Warriors' season-in-review: the wings part 2 — Kelly Oubre Jr. and Andrew Wiggins
The future of Kelly Oubre Jr., why his lineup stats need context, Andrew Wiggins' solid season, his improved shot profile, and other thoughts.
In part 1 of our season-in-review for the Warriors’ wings, we’re going to look at Kelly Oubre Jr. and Andrew Wiggins. Every time I write one of these posts, I realize there’s additional info and charts I want to include, so these posts and the next will make use of shot charts visualizations from Positive Residual and I’m also going to start comparing player’s EFG% (a more advanced version of FG% that takes into account the value of three point shots) against league average.
Next week we’ll take a look at the Warriors’ bigs starting and split our review into two parts starting with the players who played less minutes and ending with the ones who played the most.
Kelly Oubre Jr.: C
Kelly Oubre Jr.’s addition to the Warriors felt like an inevitability. From the moment the Warriors received a $17.2 traded player exception for Andre Igoudala that allowed them to acquire a player making that approximate amount, Oubre’s penciled in as a potential target by fans and journalists alike. Marcus Thompson of The Athletic predicted prior to Klay Thompson’s Achilles tear that the Warriors would use their TPE to acquire Oubre. The appeal of Oubre was that he was a young, big, and athletic wing player who could preserve Klay Thompson’s legs and provide some scoring off of the bench. Although Oubre’s impact stats weren’t great and he’d been a below average 3 point shooter for all of his career, there was reason to believe he’d benefit from playing with Steph Curry. Plus Oubre had improved his 3 point shooting every year.
After Klay Thompson went down with his season-ending injury, there was an obvious need for a wing player to soak up 25-30 minutes a game, but there were reasonable doubts that the Warriors’ ownership would be reluctant to incur $80 million or so in luxury tax penalties to bring in a player with a contract the size of Oubre’s. But the Warriors went ahead and did it anyway, price be damned, which served as an emotional boost for a fanbase still processing Thompson’s devastating injury. Even if the Warriors were no longer a contender, Oubre’s acquisition signaled that the Warriors had no intention of rolling over and playing dead so long as Steph Curry was healthy.
In training camp, Steve Kerr indicated that Oubre was almost certain to start at the wing next to Andrew Wiggins. Somehow I didn’t really question that. Most Warriors fans didn’t. I think most of us assumed that Oubre’s shooting would continue its upward trajectory and were intrigued by the idea of pairing Steph Curry and Draymond Green with two long and athletic wings. Oubre sounded very excited about being a Warrior and talked up their system of “lucid basketball.” Expectations were high — or at the very least, Oubre and other powers that be in the Warriors organization projected optimism.
And then the regular season started. Through 21 games, Kelly Oubre had the worst shooting slump of his career. He was an unmitigated disaster and it didn’t take long for Warriors media and fans to question whether Oubre should be starting over Damion Lee or Kent Bazemore, whose shooting ability would provide a little more spacing. In those first 21 games, Kelly Oubre Jr. scored 12 points a game on alarming 38/23/73 splits and he looked every bit as bad as his numbers. Oubre bricked open three after open three, made aggressive and futile drives into the lane, and really struggled to pick up on the nuances of Steve Kerr’s system. Even Steph Curry, who is rarely demonstrative or critical of his teammates, lost his patience with Oubre in a memorable sequence where Oubre ignored an obvious opportunity to set a screen on a defender to set up Curry for one of his patented relocation corner threes. Watch Steph’s reaction here below. Yikes.
But then Kelly Oubre Jr. broke his slump in a big way against the Dallas Mavericks in early February and put up 44 points on 14/21 shooting and went 7/10 from three. From that point on, Oubre’s counting numbers are actually pretty decent. In his final 34 games of the season, Oubre averaged 17.6 points a game on 47/36/67 splits. If this is the real Oubre, those numbers would actually fall in line with his career long trend of improving his three point shooting every season. That version of Kelly Oubre Jr. might be a valuable player for the Warriors.
But impact stats and lineup data were not kind to Oubre this season. Oubre was one of the most negatively impactful players for the Warriors this year and he played the 4th most minutes of any player on the team. This too, is an unfortunate trend in Oubre’s career. In his previous NBA seasons, his impact stats have been pretty bleh, despite his explosive athletic ability and decent counting stats. Oubre didn’t play a single game in last season’s Orlando bubble with the Phoenix Suns and they went 8-0 before losing their only game of the bubble in the play-in tournament. In 17 games the Warriors played without Oubre, they had a 12-5 record. There’s a mounting body of evidence to suggest that Oubre’s teams play better without him.
