The Hamptons 5, part 3: Andre Iguodala

Welcome to the “Hamptons 5” series, a five-part look at the Golden State Warriors’ legendary lineup. We will break down each player, looking at where they rank in the league as well as on their own team, what they’ve accomplished as well as where they are headed. In Part 3, we look at Andre Iguodala.

How different the Golden State Warriors’ world and entire NBA universe would be with no Andre Iguodala. There would be no 2015 title and no 73-9 season. No Stephen Curry MVP, no Bob Myers Executive of the Year and no second version of either. No meeting in the Hamptons, no Kevin Durant, and thus no quintet from which to derive this series’ name.

Even after that fateful day on the eastern tip of Long Island, the Warriors are still often referred to as a “Big Four.” Curry, Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green are forces, All-Stars and global brands. Iguodala is a subtle-game changer, and his only notable commercial is that one where he has like 50 arms.

However, the entire Warriors organization made one thing clear this summer: This is a fivesome. Iguodala made it clear with his contract demands. Joe Lacob made it clear by agreeing to those lofty terms. Myers made it clear by prioritizing him over other free agents. Durant made it clear by taking $10 million less than he could have otherwise.

As Iguodala enters the latter phase of his terrific career, we examine what he’s accomplished, where he stands within the league and what is still to come.

What Iguodala has accomplished

Career stats: 13.0 PPG, 5.3 RPG, 4.5 APG, 1.6 SPG, 0.5 BPG, 2.0 TOV, 46.5 FG%, 33.6 3P%, 71.4 FT%

Resume: 2015 NBA Finals MVP, one-time All-Star, one-time All-Defensive First Team, one-time All-Defensive Second Team, two-time NBA champion

Highlights: 25 points in last game of 2015 NBA Finals, a ton of buzzer–beaters, two tons of insane dunks

Freakish athleticism and profound on-court I.Q. are the skills least often paired within an NBA player. The combination is found almost exclusively in the game’s all-time greats: LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Bill Russell come to mind.

After those three, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who possesses both traits to the level of Iguodala. Are there 10 better dunkers of the post-Jordan era? How many have been as heady on defense and as poised on offense?

The true uniqueness of Iguodala, however, is not his blend of a brilliant cerebellum and nuclear explosiveness. It is that he is not a superstar despite these traits, and that he knows and accepts this reality.

Golden State Warriors

During his Sixers days, Iguodala’s physical gifts forced him into the “star” box. Naturally, he disappointed the country’s grumpiest fan base in this role. He never had the handle, isolation polish, long range shot or craft around the rim to be an efficient high usage scorer. That he fell short of these expectations caused many to ignore his tremendous court vision, transition playmaking and destructive defense.

He was traded to the Denver Nuggets in the summer of 2012. After eight years in Philly, he was finally allowed to be himself. He had one of his least productive statistical seasons, but was also the clear best player on a 57-win team.

When the Warriors signed him the following offseason, it was arguably the biggest free agent get in franchise history. While his numbers were reduced to those of a role player, his impact became greater than ever.

After spending the bulk of his career miscast, Iguodala found with the Warriors a fit more perfect than most can dream of. Curry and Thompson took away the scoring and shooting burden. The team’s emphasis on help and switching highlighted his defensive strengths, while his transition finishing and playmaking thrived in the fast pace that Steve Kerr implemented.

When Golden State reached the 2015 Finals, it had two potentially futile holes in its otherwise-dominant gameplan. It needed someone to guard James, and it needed someone to step into the open threes and mid-rangers that Cleveland granted anyone not named Steph or Klay.

Iguodala answered both calls, and poetically, he defeated James, started the greatest run of team dominance since Jordan’s Bulls, and received the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award for his efforts.

Where Iguodala ranks on the Warriors

No one on any team, perhaps in NBA history, has ever been as easy to identify as his team’s fifth-best player as Iguodala.

He sits as far below Curry, Durant, Thompson and Green as he stands above Shaun Livingston, David West and Zaza Pachulia. He is no longer capable of playing at an All-Star level for more than a few playoff games, and even then, his minutes must be limited.

Iguodala’s ranking will change in time. He is 33, and Patrick McCaw is likely to surpass him as the Warriors’ No. 1 wing off the bench within the next three years — before the expiration of Iguodala’s new deal. That changing of the guard could come much sooner given Iguodala’s increasing fragility and McCaw’s breakout potential.

For now, he’s as firmly entrenched at No. 5 as an NBA player will ever be.

Where Iguodala ranks in the NBA

Unlike with Thompson, Durant, Green and Curry, we will not approach this section literally. We can roughly gauge where he falls (somewhere around No. 50), but league-wide rankings don’t resonate past the top 25 or so.

