The Warriors' season-in-review: James Wiseman
The uselessness using per 36 minute stats to compare prospects, the Warriors' terrible floor spacing around James Wiseman, an antiquated shot profile, and Wiseman's ideal role next to Draymond Green.
First off, a brief apology; I wanted to get this piece over the weekend, but family time got in the way. If you are vaccinated and have the opportunity to do so, go spend time with your family!
I’ll have a piece up on Juan Toscano-Anderson, Kevon Looney, and Draymond Green up in a few days, my coaching staff and front office review soon after, and then it’ll be pre-draft time!
But let’s get to the good/bad stuff:
James Wiseman: D
I have a tendency to meander in my writing and use too many words to get to my point, so I’m going to just say it now; James Wiseman was one of the worst players in the NBA during his rookie season. There’s even an argument to be made that Wiseman may have been the worst player in the NBA to receive meaningful minutes for a non-tanking team.
Of course, nothing happens in a vacuum. If there’s an overarching takeaway in my posts, it is that player performance is intimately linked to coaching, the player’s role, and the lineups they play in. So while Wiseman was objectively bad this year, that doesn’t mean he should have been this bad.
A lot of things went wrong in James Wiseman’s rookie season. He missed most of training camp after testing positive for COVID-19, he played a lot of minutes in lineups with terrible floor spacing, he spent a week in the league’s health and safety protocols for contact tracing, he was yanked in and out of the starting lineup, he missed time with a sprained wrist, and later tore the meniscus in his right knee. Oh and he also played just three games in college before deciding to leave the University of Memphis rather than serve a 12-game suspension from the NCAA.
That’s a lot of life lived in the last year and a half for Wiseman. He recently turned 20 and while his age doesn’t excuse his lack of feel for the game of basketball, it does make me feel for James Wiseman as a person. I would have crumbled under that upheaval at the age of 19 and I’d be an anxious wreck at any age if so many people were invested in my every success and mistake.
But regardless of age, I think it’s obvious that James Wiseman was a deeply flawed prospect who benefited from limited exposure in the NCAA and what was perceived to be a weak draft class. In November of 2020, Warriors’ owner Joe Lacob told The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami that he thought Wiseman was, “a once-in-a-decade kind of guy,” and added:
“I would argue that, other than (Joel) Embiid, I don’t know that there’s another center prospect that’s come along in the last decade that you would put in the same category.”
I think that’s a ridiculous statement that can be pretty easily disproved. I’m going to quote generously from Ethan Sherwood Strauss’ assessment of Wiseman in March of 2020:
Below is a yearly list of the top big men entering college ball, as determined by the Recruiting Services Consensus Index (the overall ranking is listed in parenthesis).
2006: Greg Oden (1)
2007: J.J. Hickson (9)
2008: Samardo Samuels (4)
2009: Derrick Favors (1)
2010: Enes Kanter (7)
2011: Anthony Davis (1)
2012: Nerlens Noel (1)
2013: Dakari Johnson (9)
2014: Jahlil Okafor (1)
2015: Skal Labissiere (2)
2016: Harry Giles (1)
2017: Marvin Bagley (1)
2018: Bol Bol (6)
2019: James Wiseman (1)
I stopped at Greg Oden’s year, mostly because a) I have to stop somewhere and b) “Oden over Kevin Durant” represents a different era, draft-wise. Whatever the merits of both prospects back then, I doubt that, if such a draft happened today, overwhelming consensus would have favored the elite big over the elite wing. In the last 10 years or so we’ve seen big men get marginalized, relative to wings, who’ve been elevated.
[...]
You have to wonder whether, if we had more of a track record, Wiseman would seem as safe a bet. I’m quoting the RSCI ranking on Wiseman because we don’t have much else. He played three college games this season and only one was against a real team. In that game, against Oregon, he presented a confusing assessment for scouts. Wiseman was mostly a nonfactor for 28 minutes of action, getting benched due to foul trouble after being continually bullied by 6-8 defenders. Then he turned it on after scoring his first field goal with 11:14 to go in the second half.
[...]
The concerning plays might be easy to dismiss if Wiseman was an outright killer in high school. Instead, he was far less productive on the Nike EYBL circuit than, say, Sacramento Kings’ big man Marvin Bagley.
• Bagley’s 2017 EYBL stats: 15 games played, 25.8 points per game, 14.9 boards, 3.1 blocks, 54.6 percent from the field.
• Wiseman’s 2018 Nike EYBL stats: 16 games played, 15.0 points per game, 6.8 boards, 1.8 blocks, 48.7 percent from the field.
Of the last 10 big men to be top ranked in their high school class, Davis, Kanter, Bagley, and Okafor were the only ones picked top 5 in the draft. Bagley, now in his third year with the Sacramento Kings, was offered in a rejected trade to the Detroit Pistons for Saddiq Bey, the #19 pick in the 2020 draft. Kanter is legendarily unplayable in the playoffs because of his defensive shortcomings. Okafor, meanwhile, washed out in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and New Orleans and spent the last year playing spot minutes in Detroit behind Mason Plumlee and rookie center Isiah Stewart.
What explains these highly ranked high school bigs having their draft stock tank in college? My guess is that most of these prospects dominated lower levels with size and athleticism and failed to adapt or grow at the collegiate level. I suspect this would have happened to Wiseman in a full college season.