And yet, I still find myself somewhat intrigued by what Oubre could do in a more ideal ecosystem. I’m very skeptical of players’ whose primary positive trait is their athleticism, and yet I felt a bit of a soft spot for Oubre. Again, the appeal of him is simple — he’s a hyper athletic wing who can (theoretically) guard 1-4, he racks up steals + blocks (stocks), and up until this season he’d improved his three point shooting every year. Another thing that’s interesting about Oubre; his shooting stats are pretty much identical whether or not Steph Curry is on the court. For years now, most Warriors players have seen their shooting stats tank without Curry. It could be quite nice to have a guy on the roster who can get buckets with or without Curry.
I think it’s clear that Steve Kerr misused Oubre for most of the year by trying to make him into a shooting guard in a motion offense. Oubre is not a passer and he’s definitely not a shooting guard. He has more turnovers than assists in his career, which is stunning — I actually remember specific assists Oubre made this year because they felt so rare. Oubre’s ideal role, which he got to play for all of 5 games after returning from a hand injury, is as a bench 4. Oubre actually performed pretty well in that role in a teeny sample size. Check out these screenshots on the lineup stats from those games:
There’s only one negative lineup there and it’s worth remembering that this sample size includes the humiliating loss against the Dallas Mavericks where the Warriors lost by 30 points. But it’s irresponsible to project anything from a sample size that small, so let’s increase our sample size and look at how Oubre’s lineup numbers look after he broke out of his shooting slump. Here’s a screenshot below.
So, not great. But that’s not terribly surprising to me considering how much time Oubre spent paired with net rating anchors like James Wiseman, Eric Paschall, and Eric Paschall. This is why I find that 5 game sample size from the post-Wiseman injury era so intriguing; by virtue of injuries and trades, Steve Kerr was able to put Oubre in more optimal situations, which begs the question — why didn’t that happen earlier?
The answer is complicated and it probably comes down to politics. Kelly Oubre Jr. was the Warriors’ big ticket offseason acquisition who cost $80 million to acquire and he was in a contract year. You can imagine there was pressure from ownership to make Oubre work and not make their 80 million dollar acquisition into a bench player. Beyond that, Steve Kerr had a few other players to integrate into the rotation; FA acquisition Brad Wanamaker, All-Rookie 2nd team player Eric Paschall, and their prized #2 pick, James Wiseman.
I’d hazard a guess to say that a lot of Kerr’s decisions earlier in the year were driven by political considerations, but I still don’t think that justifies some of the decisions he made, most notably putting Brad Wanamaker on the ball over Jordan Poole and trying to turn James Wiseman into a dribble hand off decision maker rather than a hyper athletic rim runner. Oubre’s continued role as a starter falls into that category as well. I do understand that Kerr probably wanted to maintain confidence and a good relationship with Oubre in the event that the Warriors want to keep him around long term.
Starting him even through a shooting slump makes some sense in that context, but what did the Warriors gain from it? Oubre’s poor shooting played a huge role in the Warriors’ inability to space the floor, which in turn made it harder for James Wiseman to get easy buckets in the paint. I won’t speak much on Wiseman in this post, but he is indisputably one of the Warriors’ most important players and as such maximizing him as a player or trade asset should have been a higher priority than placating Kelly Oubre Jr.'s feelings.
And even there, I think the Warriors messed up. Leading up to the trade deadline, rumors swirled about a potential Kelly Oubre Jr. trade. Some names bandied about included the Net’s injured combo guard Spencer Dinwiddie, New Orleans Pelicans guard, Lonzo Ball, Atlanta Hawks guard, Bogdan Bogdanovic, the Cleveland Cavaliers Cedi Osman and former Warrior, Javale McGee. It’s hard to say exactly what the mechanics of each deal would have been and whether a potential Oubre swap would have included either the Minnesota Timberwolves 2021 FRP or the Warriors’ own FRP.
