Minnesota Timberwolves: What’s left of Andrew Wiggins’ potential?

Andrew Wiggins is struggling yet again as the Minnesota Timberwolves linger around .500. Is the shine finally off the 23-year-old would-be superstar?

In the waning minutes of the third quarter of the Minnesota Timberwolves‘ game against the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night, something strange happened — Bulls announcers Neil Funk and Stacey King began discussing Andrew Wiggins.

Funk, the veteran play-by-play legend, held absolutely nothing back:

"“We’ve seen Minnesota twice this season and Wiggins has not been engaged in either game.“He just kind of floats around out there — he does nothing … [Zach LaVine] is just much more active than a Wiggins type, night in and night out … and Wiggins just has that, and I’m sure he wants to compete, we know he’s a talent, there’s no arguing that, but his body language is as if ‘I don’t care, I’m just out here.'”"

King tried to take some of the burn off by noting Wiggins’ immense two-way potential when he plays assertively, but to hear such blunt commentary from anyone is startling in 2018, when everybody is friendly with each other and the league as a whole is looking to continue its forward momentum with good vibes and entertainment.

Wiggins finished Wednesday’s game with 14 points on 5-of-15 shooting, another off night in a string of them this season. Wiggins, who turns 24 in February, has been a subject of constant analysis and derision.

At this point in his career, most have given up on him as ever becoming anything more than an inefficient scorer and for those not paying attention on a nightly basis — essentially everyone outside of Minnesota — Wiggins has fallen firmly into the schema of a player who sucks.

The once-upon-a-time Canadian wunderkind is averaging 16.6 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game on .401/.358/.717 shooting splits, all pitiful marks for someone playing over 30 minutes a night, let alone someone with Wiggins’ immense physical gifts.

Advanced stats continue to hate Wiggins as well — he is 81st among the 86 small forwards listed in ESPN’s Defensive Real Plus/Minus, and his RPM (minus-1.19) puts him 50th among that group.

His 49.7 True Shooting percentage is squarely in the bottom third of the league’s eligible players.

All of this is such a far cry from this guy, the 2014-15 Rookie of the Year winner:

Wiggins rarely attacks the basket with that level of determination and ferocity nowadays, but there is no reason why that shouldn’t be in him anymore. If anything, entering his physical prime, we should be seeing more of that than we did during his rookie season.

Hindsight bias is a hell of a thing, so after a season and a half of Wiggins falling to the wayside, it would be easy to say he has peaked.

However, for as little linear improvement as he showed from his first to second season and his second to third season in the NBA, this is still a guy who has posted two seasons of 20-plus points per game.

Scorers like that don’t vanish into thin air without at least suffering a major injury, which Wiggins never has. Yes, Wiggins has never been good on defense for prolonged periods and his overall box score impact routinely lacks, but he cannot be dismissed simply as a bad player.

For what is a complex plethora of reasons, some of which we may never know, Wiggins’s development stalled in the 2017-18 season after Jimmy Butler arrived, and despite Butler now playing for the Philadelphia 76ers, Wiggins has not regained his mojo.

Wiggins usage rates throughout his career don’t point to any drastic setback, even as he became the third option once Butler donned a Timberwolves uniform.

These are his usage rates, in order: 22.6, 27.2, 29.0, 23.4 and 23.4 so far this year. Nearly a 6 percent drop is certainly something, but he is still getting plenty of rope to do with what he wants.

How he is using his possessions is a different story, however. Wiggins has gone from Russell Westbrook-lite, using his athleticism to put constant pressure on the rim, to Jimmer Fredette, a guy who spends most of his time hanging out aimlessly around the arc.

Wiggins has brought the 2018-19 mark up to 5.6 free throw attempts per 100 possessions over the past month, but it still isn’t enough for a guy whose shooting percentages are near the bottom of the league.

Wiggins’ free throw rate in his first two seasons was 41.0 and 43.7 percent — numbers around LeBron James‘ and Dwayne Wade’s career averages. Simply put, he was leveraging his athletic gifts to put pressure on defenses.

Too often now, he settles into routines that end with him jacking up shots. His shot progression is getting better though, as he is currently taking 31.6 percent of his shots behind the arc, up from 26 percent last year and a miniscule 11.1 percent of his total shots during his rookie year.

Likewise, his deep-2 (16+ feet) attempts have thankfully gone in the other direction, dipping from 25.3 percent of his shot selection to 19.5 percent to 17.3 percent from 2016-17 through 2018-19.

Wiggins is listening to someone, even if his career shot chart still looks rather ugly.

The question, at least on offense, still remains: why isn’t he taking the ball to the hoop more? From the eye test alone, it’s a matter of his sub par handle and his slender frame.

Back during his freshman season at Kansas in 2013-14, Wiggins was listed at 200 pounds (likely a slight exaggeration). Today, almost five years later, he is listed at 194 pounds and looks as skinny as ever.

There is simply no way he has spent extended periods of time in the weight room, which is exactly what he needs to expand his game.

Wiggins can do this against less physical players like Nicolas Batum:

… but too often when he takes the ball to the rim, Wiggins meets a wall of bodies and doesn’t have the strength to finish or kick the ball out.