Wiseman played one game in college against good competition, so in the interest of thoroughness, let’s pull up some of his game film. We’ll start with his high school highlights and then look at the good and bad of his brief college career. The high school highlights:
Wiseman looks freakish against his high school peers. This highlight video consists mostly of easy dunks and you’ll see that Wiseman gobbles up space when he moves towards the rim. He doesn’t need many steps to get in dunking position and he’s such a big target that a passer has a big margin for error on lobs. There’s even a few moments where Wiseman shoots the ball off of the dribble, but most of his dribble pull-ups move him backwards or sideways, rather than in the direction of the hoop.
But who cares about high school highlights? Here’s the good stuff from his Oregon game:
What really stands out in these highlights is Wiseman’s athleticism. I think he looks a little gangly in his movements, which isn’t unexpected for a 19 year old 7 footer, but Wiseman runs faster and jumps higher than his peers and most 7 footers I’ve ever seen. At the 0:04 mark, Wiseman barely has to move to block a shot in the paint; at the 0:20 mark, Wiseman needs only two strides to be in dunking position after setting a pick at the right wing below the three point line.
The appeal of Wiseman is obvious in these clips — imagine a hyper-athletic C patrolling the paint, blocking shots, and crushing easy dunks off of (rare) picks set for Steph Curry. There’s a few putback dunks in this highlight reel, as well as a (fading) mid-range jumper (taken with 21 seconds left in the shot clock?) with a smooth release. Here too, you can imagine how Wiseman might look as a pick and pop guy or someone who soaks up the occasional ISO possession against a slower C.
But I think watching Wiseman’s lowlights from that same Oregon is a far more illuminating experience. Make sure to watch this video with the sound on for commentary from Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Wasserman:
This, unfortunately, looks far more like the James Wiseman Warriors’ experience; biting on pump fakes, getting pushed around by shorter guys, bobbling passes and putback dunks, and at the 1:54 mark, an inexplicable pull-up jumper in the middle of the lane with :22 seconds left on the shot clock where Wiseman takes one dribble, and then spins backwards for a bricked fadeaway jumper. That looks familiar to me. Where have I seen that before?
Oof. Although Wiseman had some nice moments in his rookie year — a block leading to a coast-to-coast dunk, several nice spin moves in the paint, and confident early-season threes — he showed a lack of feel that does not bode well for his NBA future. I can’t count the number of times Wiseman ducked into the paint to post up right as a Warrior started their drive, bit on a pump fake, faded away on a spinning jumphook, shied away from contact, or made a doomed straight-line drive right into a defender’s chest.
James Wiseman is one of the most important figures in the Warriors organization. His continued development theoretically offers the Warriors a blue chip trade asset to chase star level players with or a bridge to the future as Steph Curry ages. It is inexcusable that Wiseman actually looked worse as the season went on. The Warriors failed to win games with James Wiseman and save for a few encouraging games before his meniscus tear, mostly failed in their quest to develop their prized rookie.
Let’s briefly go through the timeline of Wiseman’s rookie season; he missed most of training camp, but was apparently so impressive in his few practices that he won the starting C spot. Marcus Thompson of The Athletic said this about Wiseman’s training camp performance in December of 2020;
Truth is, though, the excitement about Wiseman is palpable. Wednesday was his first full scrimmage and it only added to why [the Warriors organization is] drooling behind the scenes over what he could be in two to three years. He does things in practice that make them give each other that you-see-what-he-just-did look.
In the Warriors’ season debut, they were blown out by the Brooklyn Nets, but James Wiseman was genuinely exciting to watch.
At the 0:18 mark in the video, Wiseman strolls into an easy dunk and takes off from... the right hash mark. At the 0:40 mark, Wiseman fakes a dribble handoff by the three point line to Steph Curry, dusts his defender and takes one dribble into a layup. Why didn’t we see more of that this season? And then there’s the three point shot. Caveats for garbage time notwithstanding, Wiseman’s shot looks fluid in this clip. In the first 10 games of the season, Wiseman took 1.5 threes a game at a 40% clip, but in his final 29 games of the season, he shot 0.8 threes a game at a 28.6% rate. What’s more troubling is that Wiseman didn’t take a single three in 12 of those final 29 games.
By the end of the season, James Wiseman took more mid-range jumpers than threes and received more possessions in the post than he did as a roll man in pick and rolls. Steve Kerr’s aversion to running Curry/Wiseman PNR’s was the source of much consternation among Warriors fans and even some national media, like The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor. On April 5th, O’Connor wrote about Kerr’s baffling reluctance to run the pick and roll with Steph Curry and its impact on James Wiseman. This came a week after the Warriors significantly increased their pick and roll frequency in a game against the lowly Chicago Bulls.
Last week, the Warriors ran 10 pick-and-rolls with Steph Curry as the ball handler and James Wiseman as the screener. It was the most Curry and Wiseman had tallied together in a game since late January.
[...]
The next game, a 53-point loss to the Raptors, Curry didn’t play. And on Sunday against the Hawks, they ran seven, near their season average of 6.5, according to Second Spectrum. None of these totals come close to pick-and-rolls run per game by duos ranging from Trae Young and Clint Capela (19.2) to De’Aaron Fox and Richaun Holmes (15.7) to even Dejounte Murray and Jakob Poeltl (9.1).
It’ll take more than one game to know whether Golden State will really run more pick-and-roll with Curry and Wiseman this season, but Warriors fans have been asking for it all year, for good reason. Since 2017-18, including this disappointing season, the Warriors score 1.07 points per pick-and-roll with Curry as the ball handler, which leads the league during this time frame.
[...]