In the end the Warriors did not trade Oubre, but they did a poor job handling the situation. After the deadline passed, Steve Kerr said in a radio interview that he could see Oubre coming off of the bench next year for the Warriors if he returned. When asked about Kerr’s comments, Oubre said that he “can offer a lot more than coming off the bench” and seemed insulted when he was asked if he’d consider taking a paycut to return to the Warriors. Frankly, he should be insulted by that question! Why would a 25/26 year old who hasn’t even reached his prime take a paycut to return to play a bench role on a team that didn’t even make the playoffs?
All things considering, I think Oubre was actually a pretty good soldier. After he injured his wrist, Oubre was asked to come off of the bench and in the 5 games he played before his injury flared up again, he looked good as a bench 4. We looked a bit at the lineup stats a few paragraphs back, but what I remember about those games is that Oubre looked much more comfortable in a better spaced environment and he did a good job racking up easy buckets on baseline cuts ala Andre Igoudala — Oubre actually had the 19th most dunks in the NBA despite playing only 43 games.
I am disappointed that the Warriors didn’t get a larger sample size of Oubre off the bench, if only because I think it would make it easier to make a determination on his future with the team. I’m not convinced the Warriors go on their hot streak to end the season as the 8th seed if Kelly Oubre Jr. is playing heavy minutes. But the flip side of that is I think I’d probably have preferred 15-20 minutes of Kelly Oubre Jr. in the play-in games to Mychal Mulder, so who knows how things play out?
But I want to talk for a moment about Oubre’s wrist injury. He sprained his wrist on April 9 and that was actually the second wrist sprain of the season as he missed earlier games in March with a wrist sprain. After the second wrist injury against the Wizards, Oubre came back for 5 games he played without Wiseman before Warriors ruled him out again on April 29. Two days later, the Warriors finally reported that Oubre’s wrist injury was a torn ligament in his wrist and a fracture in his palm. Whoops!
For those of you keeping count, this is now the 5th/6th significant injury to occur under Joe Lacbo’s ownership where the initial details of the injury do not fully explain the extent of the injury. In 2012, Andrew Bogut missed three months recovering from a microfracture surgery that he came back early from. Even back then, details about Bogut’s surgery and the botched return were nebulous. Andre Iguodala’s knee contusion in the 2018 playoffs was not known to be a “spider fracture” until Iguodala revealed the details of the injury on a press tour A YEAR LATER after the Warriors traded him for the TPE that eventually became Oubre. There’s the Kevin Durant calf sprain that may or may not have led to him tearing his Achilles in Game 5 of the 2019 Finals. Earlier this year, Marquese Chriss was listed out with a leg injury and it wasn’t until the next day that the Warriors announced he’d broken his leg. Steph Curry’s tailbone contusion from earlier this season? Turns out that was a hairline fracture. Whoops!
Do the Warriors willfully hide details of their players’ injuries to the press? I’m not sure. But whatever is going on here, it’s not a good look and I really doubt that NBA agents appreciate the nebulous cloud the Warriors have around player injuries. Bringing that back to Oubre, I’m not sure if his wrist sprain was initially misdiagnosed or if the injury got worse after some aggravation. But I really doubt that his injury experience with the Warriors left him with a warm, fuzzy feeling about the organization and that’s on top of the trade rumors or Steve Kerr and the Warriors’ media pigeonholing him into a bench role and making noise about a paycut.
So where does this leave the Warriors’ with regards to Oubre? I’ll go more into that in the “What’s next section?” but the short of it is that it’s very hard to make sense of the Kelly Oubre Jr. experience this year. I think it’s clear that he was misused for most of the year. I think it’s also clear that he’s been a mostly negative player for most of his career, but I’ll grant the caveat that he’s only really ever played in bad organizations. There might be a scenario in which Oubre is a positive player for the Warriors’ next year in a reduced role, but does he even want to come back to the Warriors? Even if he does, teams like the Knics, Heat, and Spurs are rumored to have interest in him and all of those teams will have cap space. This is to say, none of those teams need to sign-and-trade for Kelly Oubre Jr.
Should the Warriors choose to sign-and-trade Oubre, would they seek other players or perhaps another Oubre sized TPE? If they go down the TPE route and burn a pick to entice a team with cap space to create a TPE, they’ll likely have to send more picks to pick up another player with the Oubre TPE who is the approximate caliber of... Kelly Oubre Jr. The cycle goes on and on. Unfortunately, Oubre’s salary slot is the Warriors’ only path to acquiring another player or combo of players in the range of $15-20 million a year. While the Warriors could certainly benefit from using that salary slot, there’s no guarantee they’ll want to or even be able to after how the Oubre experience played out this year.
