their ankles taped and filling in littles ones and zeros in the box score. They dunk and feed digital highlight machines, but the true currency of success — real (ringz) or perceived (whatever other piece of hand-selected minutiae can help settle an argument) — stays out of reach for most of them.

Nit-picking Wiggins has become one of the favorite pastimes of the basketball internet. By the definition above, Wiggins is an uber-productive failure machine. Misses more than he makes? Check. Lost some games? Yup,156 and counting. Ringz? Zero. Pile on top of that the infinite difference between reality and expectations — did you know that he was the No. 1 pick and was traded to the Timberwolves because LeBron James preferred the experience of Kevin Love? Did you know that the Timberwolves were supposed to win 50 games this year and make the playoffs? — and Wiggins really begins to look like a steaming pile.

That’s an exaggerated barrel-is-half-empty point of view but it’s not that far off from the way Wiggins is discussed in some circles. And it all can really be traced back to one thing — outside of scoring — an area in which he has grown by leaps and bounds — he doesn’t do a whole lot on a basketball court.

This dynamic places Wiggins in the center of two debates — the puerile “numbers are stupid” vs. “numbers are everything” shouting match, and the much more meaningful adult conversation about how we actually and effectively evaluate the “goodness” of a player. That Wiggins contributes an inordinately small number of rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks, is not really up for debate, at least relative to his athletic peers. What that deficit actually means is where the discussion should start.

Wiggins has become a very good scorer. His true shooting percentage is not extreme but it’s healthy for a player who uses such a large share of his team’s offensive possessions. He also rarely turns the ball over, which everyone (except those nut-job Jamaal Tinsley stans) can agree is helpful. That Wiggins could produce more in other areas also seems undisputed. For some, that’s damning of his present and, considering the multi-year track record of that weakness, a reason to write off his future. For others, the most important factor is his potential to improve. Wiggins is just 21-years old and a gifted athlete — defensive events and prodigious rebound totals could come with seasoning and desire.

At the risk of oversimplification, here is the most even-keeled evaluation of Wiggins I can muster — he’s a good scorer but his overall value is less than you would expect from an efficient 23 point-per-game scorer because he does less of all the other stuff we would expect from a guy who scores that much and that well. Could he get better? Sure. Is he ever going to be as good as the rabid pre-draft hype machine made him out to be? Probably not, but pre-draft hype is a hell of a drug.

Wiggins is not the next LeBron. He is not a naturally sweetened, “Maple Jordan.” And that’s just fine.

The reason Andrew Wiggins is going to disappoint you is because he is a basketball player and a human being. It’s because he will never be as good as he could have been in our minds — just like every other athlete ever. Michael Jordan may have been the GOAT but he was also apparently an unrepentant jerk who spent two years of his prime bobbling pop flies and swinging wildly at sinkers in the dirt. LeBron James may have gotten more out of his physical and psychological potential than anyone else to ever play this game, and he still lost in the NBA Finals four times. Every NBA player, even the absolute best, has space between who they actually are on the court and the full realization of their potential.

That space, between potential and actualization, is especially noteworthy for Wiggins because it happens to be entwined in the narrative of LeBron and the Cavaliers. Because he happens to play for one of the league’s most talented young teams, a team that is destined for all the usual starts and stops as they try to chart an uncertain path to greatness. And because it happens to be a near-perfect example of the disconnect between how analytic adherents view certain measures and how another segment of fans do. Over the course of his career we will spend more time talking about Wiggins as a disappointment, not because he is unique in the scope of his failings, but because the unique nature of those failings (real and perceived) happen to be exceedingly interesting.

An extra two rebounds and a steal per 36 minutes isn’t going to change things. Neither is capping off a few more seasons of struggle and toil with Karl-Anthony Towns leading the Wolves to a ring. Because at some point after that title, Wiggins will age and get worse and sink back into humanity. Even if he found a way to crawl inside a legend, the story always ends. Wiggins doesn’t have the blinding transcendence to force us to overlook what he actually is.

Andrew Wiggins is going to let us down, but that’s our problem not his.