Even if Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, and Green are all off the court, Curry’s name would still rank first (1.05) when he’s running a pick-and-roll. That stat surprised me, but it speaks to his greatness. This is precisely why many Warriors fans have been frustrated: Curry is the NBA’s most efficient pick-and-roll scorer and a dynamic playmaker, yet Kerr rarely utilizes him in this action even when Klay is out, KD is gone, and the team drafted a rim-running rookie whose best skill is finishing.
A day later, the Warriors beat the Milwaukee Bucks (Giannis Antetokounmpo was out, but still!) in a close game and James Wiseman played what I thought was the best game of his career. In 25 minutes against a playoff team, Wiseman had a double-double in 25 minutes and held his own on defense for the most part. Not coincidentally, the Warriors ran a lot of pick and roll that night!
Here’s a video that has all of Wiseman’s possessions from that night.
Wiseman has some misadventures and ugly, fading shots when he puts the ball on the floor, but he looks really good when he’s setting screens. There’s a few nice defensive possessions here too. Wiseman would play just two more games after this Milwaukee game, so we really only got 5 or so games of heavy Wiseman pick and roll usage. The fact that he looked so good setting screens and diving to the rim begs the question; why didn’t Wiseman do that all year?
When we dive into the lineup stats, we’ll see that Wiseman spent a lot of time in poor shooting lineups, so that might explain some of the low PNR usage. But what purpose did it serve for the Warriors or Wiseman’s long term development to let him post up and take many mid-range jumpers as he did? Wiseman’s percentages on those shots were bad, so those shots didn’t help his trade value, nor did those shots help the Warriors win games.
Did Steve Kerr want James Wiseman posting up and shooting mid-range jumpers? If so, why? If Kerr thought these were good looks, they absolutely were not. James Wiseman only shot 31.6% from three on the season, but the points-per-possession yield on a Wiseman three was still significantly higher than a Wiseman mid-range shot on similar percentages.
James Wiseman’s offensive impact was unambiguously terrible for most of the season and it was only when Kerr made significant changes to his system that Wiseman looked competent offensively. Even then, every 5 man lineup to include Steph Curry and James Wiseman in the PNR heavy stretch scored at a far below average rate. If Wiseman is going to be a useful player for the Warriors next season, he will have to play a much different role than he did for most of his rookie season.
But James Wiseman will not play summer league basketball and he may miss some of training camp rehabbing his torn meniscus. Jaren Jackson Jr., the Memphis Grizzlies' third year big man, tore his meniscus in early August of his sophomore season and did not play again for another 8 months. If Wiseman has a similar timeline to JJJ, he might not be back until December. That scenario, or even a more optimistic one where he’s only rehabbing until November, would make it practically impossible for Wiseman to get the game reps he needs.
It is on the Warriors’ organization to make the most out of James Wiseman, but the Wiseman we saw this season is very likely to be the same Wiseman we see in his sophomore year. That version of James Wiseman will not help the Warriors win games next season, nor will he be a valuable trade chip. The Warriors’ stated goal in drafting Wiseman was to develop him alongside Steph Curry and Draymond Green and compete in the playoffs and because they did neither of those things this season, Wiseman’s rookie year must be viewed as a failure.
James Wiseman’s statistical profile:
39 games played, 21.4 minutes a game, 11.5points a game, 5.8 rebounds, 0.7 assists, 1.5 turnovers, 0.3 steals, 0.9 blocks, and 3.1 fouls.
51.9% FG, 31.6%, 62.8% FT, 55.2 TS% (-2.0% league average TS), 53.5% EFG (-0.3 league average EFG).
9.4 FGA, 1.0 3PA, 2.2 FTA.
BBREF: 100 ORTG, 109 DRTG, -10.2 +/- per 100 poss., -0.7 VORP, 0.42 WS/48, 23.8% USG.
NBA.com: 101.8 ORTG, 110.6 DRTG, -8.8 net rating, 23.1% USG.
-16.9 DIFF in non-garbage time (1st percentile), 76th percentile usage, 25th percentile PSA, 10th percentile AST%, 4th percentile AST:Usg, 28th percentile TOV% among big position.
-1.22 ORPM, -1.08 DRPM, -2.30 RPM (#426 rank of 534 players).
All the impact stats are in agreement that Wiseman was terrible this year, although they aren’t super critical about his defensive impact. In non-garbage time minutes, Wiseman ranked as the 7th worst player in the league per Cleaning the Glass’ net rating numbers and you’ll be thrilled to know that Nico Mannion was the 3rd worst. Joy.
The impact stats tell stories that per 36 minute counting stats, which are often used to prop up Wiseman, do not. In a recent article for NBC Sports, Monte Poole trotted out the per 36 minute counting stats to compare Wiseman’s rookie season against the rookie years of Anthony Davis, Kevin Garnett, Jermaine O’Neal, Tyson Chandler, and DeAndre Jordan. Here’s a screenshot:
Let’s add some impact stats here to the comparison. We don’t have access to Cleaning the Glass’ numbers before 2003-2004, so we’ll use Basketball Reference’s BPM numbers for Garnett, O’Neal, and Chandler and CTG’s numbers for AD and Jordan.
James Wiseman 2020-2021: -16.9 net rating per CtG, -5.4 BPM, -4.0 OBPM, -1.4 DBPM.
Anthony Davis 2012-2013: -0.8 net rating per CtG, +2.5 BPM, +1.8 OBPM, +0.7 DBPM.
Kevin Garnett 1995-96: +1.0 BPM, +0.1 OBPM, +0.9 DBPM.