All of this makes it really hard for me to grade Oubre, but I settled on a C to account for the various caveats and weird shit that went on around him. I don’t love Kelly Oubre Jr., but he can be better than he was this year. I’m just not sure that can or should happen with the Warriors.
Kelly Oubre Jr.’s statistical profile (career bests bolded):
55 games played, 30.7 minutes a game, 15.4points a game, 6 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 1.3 turnovers, 1 steals, 0.8 blocks, and 2.2 fouls.
43.9% FG, 31.6% 3P, 69.5% FT, 52.9 TS% (-4.3% league average TS), 50.1% EFG (-3.7 league average EFG).
13.2 FGA, 5.2 3PA, 3.2 FTA.
BBREF: 103 ORTG, 110 DRTG, -5.3 +/- per 100 poss., -0.1 VORP, 0.62 WS/48, 22.1% USG.
NBA.com: 105.2 ORTG, 109.8 DRTG, -4.6 net rating, 21.5% USG.
-11.2 DIFF in non-garbage time (8th percentile), 74th percentile usage, 34th percentile PSA, 20th percentile AST%, 5th percentile AST:Usg, 84th percentile TOV% among wing position.
-1.90 ORPM, 1.17 DRPM, -0.73 RPM (#204 rank of 534 players).
So the numbers are pretty ugly. Again, there’s some caveats to apply, but his numbers both raw counting stats and impact metrics are mostly in line with what Oubre has done in his 6 year career. Counting the Glass is very anti-Oubre. For the point of comparison, I checked how he fared in years prior and CtG has him as 49th, 27th, 17th, 15th (partial season with Washington), 86th (partial season with Phoenix), and 45th percentile efficiency differential until this year. So this season was Oubre’s worst on record by a significant amount. It was also Oubre’s 3rd worst season by TS%, which is not what you would expect to happen in a Steph Curry ecosystem. I am amused by Oubre’s “elite” TOV%. There’s some necessary context here that needs to get untangled — Kelly Oubre rarely passes the ball, so of course he doesn’t turn the ball over.
Oubre does come out positive defensively everywhere except for BBRef’s DBPM. I’ve heard some whispers about some unreleased tracking stats that evaluate how much a defender changes a player’s shot that are apparently quite low on Oubre and quite high on Andrew Wiggins, for whatever that’s worth. I could see that making some sense. Oubre is an active defender and because he’s got long-ass gumby arms and a good motor, he can make himself look busy. Beyond that he also racks up rebounds, steals, and blocks, all of which typically bleed into defensive impact stats that emphasize box score counting stats. Whether or not Oubre’s box score stats accumulation actually counts as good defense is another question altogether — regardless of his supposed defensive prowess, the Warriors were a very bad team with him on the court this year.
Kelly Oubre Jr.’s performance in the play-in games: N/A
Kelly Oubre Jr.’s shooting profile:
Restricted area: 63.9% on 241 attempts.
Non-restricted area paint: 38.7% on 150 attempts.
Mid-range: 33.3% on 48 attempts.
Left corner 3: 40.5% on 42 attempts.
Right corner 3: 36.5% on 63 attempts.
Above the break 3: 27.8% on 180 attempts.
Floaters: 46% on 50 attempts.
Layups and fingers rolls: 44% on 198 attempts.
FGA% per total drives: 60.9%.
Assisted by: Draymond Green (74), Steph Curry (57), Juan Toscano-Anderson (22), Andrew Wiggins (19), Damion Lee (13), Kevon Looney and Brad Wanamaker (12), Jordan Poole (11), Kent Bazemore (7), James Wiseman and Eric Paschall (4), Nico Mannion (3), Mychal Mulder (1).
