The 2021-2022 Golden State Warriors season-in-review: James Wiseman
The narrowly avoided consequences of Wiseman's long rehab, his G-League and Summer League stints examined, and the financial implications of keeping Wiseman instead of Poole, Wiggins, and Draymond.
James Wiseman’s grade: Incomplete
The Golden State Warriors built a roster light in the frontcourt to accommodate second-year center, James Wiseman, only for him to miss the entire season 2021-22 rehabbing the meniscus he tore in April of last year. I’m not a medical professional — although I do date one — so I’m not going to speculate much on Wiseman’s long-term health. I will note, however, that Wiseman’s beleaguered meniscus rehab is the longest one I remember in my life as an obsessive basketball fan. Friend of the Substack and former healthcare worker, FNQ, noted on RealGM recently that Wiseman is not the only NBA player to have a complicated recovery process from a meniscus injury and pointed to the trials and tribulations of Lonzo Ball.
Tons of variance in this injury though. What's more concerning is the trend, something that was ramping up a few years back but a lot of us shrugged it off as just the high end of a range. There were a couple medical outlets wondering whether or not our increased activity in sports, as well as the focus on fast-twitch motion, could be contributing to more damaging injuries around the knee, specifically the MCL and meniscus.
Take that for what it’s worth. I value FNQ’s opinion and medical expertise, so I thought you might too. But back to Wiseman. The Warriors very publicly expected James Wiseman to be healthy come training camp. That was not the case. In November, a possible Thanksgiving return was pushed in the friendly Bay Area media, but when that didn’t come to pass, The Athletic's Anthony Slater wrote a piece about Wiseman’s ongoing rehab. Here are some notable parts of that article:
Nearly eight months after meniscus surgery, James Wiseman is still not cleared for full contact 5-on-5 work. Steve Kerr gave that non-update update pregame. It’s become increasingly clear that the Warriors’ young center — attached to so much promise, pressure and expectation — won’t return to an NBA court until some time in 2022.
“Umm. Where are we — December 6th?” Steve Kerr said. “So, he hasn’t scrimmaged yet. By the time he comes back and scrimmages, it’s going to take some time from there. You guys can do the math. I don’t want to be a headline.”
Those closest to Wiseman’s recovery insist that this length of an absence was always in the reasonable realm. Meniscus timelines are high variance and vague, listed in the 6-9 month range if you go the repair route, which Wiseman did.
Only days after Slater published that article, Wiseman went under the knife in an exploratory procedure that cleared out some loose cartilage. The Warriors didn’t announce that second operation and it wasn’t until Slater and Shams Charania wrote about it in January that it became public knowledge. This setback all but guaranteed that Wiseman was unlikely to play until after the NBA trade deadline. When that date came and went without his return, the Warriors were effectively locked into a very thin center rotation and then James Wiseman played two games in the G-League in March before getting shut down for the season because of swelling in his surgically repaired knee.
From the moment that Wiseman suffered his first setback, he became a long shot to play significant minutes for this Warriors team. Even if he had gotten a few games in the G-League and returned to the Warriors in mid to late March as initially planned, Wiseman would have had about a month to try to claim a rotation spot prior to the playoffs. Given that he’d missed two summer leagues and two training camps in a row on top of his low amount of reps/minutes since graduating high school in 2019, Wiseman was almost certainly not going to earn playoff minutes.
The decision to build a roster around James Wiseman’s presence and then do nothing to accommodate for his absence was a reckless gamble. Kevon Looney — he of multiple surgeries, intense gastrointestinal issues, and nerve damage and numbness in his extremities — became an improbable iron man and played the fourth-most games ever of any NBA player in a combined regular season and playoff run. I don’t think there’s a single reasonable Warriors fan that would have been comfortable going into the 2021-22 season with only Looney and Nemanja Bjelica as the only true centers on the roster if they’d known that Wiseman would miss the entire regular season. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying to you.