Jermaine O’Neal 1996-97: -3.5 BPM, -2.5 OBPM, -0.9 DBPM.
Tyson Chandler 2001-02: -3.5 BPM, -3.3 OBPM, -0.2 DBPM.
DeAndre Jordan 2008-2009: -12.3 net rating per CtG, -3.8 BPM, -3.5 OBPM, -0.3 DBPM.
Wiseman’s defensive impact here is closest to but still not as good as rookie Jermaine O’Neal, who came to the NBA right out of high school. DeAndre Jordan is the only player who came close to being as bad as Wiseman, due in large part to terrible offensive impact, but he was a 2nd round pick and almost managed to be a neutral defender.
If you can’t tell, I think per 36 stats are kind of silly because they offer so little for evaluating a player’s on-court impact. So let’s do one last set of comparisons to demonstrate the un-seriousness of per 36 numbers. All the numbers listed below are from rookie seasons:
Rookie James Wiseman per 36 minutes: 19.3points a game, 9.7 rebounds, 1.1 assists, 2.6 turnovers, 0.5 steals, 1.6 blocks, and 5.2 fouls, -16.9 net rating per CtG, -5.4 BPM, -4.0 OBPM, -1.4 DBPM.
Player A per 36 minutes: 21.2 points a game, 10.8 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 2.3 turnovers, 0.8 steals, 1.4 blocks, and 2.8 fouls, -5.4 net rating per CtG, -1.0 BPM, 0.5 OBPM, -1.5 DBPM.
Player B per 36 minutes: 13.3 points a game, 11.2 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.7 turnovers, 1.0 steals, 2.1 blocks, and 4.6 fouls, +4.1 net rating per CtG, -1.2 BPM, -1.6 OBPM, +0.4 DBPM.
Player C per 36 minutes: 15.9 points a game, 11.6 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 2.6 turnovers, 1.3 steals, 2.4 blocks, and 4.5 steals, -1.3 net rating per CtG, -2.3 BPM, -1.5 OBPM, -0.8 DBPM.
Player D per 36 minutes: 15.4 points a game, 9.3 rebounds, 0.7 assists, 1.9 turnovers, 1.0 steals, 2.4 blocks, -7.9 net rating per CtG, -2.9 BPM, -1.8 OBPM, -1.1 DBPM.
Player E per 36 minutes: 19.1 points a game, 12 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 2.1 turnovers, 1.0 steals, 1.1 blocks, +2.7 net rating per CtG, +0.2 BPM, +1.3 OBPM, -1.1 DBPM.
Player A is Marvin Bagley, Player B is Isaiah Stewart, Player C is Anthony Randolph, Player D is JaVale McGee, and Player E is Deandre Ayton.
Bagley far outperformed Wiseman at the AAU level and in his rookie season. Bagley is on track to be a bust of historical proportions (although getting picked before Luka Doncic has a way of fucking with your reptuation) and his team already wants out of his rookie contract. Not great.
Isaiah Stewart is a fellow 2020 draftee and he’s actually a little less than two months younger than Wiseman. I thought Stewart would be an interesting point of reference because he’s been a longtime nemesis of Wiseman and because he outperformed his #16 draft slot. Stewart made the All-Rookie 2nd team and endeared himself to the Pistons organization with relentless hustle, defensive feel, and intriguing range out to the three point line. Isaiah Stewart actually has a history of outperforming Wiseman in head-to-head matchups. From ESPN draft analyst Mike Schmidt on a podcast with Zach Lowe:
“...even at USA Basketball camps, there was a level of toughness that wasn’t always there, frankly [with Wiseman]. If Isaiah Stewart, frankly kicked [Wiseman’s] ass one day, then the next day he was in sweats.... that battle goes deep. Those two, James Wiseman and Isaiah Stewart had their moments... at the AAU level, USA Basketball, McDonald’s All-American - they go at it. So that’s something to keep an eye on as we get deeper into their NBA careers.”
Oh, and there’s film dating back to high school and it’s not good for Wiseman.
I chose Anthony Randolph as a point of comparison because the rough outlines of his and Wiseman’s skillsets are quite similar; both were hyper athletic lefty bigs who liked to take the the ball up the court, had some range out to three point line, blocked shots, and didn’t have the greatest feel for the game. Randolph doesn’t score like rookie Wiseman, but he was a far superior shotblocker per 36 minutes and his impact numbers are prettier than Wiseman’s, despite playing on an awful Warriors team.
JaVale McGee seemed like a logical player to include here because many Warriors fans expected that a rookie Wiseman could play the role McGee did for the Warriors in his 9th year in the league. McGee washed out of the league before the Warriors invited him to training camp in 2016. Although there’s maybe ten big men in NBA history who had the raw athletic gifts of young JaVale McGee, he didn’t have the BBIQ or maturity to contribute to winning basketball until he was in his late 20’s. McGee’s rookie season is the worst non-Wiseman season on this list, but his impact numbers still beat Wiseman’s.
Last on our list is DeAndre Ayton, to whom James Wiseman is frequently compared. Ayton’s defensive metrics are slightly worse than Wiseman’s per BBref’s DBPM, but he was a net positive as a rookie per CtG and seems to have helped the Suns on offense. Ayton was a far more advanced offensive prospect than Wiseman, but it’s his defensive growth in this year’s playoffs that has given fans hope about Wiseman’s own development.
I don’t think I’ll ever want James Wiseman to guard Nikola Jokic or Anthony Davis so long as Draymond Green is healthy, but Wiseman should be able to provide 25-30 minutes of competent regular season defense at some point in the future. The big question is; will his defense ever be good enough to make him a plus in crunch time?