Total FG’s assisted: 116
FGM% assisted: 75.1%
FGM% unassisted: 24.9%
So to give you a sense of how weird Kelly Oubre Jr.’s season was, I’ve pulled up some stats from his previous two seasons. Last year Oubre shot 37.9% on pull-up threes on 58 attempts vs 34.4% on 241 catch and shoot attempts and the year prior he shot 34.3% on 70 attempts pull-up attempts vs 31.1% catch and shoot on 267 attempts. Kelly Oubre was atrocious shooting above the break threes this year. But last year he shot 36.3% above the break on 215 attempts and 32.3% the year prior on 257 attempts. Oubre’s mid-range game was pretty meh this year. Last year, he shot 42.1% on 56 mid-range attempts and 46.4% on 54 mid-range attempts the year prior. Oubre optimists, whoever they may be, would argue that the brutal slump he had at the beginning of the season really fucked up his shooting percentages. I’m open to that argument.
But there’s some other ugly stuff here that needs to be addressed. Kelly Oubre shot 41.5% on drives and 44.4% on layups this year. When Oubre drove, he passed it only 19% of the time. James Wiseman is the only rotation player who passed less on drives and I don’t even want to tell you how many times he passed the ball on drives this year. Only 28 players in the league that drove more than four times a game had a lower FG%. That tracks with the eyeball test and my memory, which was that Kelly Oubre Jr. made a lot of drives to the hoop where it was very clear he was going to shoot it regardless of who was defending him or how many defenders helped on his drives.
Oubre has been in the league for 6 years now. It’s unlikely he makes any dramatic improvements to his game at this point in his career and one of the things that really struggles with is forcing his defenders to move laterally. Kelly Oubre Jr. is a straight line driver. He has almost no ability to shift his defender with the dribble. What he does have is explosion, which can be quite useful when he attacks a closeout or beats his defender with his first step.
But early on in his slump, defenders started laying off of Oubre, which in turn made it harder for him to attack closeouts and put more defenders in the paint to contest his straight line drives. You’d hope that next year with a healthy ish Klay Thompson and some additional floor spacing that Oubre’s drives to the hoop wouldn’t be so ugly.
Unfortunately, Oubre was asked to do more than he should have this year and the Warriors’ fate was tied to Oubre’s performance too many times for comfort. Out of curiosity, I checked Stat Muse to see how Oubre performed in wins vs. losses and the numbers aren’t terribly surprising: in 27 wins, Oubre averaged 16.8 points on 47/34/77 splits. In losses he averaged 14.1 points on 40/29/63 splits.
Now, for the shot chart from Positive Residual!
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/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Looney: +5.8 net rating (112.2 ORTG) in 401 possessions.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/JTA/Green: +9 net rating (119.4 ORTG) in 324 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.
Wanamaker/Lee/Oubre/Wiggins/Paschall: -16.5 net rating (88.6 ORTG) in 79 possessions.
Curry/Lee/Oubre/Wiggins/Green: -11.9 net rating (118.2 ORTG) in 77 possessions.
Poole/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: -19.2 net rating (115.6 ORTG) in 64 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre/Wiggins/Green: +9.5 net rating (128.6 ORTG) in 63 possessions.
Mannion/Poole/Lee/Oubre/Looney: +5 net rating (103.3 ORTG) in 60 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre/Green/Looney: +19.2 net rating (114 ORTG) in 57
Wanamaker/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Paschall: +5.7 net rating (114.3 ORTG) in 56 possessions.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/Paschall/Wiseman: -35.9 net rating (90.9 ORTG) in 55 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre/JTA/Green: +24.1 net rating (114.8 ORTG) in 54 possessions.
Poole/Oubre/Wiggins/JTA/Wiseman: -41.2 net rating (101.9 ORTG) in 52 possessions.
So, all of the positive lineups here manage to have an above league average ORTG, save for the one with Mannion at the point guard. All but one of the negative lineups include one of Eric Paschall or James Wiseman. The only one that doesn’t, is a smallball lineup — Curry/Lee/Oubre/Wiggins/Green — and it had a well above average ORTG but struggled to defend. As with all the lineup numbers, there’s some noise here, but I am intrigued that Oubre, who the impact stats all agreed was a negative on offense, was involved in several lineups that had an above average ORTG when he was removed from Eric Paschall or James Wiseman. I had a hunch that there’s more positive lineups to be found if I looked for Oubre 5 man combos with Wiseman or Paschall filtered out, so I’ve attached a screenshot of what I found below.