Since Kevon Looney became a rotation player in his third NBA season, he’s missed an average of 18 games per season. The Warriors’ decision to build a roster around Wiseman’s eventual presence and then do nothing — not even acquire a big on a two-way contract — left them vulnerable. Even a minor ankle injury for Looney, back spasms, or some other malady that would only cause an absence of a few regular-season games could have seriously messed with the Warriors’ seeding in the playoffs. God forbid a Looney injury in, say, the second-round series against the Grizzlies or the Western Conference Finals against the Mavericks.
The Warriors have, yet again, built a roster where Wiseman has a clear path to rotation minutes. The odds are that the Warriors will need Wiseman to play rotation minutes — Kevon Looney is unlikely to replicate his historic run of health, JaMychal Green is a solid player but is even more undersized at the 5 than Nemanja Bjelica before him, and Draymond Green is a year older and more physically damaged. James Wiseman has only played 39 games at the NBA level since getting drafted in 2020, but he remains of the most important polarizing figures in the Warriors’ organization. His performance this year could determine the team’s roster construction moving forward and clarify how the Warriors should handle the crushing luxury tax payments that will come from trying to retain all or some of Andrew Wiggins, Jordan Poole, and Draymond Green.
My post last summer on James Wiseman’s rookie season has more details about the gruesome numbers that inform my skepticism about his long-term future. The short of it — James Wiseman had the 13th-lowest non-garbage time net rating in basketball and the 7th-worst net rating differential and pretty much every Warriors player was better with Wiseman off of the court than him on it. The optimist’s case for Wiseman has to be predicated on severe criticism of Steve Kerr and the fact that 84% of the Curry/Wiseman minutes included Kelly Oubre Jr. I was curious to see what Wiseman would look like on a team that was chasing wins and how Steve Kerr would coach him when he wasn’t under the pressure of political considerations, but because of multiple setbacks, Wiseman remains a man of mystery.
In the interest of not further re-litigating Wiseman’s rookie season, we’ll turn instead to his G-League and Summer League performances.
James Wiseman’s G-League stint:
17.3 points, 9.6 rebounds, 0 assists, 1.6 blocks, 0 steals, 2 fouls, and 4 turnovers game on 52/25/50 shooting splits in 20.7 minutes a game.
Prior to his second setback on his surgically repaired knee, James Wiseman played three games in the G-League. This was the cumulation of a long rehab process that included several scrimmages with the big-league Warriors team. In the week leading up to Wiseman’s G-League stint, Steve Kerr and the Warriors’ coaching staff went out of their way to not put too much pressure on Wiseman. In a late-February radio interview, Kerr said:
“He’s going to be a really good player for us for a long time to come – [we] look at that as being the next 10 or 15 years and that’s great. For people to expect something right now is a little far-fetched. He barely has any experience and he’s just getting back from his injury and he’s a young guy. Just give it time and it’ll happen for him.”
Here’s a quote from an ESPN article in March:
Still, one Warriors coach told ESPN that it's highly unlikely that Wiseman will be a big part of the Warriors' rotation, particularly in the playoffs. They want to plug him into specific situations but don't believe he'll be ready to take on the brunt of the work down low right away. Instead, they want him to get ready to be an integral part of the team next season.
It was in that context that Santa Cruz Warriors’ coach, Seth Cooper, said this about what the organization wanted Wiseman to focus on during his G-League stint:
"People have some expectations for him, but for him it's not about coming out here and playing in a way that he's not gonna come and play for the Warriors," Cooper said. "It's about building him up and him being able to be ready to play for them and make an impact there when that happens."
[...]
"Play in a way that's gonna help you, that you're gonna be able to play if you got thrown into a Warriors game in two days," Cooper said. "Not for him to think, 'Oh, I'm the second pick in the draft. I have to go down there and dominate.'
"It's more of, just go out there and play in a role where when you're playing with Steph Curry, you're going to be successful."