Two nights ago, Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert got attacked over and over again in crunch time by small guards, most notably Reggie Jackson. Gobert is a once-in-a-generation shot blocker, but he’s vulnerable come playoff time when opposing teams bring him out of the paint and make him defend in space. Wiseman is unlikely to ever be a Gobert-level rim protector, but he should be more useful than the Frenchman guarding the perimeter.
James Wiseman got burned repeatedly in drop coverages by Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum in the Warriors’ first game of 2021. Wiseman was slow to react when drivers came into the lane and ended up behind drivers several times on lay-up attempts. But in the next game, Wiseman was more proactive about sliding out of the paint to meet drivers at the point of attack and I thought he looked much more fluid physically in these situations than he did in drop coverage.
Wiseman is said to be a ferocious worker, so in theory, he could improve his lateral agility to become a competent switching defender, but his lack of feel makes me question whether his brain will ever keep up with his body. Will Wiseman be a merely competent switch defender or will he be an elite one? The answer to that question will determine his defensive ceiling, but I doubt Wiseman’s defense will ever justify putting Draymond Green at the power forward in crunch time.
I think Wiseman will eventually be a fine defender, so I’m much more interested in packing his awful offensive impact. Were his offensive struggles preventable? Maybe. Were his offensive struggles tied to role? Definitely. But I’m not comfortable writing off the bad numbers and attributing it entirely to coaching. Which of these two scenarios is more likely?
A. James Wiseman was so misused by his coach that his historically bad impact numbers are an aberration.
or
B. James Wiseman’s impact numbers were historically bad because he was not ready for the NBA, regardless of role.
Wiseman’s offensive numbers are gruesome and while I do think he was misused as a rookie, his shot profile is concerning, so let’s dive into that.
Wiseman’s performance in the play-in games: N/A
James Wiseman’s shooting profile:
Restricted area: 75.4% on 167 attempts.
Non-restricted area paint: 31.3% on 83 attempts.
Mid-range: 33.3% on 81 attempts.
Left corner 3: 0% on 2 attempts.
Right corner 3: 100% on 1 attempt.
Above the break 3: 32.4% on 34 attempts.
Floaters: 44.4% on 18 attempts.
Layups and fingers rolls: 52.3% on 100 attempts.
FGA% per total drives: 87.1%.
Assisted by: Draymond Green (47), Steph Curry (34), Andrew Wiggins (20), Kelly Oubre Jr. (16), Jordan Poole (12), Nico Mannion (9), Damion Lee (8), Kent Bazemore (4), Eric Paschall (3), Brad Wanamaker and Mychal Mulder (2), Juan Toscano-Anderson (1).
FGM% assisted: 82.7%
FGM% unassisted: 17.3%
As I mentioned earlier, James Wiseman took more mid-range shots than he did three point shots by the end of the year, but the volume is staggering — Wiseman took nearly twice as many mid-range shots as he did threes.
That begs the question; why? If my math is correct, Wiseman mid-range jumpers yielded 0.66 points per shot and three pointers 0.95 points per shot even though he shot marginally worse on three pointers. With percentages being effectively equal, Wiseman should have shot a much higher volume of three point than mid-range jumpers.
Although Wiseman’s form on his jumpshot looks good, he’s not a knockdown shooter and his 62.8% from the free throw line in conjunction with middling percentages from the three and mid-range show that his jumpshot is mostly theoretical at this point in time.
Wiseman was assisted on most of his buckets this year and the longer he held onto the ball, the more his percentages tanked. I took a screenshot that shows the percentages on Wiseman’s shots when factoring in dribbles taken and seconds per touch.
Something else that stuck out to me is that Wiseman took 48 2P FG catch and shoot attempts. That is by far the highest volume of any Warrior player. I don’t have access to Synergy or other, more advanced tracking data, so I can only offer guesses as to how those attempts came about. My guess? Wiseman took a lot of catch and shoot jumpers facing up in the mid-post and off of pick and rolls.
On paper, James Wiseman seems like an ideal rim runner in PNR’s, but he actually had the 2nd lowest points per possession of any Warrior to get possessions as the roll man at 1.12 PPP, a mere 49th percentile. Wiseman shot 52.5% on attempts as the roll man — Kevon Looney, Eric Paschall, Draymond Green, and Juan-Toscano Anderson all rank higher by percentage than Wiseman, albeit on significantly lower volume. So how does that happen?
You’ll remember that Wiseman made over 3/4 of his attempts in the restricted area this year on 167 attempts. Wiseman only shot the ball 61 times as the roll man and we can safely infer that a lot of his shots as the roll man occurred outside of the restricted area where his percentages are not great. Here’s a great example of a Wiseman PNR terminating outside of the restricted area.
James Wiseman sets a high screen for Steph Curry near the logo. Draymond Green’s defender is planted below the three point line and pretty much stays there the entire possession while Kelly Oubre Jr.’s defender is comfortable sagging off the three point line to cut off the Wiseman roll just below the free throw line. Where can James Wiseman go on this possession? An unfortunate amount of pick and rolls with Wiseman ended in a similar fashion and the main culprit, as you may suspect, is not Wiseman, but rather the Warriors’ bad spacing.
Make no mistake, this was avoidable. In early April, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Connor Letorneau wrote that Kerr turned to the PNR with Wiseman after the Warriors’ analytics team nudged him to do so, which, duh? How many Warriors fans were begging the Warriors to run PNR with James Wiseman?