A better question is this: Where does Iguodala rank among NBA wings?

We can immediately rule out every All-Star caliber guy. That’s James, Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Thompson, Jimmy Butler, Paul George, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Gordon Hayward, DeMar DeRozan and Carmelo Anthony (and James Harden, depending on how you categorize him).

After that, things become difficult. Before figuring out where to place Iguodala, we need to establish a criteria for ranking non-elite wings.

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Players who excel as scorers quickly lose their value when you get below the elite tier (this problem really starts with DeRozan and Anthony). If a wing is not good enough to create efficient shots for themselves in the halfcourt, they can best serve their team in three ways: by setting up those who can, by spacing the floor for those who can and by defending those who can.

There are only a handful of non-elite scoring wings in the league who excel in at least two of these categories. They are: Khris Middleton, Nicolas Batum, Jae Crowder, Danny Green, Avery Bradley and Iguodala. Harrison Barnes, Wilson Chandler, J.J. Redick and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope are not quite versatile enough, while Andrew Wiggins, Devin Booker and Jabari Parker are far too one-dimensional at this stage in their careers.

Combining on-ball and off-ball impact, Iguodala is the best overall defender in this group. He’s probably the worst shooter of the bunch, but is the best facilitator after Batum. This gives Batum — a solid defender in his own right — the overall edge, and Middleton is right behind him as the group’s best two-way player.

Iguodala is next, from a pure on-court standpoint. His supreme versatility and unparalleled I.Q. outweigh the edge that Green, Crowder and Bradley have as outside shooters. However, it is unlikely that he would hold up under the minutes load that Bradley and Crowder receive. That leaves him as the 15th-best wing in the NBA—and the third-best on his own team.

Projecting Iguodala’s 2017-18 numbers

Perhaps no Warriors player benefitted more from the addition of Durant than Iguodala. The superstar forward relieved the 33-year-old’s James-guarding burden in the Finals, allowed him to save even more energy leading up to the Finals and gave him more space to work with offensively than ever before.

Iguodala — an expert cutter and the league’s best picker of spots — made the most of this. He shot 52.8 percent from the field last year, shattering his previous career-high of 50.0 percent. He also had the best assist-to-turnover rate of his career, leading the league with a ratio of 4.50 to 1. Chris Paul was second, at 3.83 to 1.

None of that should change much, though the field goal percentage may regress some. Iguodala’s counting stats, however, should dip due to a likely reduction in playing time. After dropping from 26.9 to 26.6 to 26.3 minutes over the last three seasons, we can at the very least expect another 20-second drop.

A steeper decrease is more likely. Last year’s number is inflated by Durant’s 20-game absence, and the Warriors will be deeper on the wing than ever before. Omri Casspi, Nick Young and Patrick McCaw are all threats to Iguodala’s regular-season role.

He averaged 7.6 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.0 steals per game in 2016-17. Should he play 24-25 minutes this coming year, those averages will drop accordingly.

Projections:  6.9 PPG, 3.7 RPG, 3.2 APG, 0.4 BPG 0.9 SPG, 0.8 TOV, 50.7 FG%, 35.8 3P%, 67.5 FT%

Where Iguodala is headed

In Part 1 of this series, we compared Thompson’s Hall of Fame resume to that of Manu Ginobili. In a different way, the Argentinian guard also serves as a proxy for Iguodala.

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Iguodala never reached the heights of a Thompson or Ginobili. The players’ extreme disparity in early-career situations — ideal for Thompson and Ginobili, toxic for Iguodala — might be more responsible than a disparity in talent, but that ultimately doesn’t matter. Having a Hall of Fame career is based partially on luck. The less undeniably talented you are, the more true this is.

James, Jordan and Russell would have been Hall of Famers anywhere; Thompson and Ginobili needed to be drafted by the right teams. Iguodala eventually found his basketball haven, but not until his best decade was all but behind him.

His 2015 Finals MVP gave him a shot at enshrinement. With a few more rings and possibly another piece of personal hardware, he would have been on the cusp. But the Warriors lost in 2016, and Iguodala’s injured back and infamously-doomed layup was at the center of it. He got a second ring in 2017, but Durant had replaced him as the LeBron stopper, not to mention as the Finals MVP.

Next: NBA Trade Grades - Cavaliers send Kyrie Irving to Celtics

The Springfield, Illinois native will likely never have a plaque in Springfield, Massachusetts. That should be no tragedy to a player of Iguodala’s inclinations, particularly if he is remembered as a culture changer, a multi-time champion and the fifth member of the greatest fivesome the game has ever seen.