The Santa Cruz Warriors lost both of those games and Wiseman was on a minutes restriction but the rate at which he accumulated counting stats was impressive. Per 36 minutes — the preferred stat of Wiseman stans — he averaged 30.1 points, 16.7 rebounds a game, 0 steals, 2.8 blocks, and 6.9 turnovers a game. I’ve accumulated some clips below that highlight both the good and bad of his G-League stint.
This video below, courtesy of Jason Dumas, has a good swath of Wiseman’s box score contributions. The first few clips are rough. Wiseman gets blocked on a soft layup attempt in transition, he misses a lob dunk, and misses a few jumpers in the first half. But later in this video, Wiseman gets easy dunks in the restricted area and in transition. After the game, Steve Kerr said:
"I was so happy to see him the other night, [...] I watched the tape and he just looked happy. It looked like he was excited and moving well. It's been a long 11 months for him. Thrilled for James that he's back on the floor.”
In this clip below, Wiseman shows some of the ball-handling prowess as well as the poor feel that can get him into trouble.
In one swift motion, Wiseman corrals a long rebound with his left hand, transfers it to his opposite hand, and goes behind the back to evade a defender trying to steal the ball. Impressive stuff! Wiseman takes two dribbles and then passes it to Chris Chiozza cutting down the right wing. At this point, the paint is starting to get a bit clogged — I think Wiseman would have been better served to pass to Chiozza around halfcourt — and Wiseman compounds the poor transition spacing by lingering in the paint rather than cutting through and occupying the dunker spot or left block. When Quinndary Weatherspoon cuts down the middle, Wiseman’s defender barely has to move to contest Weatherspoon’s layup attempt, which misses, but Wiseman gets his hands on the ball for a missed tip-in before recovering his own miss for a successful tip-in dunk.
In the above clip, Wiseman slips a screen and misses a lob dunk on a pass from Chiozza. In the next possession highlighted, he opts against getting into his own bag in the post and instead flows into a DHO that gets him a dunk. Watch that play a few times and take note of how bad the spacing is throughout that entire sequence — Chris Chiozza’s defender does not care to guard him after he sets a cross-screen above the free-throw line and when Wiseman sets the screen out of the DHO, four defenders have a foot in the paint. And yet, Wiseman gets a dunk on this play (in part because #3 on the opposing team doesn’t make an effort to bump Wiseman on the roll). You can imagine how much more space Wiseman would have to roll to the hoop running this set in shared minutes with players like Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Jordan Poole.
This clip starts with a huge dunk out of a face-up possession on the left baseline and goes downhill from there. Wiseman gets the ball on a defensive rebound, takes it up the court himself, and turns the ball over just as he gets into the paint. Watch that clip a few times and look at the reaction of his teammates. As Wiseman dribbles his way below the three-point line, his teammates seem to realize they will not be getting the ball back on this possession and stand almost completely still dotted around the three-point line.
A similar moment occurs in the clip below, where Chris Chiozza gives the ball to Wiseman as he sprints down the middle of the court. Wiseman gets the ball above the three-point line, takes one dribble going right, and when the wing-sized defender in the middle of the paint moves with Wiseman, the big man gets knocked off of his path and moves away from the basket before taking a clunky, wrong-footed left-hand fadeaway floater.
One of my biggest concerns about Wiseman’s game is his aversion to contact on offense. By and large, unless Wiseman has a clear path to the dunk, he’s prone to fading away from the basket, even on easy shots. Here’s another example from his G-League stint:
This is not a new problem for Wiseman. Even at the high-school level against much smaller competition, Wiseman has shrunk from contact. NBA Twitter guru, Jackson Frank, highlighted this flaw back in 2019 and compiled some examples:
Wiseman’s aversion to contact might not be nearly as big an issue if he had a smaller role in the Warriors’ offense and feasted exclusively on lobs, DHO’s, and pick-and-rolls. The Warriors’ coaching staff has talked about Wiseman playing within a simplified role in the future and Steve Kerr has lamented how the Warriors tossed Wiseman “into the deep end and let [...] sort of sink or swim,” during his rookie season. That all bodes well for Wiseman and while I didn’t love his enthusiasm for pushing the ball in transition and creating for himself during his G-League games, it’s an understandable impulse for someone who hasn’t played in nearly a year and wanted to prove himself.