The numbers on Wiseman as the roll man aren’t pretty, but it was obvious to even the most casual of fans that the Warriors’ bad spacing had a negative impact on Wiseman’s offensive output. If Wiseman is crucial to the Warriors’ future, why then did Steve Kerr prioritize the comfort of Kelly Oubre Jr. and give the two lefties so many minutes together at the expense of the Warriors’ spacing and in turn make Wiseman look worse?
What’s even more frustrating is that Wiseman took 59 shots out of the post in his rookie season at 0.71 PPP and 40.7% FG. Of the players to post-up more than twice a game, nobody in the NBA was more inefficient than Wiseman and only three players turned the ball over more frequently in the post. Who did it benefit to have James Wiseman post-up more than twice a game? Certainly not James Wiseman’s confidence or the Warriors W-L record. 42 times, James Wiseman took a hook shot in his rookie season and he connected on only 12 of those attempts.
A few years back, I read an article about Paul George’s development by Action Network’s Matt Moore that I can no longer find. In it, Moore talks to George about his growth into a superstar wing and the way he was developed on the Indiana Pacers. In the article, George talked at length about the sets and play actions he received in his first years in the league. To paraphrase from memory, George said that the Pacers started him off with pin-down screen actions. George mastered the reads available to him in pin-down actions and in time, applied those lessons to a diversified palette of play types.
I bring up George’s development in Indiana to compare it against the haphazard development path of Wiseman’s rookie season. James Wiseman would have benefited from similar diet of predictable playcalls that Paul George received in his rookie year. We don’t know if James Wiseman wanted to take more mid-range jumpers than threes or post-up nearly as many times as he shot off of the roll, but the Warriors’ coaching staff should not have allowed or pushed Wiseman to take the inefficient shots he did in his rookie season.
Wiseman’s shot chart offers a visual representation of the volume and inefficiency of his rookie season.
The lineup stats!
We’ll start with Cleaning the Glass’ non-garbage time lineups.
Notable 5 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: - 13.2 net rating (97.4 ORTG) in 538 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: -8.5 net rating (108.8 ORTG) in 102 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre/Green/Wiseman: +25 net rating (125 ORTG) in 96 possessions.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/JTA/Wiseman: -6.9 net rating (83.9 ORTG) in 87 possessions.
Poole/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: -19.2 net rating (115.6 ORTG) in 64 possessions.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/Paschall/Wiseman: -35.9 net rating (90.9 ORTG) in 55 possessions.
Poole/Oubre/Wiggins/JTA/Wiseman: -41.2 net rating (101.9 ORTG) in 52 possessions.
Mannion/Lee/Wiggins/JTA/Wiseman: -22.1 net rating 97.4 ORTG) in 38 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Wiggins/Paschall/Wiseman: -28.9 net rating (71.1 ORTG) in 38 possessions.
Curry/Mulder/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: -31.9 net rating (80.6 ORTG) in 31 possessions.
Curry/Lee/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: +37.9 net rating (169 ORTG) in 29 possessions.
Curry/Lee/Oubre/Green/Wiseman: -39.9 net rating (89.3 ORTG) in 28 possessions.
Curry/Wanamaker/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: +8.9 net rating (113.6 ORTG) in 22 possessions.
Curry/Mulder/Bazemore/Green/Wiseman: -35.6 net rating (90.6 ORTG) in 21 possessions.
Mannion/Poole/Oubre/Paschall/Wiseman: -55.6 net rating (77.8 ORTG) in 18 possessions.
These numbers make me sad. There are some truly horrendous combinations of ill-fitting players all throughout these lineups. The original starters with Kent Bazemore in place of Andrew Wiggins is positive, somehow, the starters many Warriors fans wanted (Curry/Lee/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman) were stellar in a small sample size, the OG starters with Brad Wanamaker in place of Kelly Oubre Jr. were solid, and there’s a Poole/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Wiggins lineup that is positive in 15 possessions. That’s it for positive lineups with James Wiseman on the court.
Just 6% of Wiseman’s minutes this year came with two or more shooters on the court (for the sake of thought, Curry, Poole, Mychal Mulder, and Damion Lee are the “shooters” because they’re the only shooters defenses seemed to respect). That’s inexcusable. 84% of the time that James Wiseman shared the court with Steph Curry, Kelly Oubre Jr. was also on the court. That, too, is inexcusable.
Notable 3 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Green/Wiseman: -7.3 net rating (102.3 ORTG) in 423 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Wiseman: -11.6 net rating (98.5 ORTG) in 416 minutes.
Curry/Oubre/Wiseman: -8.3 net rating (99 ORTG) in 413 minutes.
Oubre/Wiggins/Wiseman: -16.8 net rating (96 ORTG) in 386 minutes.
Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: -13.7 net rating (100.5 ORTG) in 385 minutes.
Oubre/Green/Wiseman: -6.6 net rating (101.7 ORTG) in 364 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiseman: +4.8 net rating (109.4 ORTG) in 113 minutes.
Bazemore/Green/Wiseman: +3.8 net rating (108.3 ORTG) in 109 minutes.
Lee/Wiggins/Wiseman: -12.3 net rating (96.5 ORTG) in 106 minutes.
Wiggins/JTA/Wiseman: -12.3 net rating (93.4 ORTG) in 103 minutes.
Poole/Wiggins/Wiseman: -16.4 net rating (99.5 ORTG) in 101 minutes.
Poole/Oubre/Wiseman: -22 net rating (106.5 ORTG) in 101 minutes.