Wiggins does not need to undergo a Giannis Antetokounmpo-level body transformation, but putting on even 10-15 pounds of muscle over the next year would potentially unlock a whole new aspect to his game.

On both sides of the ball, Wiggins usually wanders back listlessly the minute the ball goes up; if he were stronger, maybe it’d be possible for a 6’8” athlete of his quality to rebound his position at a league average or better. for once.

His dribble is similarly unchanged from when he entered the NBA. In fact, his draft report write-up still haunts him all these years later. Per NBADraft.net, Wiggins’ weaknesses back in 2014 were:

"Weaknesses: The biggest issue is whether or not Wiggins has the mental make up to maximize his immense physical gifts. While some scouts are extremely high on him, there are just as many that question his focus and passion for the game … Often plays too upright on offense, which can get him off his base and lead to turnovers … Needs to work on moving without the ball, has a reputation of sometimes standing, ball watching … Defensive awareness is something he must work on, along with always running out to his spot and not relying completely on length, athleticism to challenge a player … Still needs to add upper body strength, had issues finishing around the basket and getting knocked off of his spot when defensive rebounding …  Often loose with dribble, sometimes has the ball too high and gets exploited when double teamed … Some question his lack of assertiveness offensively, which calls into question his ability to be a primary option on a high level team … Battled inconsistency and struggled against physical defense, which could point to strength as well as a sign of shaky confidence"

Wiggins has failed to properly put any of those worries to rest up to this point. When Wiggins does flash moments on both ends of the court, it’s easy to see why he was so hyped initially, but those moments are too few and far between.

For every possession like this:

… or defensive play like this:

https://twitter.com/Timberwolves/status/1071629092246568961

… there are five possessions when he stands on the wing doing nothing or runs into a screen and gives up on the play.

After this thunderous dunk by Timberwolves rookie Josh Okogie in October, Wiggins told reporters,

Wiggs! You’re 23 my man — you are still the young you!

Everything about Andrew Wiggins screams a crisis of confidence. Whispers during his time at Kansas noted that Bill Self couldn’t yell at him or he would shut down, which must put head coach Tom Thibodeau in an unenviable position.

I don’t know how involved the Timberwolves are with their players’ mental health, but I honestly think some counseling could go a long way for Wiggins. That is not a knock on him, and it isn’t the equivalent of Jimmy Butler telling anyone who’d listen that the Canadian is soft.

For some reason, when Andrew Wiggins steps onto a basketball court, he simply doesn’t channel his focus the way great players need to.

Wiggins has not been good for most of this season, but he played terribly in November in particular, when he was recovering from a quad injury which had forced him to miss games for the first time in his career, as well as adjusting to life as a father.

Anyone with a newborn can tell you that sleep is hard to come by, and your performance at work, no matter what your job is, might slip.

These facts don’t excuse the putrid performances he submitted that month, but they should cut him some slack — the difference between 40 percent shooting (around where he is now) and 44 percent shooting (where he was in October and has been in December) is ginormous.

The Timberwolves franchise hinges on that difference, as sad as it is to say. No matter how good Karl-Anthony Towns is, Minnesota has tried and failed the single-superstar approach multiple times.

Signing Wiggins to a max deal worth nearly $150 million tied the franchise’s fate to the Canadian enigma the moment Glen Taylor looked him in the eye and was satisfied that the young Canadian was going to try harder — yes, that really happened.

The deal was ridiculed immediately, and now looks untradeable.

Yet every time when even the Timberwolves and the fans are ready to throw in the towel, Wiggins pulls them back in.

On Sunday against the defensive juggernaut Oklahoma City Thunder, Wiggins dropped 30 points on 11-of-20 shooting to go with five assists, performing great against premium defenders like Paul George and Steven Adams.

A few days later, on Friday night against the Atlanta Hawks, he missed 7-of-12 free throws and was booed by the Timberwolves fans in attendance. It’s a fickle overall situation.

Wiggins won’t ever post 30 points night after night, but you have to hope that the new and positive locker room vibes will help him acclimate after over a year of constant reality checks.

At this point, almost halfway through the 2018-19 season, he will probably continue his grab bag of the good with the bad. Very few people will change their minds about Wiggins as a player this season.

What he can do to salvage his reputation and become a very good player, even if he will never become the unquestionable superstar many thought he’d be when he was at Kansas, is rededicate himself the minute the season ends.

Hit the gym, dribble a ball everywhere he goes and put away the video games and frivolities. He needs to more seriously address his weaknesses as a player, and time is already running thin. This next offseason may be his last chance to make a leap.

Judging from his Instagram account as well as that of his girlfriend, Andrew Wiggins is a good guy who loves dogs and his infant daughter. He’s committing to charity work. He is a totally well-adjusted guy who just so happens to be one of the most athletic people on the planet.

What’s troubling is that over four years into his career, it still isn’t clear if he loves basketball. Where he goes from here on the court is anyone’s guess, but if he respects himself, he’ll put in the work to maximize his abilities and become a semblance of the Maple Jordan so many of us dreamed about.