Before we get into Wiseman’s summer league stint, I did want to briefly highlight this clip, which I thought was another good example of growth from him:
When a PNR never really manifests in a satisfying way with Chris Chiozza, Wiseman gets the ball in the middle of the floor and makes the right head when he hits a cutting Quinndary Weatherspoon with a pass in the restricted area. If James Wiseman can consistently make those types of reads from the middle of the floor, he could make a more credible claim to deserving on-ball reps.
James Wiseman’s Summer League stint:
10.5 points, 5.5 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 0 steals, 2.0 blocks, 1.8 turnovers, and 4.5 fouls a game on 49/33/54 shooting splits in 19.9 minutes a game.
After missing the first game of the Las Vegas Summer League, James Wiseman played the final four consecutive games, his longest stretch of health and game reps since April of 2021. The Warriors, despite sporting three lottery picks in Wiseman, Moses Moody, and Jonathan Kuminga, went in 1-4 in these contests, and my Twitter feed was flooded with complaints about the Warriors’ mediocre guard play and how it was impeding the play of James Wiseman and Jonathan Kuminga. Moses Moody was the star of the Warriors’ Summer League squad and only played two games in Vegas, which put Mac McClung, Jonathan Kuminga, Gui Santos, and Lester Quiñones in the position of handling the ball.
In the instances that Wiseman did get into two-man games, good things happened. Here are a few examples that also highlight smart screening from the big man:
Wiseman also had moments where he showed an encouraging level of patience as a rim protector:
One of the better moments of Wisemabn’s Summer League came on this play where he showed an advanced level of physical control as he deterred a shot at the rim by maintaining verticality without fouling:
But Wiseman did still have moments that highlighted some of the weaknesses that will cap both his long-term potential and his ability to contribute to a contending squad next season. One thing that has long stuck out to me about Wiseman is his penchant for clogging the paint. In the clip below, Wiseman cuts into the paint and lingers by the left block. Jonathan Kuminga is deterred by his defender, spins back middle, and takes a bad fadeaway jumper. Wiseman gets the rebound on this play and a putback dunk — that’s good! — but I’d like to see him clear the paint and space out towards the dunker spot on the baseline after his initial cut, rather than let his defender hang out by the left block and clog the paint.
Here’s instance of poor offensive awareness from Wiseman:
There’s a baseline cut available to him — and perhaps, a lob dunk — but because he stays by the block, he doesn’t have a clear path to the hoop so he takes a mid-range jumper. That’s less than ideal, especially for someone who only shot 33% from the midrange in his rookie season.
Another concern I have that wasn’t exactly assuaged by his summer-league stint is Wiseman’s penchant for biting on fakes. Kevon Looney, perhaps by virtue of his unusually aged body, rarely jumps on fakes on defense. The Warriors were in the 74th percentile in opponents’ frequency of shots at the rim in the 2020-21 season when Looney was on the court. With Wiseman on the court, they were a middling 46th percentile, but when he sat, the Warriors were an elite 86th percentile in the frequency of opponents’ shots at the rim. Wiseman had a few notable blunders biting on fakes in summer league, which you can see below:
If Wiseman doesn’t clean up his twitchiness on fakes — Jordan Bell never did, for example — the benefits he provides as a big rim protector will be undone by how easily defenders can send him flying into the air. The types of plays seen above are not going to cut it come playoff time.
But on the whole, Wiseman did show some marked improvement in between his G-League and Summer League stints. Some of that probably can be attributed to a numbing of the nerves — the G-League games marked his first games in nearly a year — and some of that has to do with increased reps. As Steve Kerr has said before, James Wiseman needs 1000 reps and the improvements he made months apart does bode well for the possibility of improvement over the course of a training camp and a full regular season’s worth of games.