Oubre/JTA/Wiseman: -17.3 net rating (93.9 ORTG) in 85 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiggins/Wiseman: -14.5 net rating (96.1 ORTG) in 83 minutes.
Mannion/Poole/Wiseman: +2.9 net rating (107.3 ORTG).
The first six combos here are all variants of the OG starting lineup and then there is a massive drop-off in minutes played for the subsequent combos. There are only two positive combos here; Curry/Bazemore/Wiseman and Mannion/Poole/Wiseman. I’m almost certain that the latter combo was a garbage time tank squad. Not a single one of these combos scores at or above a league average rate.
Notable two man combos (positive ones bolded):
Wiggins/Wiseman: -15.5 net rating (96.7 ORTG) in 598 minutes.
Curry/Wiseman: -8.1 net rating (101.6 ORTG) in 533 minutes.
Oubre/Wiseman: -10.8 net rating (100.4 ORTG) in 527 minutes.
Green/Wiseman: -8.4 net rating (103 ORTG) in 481 minutes.
Poole/Wiseman: -1.2 net rating (108.4 ORTG) in 206 minutes.
Lee/Wiseman: +0.1 net rating (108.4 ORTG) in 203 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiseman: -0.9 net rating (104.6 ORTG) in 167 minutes.
JTA/Wiseman: -4.3 net rating (100.9 ORTG) in 154 minutes.
Mannion/Wiseman: -14.5 net rating (99.7 ORTG) in 137 minutes.
Mulder/Wiseman: +1.9 net rating (104.1 ORTG) in 120 minutes.
Wanamaker/Wiseman: -5.4 net rating (95 ORTG) in 109 minutes.
Paschall/Wiseman: -20.2 net rating (94.5 ORTG) in 102 minutes.
Again, not a single one of these combos puts up league average offense. The positivity of the Damion Lee and James Wiseman combo is superficially interesting, but nearly half of their minutes together occurred in garbage time.
James Wiseman’s negative net rating with Steph Curry is alarming. As I’ve mentioned before, Wiseman joined Kelly Oubre Jr. and Anderson Varejao in infamy to become the only players in the Steve Kerr era to have a negative net rating in over 100 minutes in a 2 man combo with Steph Curry. The only players with a worse 2 man combo net rating with Steph that played over 100 minutes are Kelenna Azubuike (2009-2010), Mikki Moore (2009-2010), Rodney Carney (2010-2011), Dan Gadzuric (2010-2011), and Jordan Crawford (2013-14).
Moore and Azubuike played with rookie Steph, Carney and Gadzuric played only 18 more NBA games between the two of them after their Warriors stint, and Crawford washed out of the NBA after 2014 before briefly playing 24 games with New Orleans Pelicans over the course of the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons.
What’s next for James Wiseman?
For the sake of both parties, the Warriors should trade James Wiseman.
It is unlikely James makes a significant leap next year because he’ll spend much, if not all of his offseason rehabilitating his right knee. Steve Kerr could certainly make better use of Wiseman in his sophomore season, but let’s try to imagine what actually that looks like; Kerr could start Wiseman and play him only at the beginning of the 1st and 3rd quarters until he merits more minutes or he could limit Wiseman’s exposure to starting caliber guards and bigs by bringing him off of the bench.
In both of those scenarios, Wiseman would (ideally) be forced to earn his minutes. But consider the consequences of Wiseman struggling as a sophomore and not earning more than 12-15 minutes a game as the Warriors try to win games. If Wiseman isn’t a positive player (again) with the starting lineup, what does that do for his trade value and long-term development? If Wiseman doesn’t play well enough off of the bench to earn minutes above Kevon Looney what does that do for Wiseman’s perception around the league?
Remember again, that the most optimistic timeline of James Wiseman’s recovery from his meniscus tear has him missing summer league. Ideally Wiseman would be 100% by training camp, but even then that sets up preseason games to be his first meaningful in-game reps in nearly half of a year. Wiseman desperately needs in-game reps and it’s very likely he’ll be shaking off rust and readjusting to NBA game speed in the first month or so of his sophomore season — and god forbid his injury rehab has setbacks ala Jaren Jackson Jr. that push his return back to 2022.
It would be great if James Wiseman bounces back to have a stellar sophomore season, but the odds are stacked against him. If the Warriors prioritize winning next year and Wiseman isn’t ready to play significant minutes, it’ll be easy for outside observers to conclude that Wiseman isn’t ready to contribute to winning basketball. If Wiseman isn’t a positive contributor, then he is actively detrimental to the short-term goal of winning championships in the waning days of Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson’s careers.
It is more likely than not that James Wiseman will not play closing minutes in the playoffs during his rookie contract. There is half a decade of data that shows that the Warriors are at their best in high leverage situations with Draymond Green at the 5. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Wiseman becomes more useful than Kevon Looney at some point in the future, but it will be a tall task for Wiseman to provide more value at the 5 than Draymond Green does.
In the final months of the season, Draymond Green made life hell for MVP candidates Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid, stoned Zion Williamson repeatedly, and defended Anthony Davis so well that the Los Angeles Lakers abandoned the LeBron/AD PNR in the second half of the play-in game. Draymond Green is aging and undersized, so yes, you absolutely want to preserve his body to allow him to guard elite bigs in meaningful moments, but how many bigs will you find in the NBA that defend the elite bigs better than Draymond? Do you really think that James Wiseman will be that guy at any point during the tail end of Steph Curry and Draymond Green’s primes?
So long as Draymond Green is still Draymond Green, it will make sense for the Warriors to close games with him at the 5, so where does that leave James Wiseman? Unless Wiseman becomes a DPOY level defender or Amare Stoudemire with a 3 point shot in the immediate future, his most useful role for the contending Warriors would be as an innings eater at the 5, which is to say, JaVale McGee with the luster of a top 3 pick. A veteran minimum contract C is more suited to this role than James Wiseman and would probably more enjoy playing said role more than Wiseman. This is the crux of the Warriors’ James Wiseman problem — it’s unlikely Wiseman will earn crunch time playoff minutes in the duration of his rookie contract, which makes it difficult to trade him for someone who can close games in the playoffs.
As James Wiseman approaches the end of his rookie contract, it will be harder to trade him for a good return. Jarrett Allen, who was a much better player than Wiseman as a rookie, was traded in the final year of his rookie contract to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Do you know what they gave up?
The often injured Dante Exum, the Milwaukee Bucks’ 2022 first round pick, and whichever of the Utah Jazz or Cavalier’s 2024 2nd round draft pick is worse. Allen is expected to want upwards of $20 million dollars in free agency, which is a big reason that he returned so little in a trade.
Now imagine what James Wiseman might fetch on the trade market in the third or fourth year of his rookie contract as his payday approaches. Do you think that the players/picks coming back to the Warriors will be significant contributors to a championship roster? I doubt it.
James Wiseman’s trade value peaked before he played a single NBA game. The uncomfortable truth is that trading Wiseman right now is selling high because it is unlikely his trade value will go up any time in the next three years, barring a superstar leap. Right now, other teams can look at James Wiseman’s rookie season and convince themselves that Wiseman was misused (he was), that his confidence suffered from the high pressures of elevated expectations (it was), and that their team has a better environment for Wiseman than Golden State. They’re probably right.
Before Wiseman even played a single NBA game, the Warriors’ ownership and coaching staff compared him to current and future HOF players like David Robinson and Joel Embiid. These are absurd expectations to publicly place onto any NBA rookie, let alone one with so little experience and feel for the game. The Warriors organization did Wiseman a disservice by placing such high expectations onto him, ones that Wiseman would inevitably fail to meet as a rookie.
The Warriors organization failed James Wiseman by putting him into situations that he was not ready for. James Wiseman was not ready to play in Steve Kerr’s read-and-react motion offensive system; he was not ready to or capable of creating his own shot; he was not ready to solve the vexing problem of what the fuck to do as the roll man when multiple defenders were planted in the paint.
Very little that the Warriors did with James Wiseman made sense, save for the brief spurt of high volume PNR’s before he tore his meniscus. Nearly all of Wiseman’s non-garbage time minutes were spent in lineups with terrible floor spacing. How exactly did that benefit James Wiseman or the Warriors?
If James Wiseman was supposed to be learning how to play in the Warriors’ system, why did he spend so much time playing with players who do not fit the system? If the Warriors’ organization wanted Wiseman to learn how to play with Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson, why not play Wiseman heavy minutes with Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Damion Lee? Would it not have made sense to approximate the spacing and playstyle of the Warriors’ big 3 rather than have Wiseman play so many of his minutes with Steph Curry flanked by Kelly Oubre Jr.?
In an ideal world, James Wiseman would have played the role of a rim running center in lineups with good floor spacing. For various reasons, most of which are not justifiable, that did not happen. Instead, Wiseman played an antiquated style of basketball to the detriment to the Warriors’ W-L record and his own trade value. If Steve Kerr wanted James Wiseman to take twice as many mid-range jumpers as he did threes and post-up as much as he did roll on PNR’s, that’s obviously a problem and that bodes poorly for Wiseman’s development under Kerr.
While I have many frustrations with Steve Kerr, I don’t think he’s an idiot. I have trouble believing that Kerr watched Wiseman’s failed post-ups and thought happy thoughts. I think it’s far more likely that James Wiseman wanted to take those shots. But why did Steve Kerr let him?
Steve Kerr is an 8-time NBA champion as a player and a coach — he has as much gravitas as anyone in the league — so there’s no way James Wiseman would have blown him off, right? By all accounts, James Wiseman is a delightful, and hardworking human being. If he was the type of player to sneer at a coach’s instructions, there’s no way the Warriors’ brain trust would have picked him given their emphasis on culture.
So the far more likely scenario is that Steve Kerr willingly gave James Wiseman the freedom to fail on offense. Again, this begs the question; why? Was Steve Kerr pushed by his bosses to give Wiseman that type of freedom and if so, why did Kerr not push back? If Steve Kerr doesn’t have the confidence and security to speak up for himself and his team within the Warriors’ organization, that is a huge problem and reeks of meddling ownership.
Is it possible, instead, that Steve Kerr thought James Wiseman needed to struggle doing things his own way in order to fully buy into his role with the Warriors? I’d understand (and disagree with) that conclusion, but it clearly did James Wiseman no favors. James Wiseman looked worse with every passing month in his rookie season. How does that look to outside observers?
Oof.
The indisputable and sad truth is that James Wiseman had a terrible rookie season. There’s many answers that explain the why of what went down, but none of them give me any comfort.
While there’s a path to James Wiseman being a neutral contributor in his sophomore season, I am not confident the Warriors have the right environment to develop James Wiseman, I don’t believe he’ll ever be good enough to usurp Draymond Green as the Warriors’ crunch time 5, and I think his trade value will suffer if he only plays the minutes he earns next year. For those reasons and the many numbers we looked at in this piece, I believe the Warriors and Wiseman would both benefit from a breakup.