The question now is whether the expected improvements from Wiseman will earn playoff minutes and whether he can prove himself worthy of the Warriors’ investment in him.
What’s next for James Wiseman?
James Wiseman has a legitimate shot at playing at least 15 minutes a game for next season’s Warriors. The Warriors chose to replace Nemanja Bjelcia (and to some extent, Otto Porter Jr.) with JaMcyhal Green, a longtime basketball crush of mine who is somewhat undersized at the center and has long played the majority of his minutes at the 4. The two Greens stand to play some minutes at the 5 and it’s likely Jonathan Kuminga does as well, but the Warriors will need James Wiseman to, at least, preserve the bodies of Kevon Looney, the Greens, and Kuminga.
The performance of James Wiseman could very well determine what the Warriors do about their looming salary cap crunch. The Athletic’s Marcus Thompson and Anthony Slater recently wrote about the sobering possibility that the Warriors are without one of Jordan Poole, Andrew Wiggins, and Draymond Green in the 2023-24 as the former two players will be up for new contracts and the latter will have a player option. Here’s the crux of the issue:
Let’s do an exercise and get ambitious with it, ensuring everyone feels well-compensated for 2023-24. Give Wiggins an extension that starts around the $33 million he’s currently making. Give Poole an extension that starts around the $27 million range. Bump Green, who has a player option, into his decline-and-extend max of a $30.9 million starting salary. Thompson is already making $43.2 million that season.
That zooms the total payroll for the 2023-24 season toward $222 million. The projected tax line is $161 million. The Warriors are willing to pay their players. But their enemy is the collective bargaining agreement and its luxury tax rules. The Warriors are living in the more punitive repeater tax. Crunch the numbers and you’re talking about a total bill (salary plus tax) of around $564 million.
“Those numbers are not even remotely possible,” Lacob told our Tim Kawakami last month, even indicating that $400 million was too steep.
But slice one of those theoretical contract extensions completely away, even the smallest — Poole’s $27 million, for the sake of this exercise — and the total 2023-24 bill (salary plus tax) nosedives more than $200 million back to around $338 million, a range Lacob appears more comfortable paying.
Thus, a storm is brewing. They are all under contract for the 2022-23 season. But not paying everyone means the Warriors will have to decide who to prioritize and who to leave vulnerable. As soon as next offseason, one or two of the beloved championship core could be gone. Even before potential departures, the reactions to how the Warriors’ front office navigates this could reverberate into this season, potentially impacting their chances to defend the crown.
In the 2023-24 season, James Wiseman will make over $12 million dollars if the Warriors pick up his fourth-year option. Friend of the Substack, @fakelogic, has spent much of the summer crunching the numbers on Twitter to demonstrate the various ways that the Warriors could keep all of Wiggins, Poole, and Green and keep their payroll — after luxury tax considerations — below $400 million. Nearly every single one of those scenarios requires that the Warriors trade Wiseman’s $12 million contract prior to the 2023-24 season, which would free up approximately $70 million dollars worth of luxury tax penalties:
The local media in the Bay Area has mostly avoided talking about the possibility of trading Wiseman. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Connor Letourneau recently wrote an article positing that the Warriors would have to choose between Wiggins and Poole and predicted that Poole could be on his way out.
Apparently absent from Letourneau’s analysis is the possibility of even considering a trade of Wiseman, this despite the fact that both Wiggins and Poole are proven contributors to a championship team while Wiseman has played only 46 games between the NBA, the G-League, and Summer League since he graduated high school in 2019.
James Wiseman has a path to being useful to next season’s Warriors team. He might even be a positive contributor in a rim-running, rim-protecting role. But there’s little indication in his past performances that he will unseat Kevon Looney from his starting role at any point during his rookie contract, let alone be worthy of closing games above any of the “foundational six” of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green, Kevon Looney, and Jordan Poole that Steve Kerr said “we know are going to be on the court for big minutes every night.”
Should Wiseman stay with the Warriors for the duration of his rookie contract, he’ll likely want an extension north of $15-20 million dollars a year. A worst-case scenario for Wiseman’s wallet would be going the route of fellow #2 overall pick, Marvin Bagley II, who just signed a a 3 year/$37.5 million contract with the Detroit Pistons after flaming out with the Sacramento Kings and getting traded in the final season of his rookie contract. Basically, if Wiseman pans out in any significant way, he’s going to demand a lot of money. The question worth asking is will the Warriors be the ones to pay Wiseman at the expense of one of Draymond Green, Andrew Wiggins, or Jordan Poole?
It’s on James Wiseman to answer that question with his play. There’s nothing more I’d like than for James Wiseman to exceed my wildest expectations and make himself an indispensable part of the Warriors’ short-term and long-term future. I want that for pretty much every player that has ever put on a Warriors’ jersey — save for, say, credibly accused rapist, Avery Bradley — even if it forces unforunate decisions, like the one that led Gary Payton II to secure his wealth with the Portland Trail Blazers.
But in the case of Wiseman, I have a lot of doubts that his “potential” will ever be worth the investment the Warriors have put in him, especially if it means saying goodbye to proven championship contributors. I’ve already outlined my disbelief that the Warriors went into the later half of the regular season with only two healthy centers and not even a warm body at the 5 on a two-way contract. But as far as this season goes, I also have my doubts that Wiseman will be a key contributor to the Warriors, at least not if he doesn’t make significant improvements to his game and embrace a much more limited role than he did as a rookie.
James Wiseman showed improvements in the Summer League as a screener and a rim protector. Those skills could undoubtedly be useful to the Warriors, particularly in the second unit. But consider the broad outlines of the Warriors’ second unit. Are you comfortable with the floor spacing or the defense of a Jonathan Kuminga/James Wiseman frontcourt? Kuminga shot 33.6% from three in the regular season and below 30% from deep in the Summer League while Wiseman shot 31.5% on 48 attempts from deep in the NBA, G-League, and Summer League combined. Wiseman was also only a 62.8% shooter from the free-throw line and shot 52.6% combined in the G-League and Summer League. He also only shot 58.5% from the line in his final season of AAU ball in 2018-19, which is to say that there is a multi-year sample size right now demonstrating that Wiseman’s shooting touch is theoretical at best right now.
That may read like harsh criticism, but it matters in the context of next season. The Warriors lost two credible frontcourt spacers in Otto Porter Jr. and Nemanja Bjelica. Their replacement, JaMychal Green, has long been a good shooter and if you buy his explanation that a wrist injury tanked his percentages and willingness to shoot last season, that should provide some solace. But the Warriors might have to take one of Kuminga or Wiseman out of the second-unit and instead slot Green in at the 4 or 5 to make their rotation work. That’s ok, it’s the price of doing business if you want to win championships. But my broader point is that I don’t think James Wiseman and Jonathan Kuminga will be playable together next season, at least not until either one of them turns into a credible floor spacer or high-quality defender. On a regular team, the relative incompatibility of your top frontcourt prospects isn’t a death knell — it’s actually probably a path to another lottery pick! — but on a team that has to make serious considerations about which veterans they can or cannot pay, that stuff matters.
It also matters that James Wiseman is unlikely to ever be a better closing option in the frontcourt than Draymond Green or Kevon Looney, both of whom have proven themselves at the highest levels of competition and turned in historical playoff performances on defense and on the glass. Again, that’s no fault of Wiseman’s, but the fact that he has one of the only middle-class contracts on the Warriors means that his short-term value needs to be scrutinzed when considering the financial crunch that looms for Joe Lacob and Bob Myers.
If James Wiseman makes himself obviously worthy of the investment the Warriors have made in him, it’ll be easier to swallow the inevitable loss of one of the Foundational Six. I hope for his sake that becomes the player the that he thinks he can be, but I sincerely doubt he can do so on the Warriors without interfering with their championship aspirations or on the timeline of the closing window of the Warriors’ legendary core.