Anything interesting here? Maybe. JTA/Looney seems to be a bad frontcourt to pair with Kelly Oubre. That makes sense. The combo of Lee/Bazemore/Oubre doesn’t look great here either. Still lots of noise, but I thought it would be interesting to see how Oubre played without Paschall or Wiseman.
Notable 3 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Oubre/Green: +1.2 net rating (109.7 ORTG) in 899 minutes.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins: -2.6 net rating (107.2 ORTG) in 833 minutes.
Oubre/Wiggins/Green: -3.8 net rating (106.5 ORTG) in 811 minutes.
Curry/Oubre/Wiseman: -8.3 net rating (99 ORTG) in 413 minutes.
Oubre/Wiggins/Wiseman: -16.8 net rating (96 ORTG) in 396 minutes.
Oubre/Green/Wiseman: -6.6 net rating (101.7 ORTG) in 364 minutes.
Curry/Oubre/Looney: +6 net rating (110.3 ORTG) in 336 minutes.
Curry/Oubre/JTA: +0.3 net rating (105.8 ORTG) in 324 minutes.
Oubre/Wiggins/JTA: -2.1 net rating (104.9 ORTG) in 301 minutes.
Oubre/Wiggins/Looney: +3.8 net rating (108.2 ORTG) in 275 minutes.
Oubre/Green/Looney: +10.9 net rating (112.4 ORTG) in 245 minutes.
Oubre/JTA/Green: +6.4 net rating (111.4 ORTG) in 231 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre: +7 net rating (110 ORTG) in 222 minutes.
Curry/Lee/Oubre: -2.8 net rating (106.6 ORTG) in 173 minutes.
Poole/Oubre/Wiggins: -14.2 net rating (100 ORTG) in 168 minutes.
What sticks out to me here is that most of the negative combos are variants on the early season starting 5 with James Wiseman at the C. Curry/Lee/Oubre didn’t fare all that well in 5 man combos either, so it’s not terribly surprising to see them show up negative here, nor is it much of a shock that Poole/Oubre/Wiggins bench lineups struggled to score.
Notable 2 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Oubre: -1.4 net rating (107.3 ORTG) in 1175 minutes.
Oubre/Wiggins: -5.3 net rating (104.1 ORTG) in 1097 minutes.
Oubre/Green: +0.4 net rating (108.2 ORTG) in 1055 minutes.
Oubre/Wiseman: -10.8 net rating (100.4 ORTG) in 527 minutes.
Oubre/Looney: +1.7 net rating (106.8 ORTG) in 479 minutes.
Oubre/JTA: -6.8 net rating (102.4 ORTG) in 458 minutes.
Lee/Oubre: -3.9 net rating (103.9 ORTG) in 452 minutes.
Poole/Oubre: -10.4 net rating (99.4 ORTG) in 380 minutes.
Bazemore/Oubre: +7.1 net rating (109 ORTG) in 344 minutes.
Oubre/Paschall: -20.8 net rating (95.2 ORTG) in 281 minutes.
Wanamaker/Oubre; -4.3 net rating (101.4 ORTG) in 209 minutes.
Mulder/Oubre: -21.2 net rating (98.6 ORTG) in 151 minutes.
Mannion/Oubre: -15.2 net rating (101.9 ORTG) in 125 minutes.
These 2 man combo numbers are less kind to Oubre than the 5 man or 3 man combo numbers. Oubre joins James Wiseman and Anderson Vareajo in infamy to be the only players in the Steve Kerr era to play >100 minutes with Steph Curry and have a negative net rating in a 2 man combo. I’m surprised to see Oubre/JTA come up negative, but the rest of the negative combos make sense — Oubre spent lots of time in the starting 5 with James Wiseman, who was bad this year and Steve Kerr tried out lots of bad bench combinations where Oubre played next to Eric Paschall, James Wiseman, or Brad Wanamaker.
I am, however, very curious as to how Bazemore/Oubre comes up positive. I would have assumed that skill and low BBIQ overlap between Bazemore and Oubre would lead to disaster, but that was not the case. I doubt that both Bazemore and Oubre are Warriors next year, but I could see how they’d work in a bench unit next to Klay Thompson and Jordan Poole and a rim running C.
What’s next for Kelly Oubre Jr.?
Kelly Oubre Jr. is an unrestricted free agent this summer, which means the Warriors cannot match any offers made to him. If the Warriors want to keep him, Oubre will have to choose to return to the Warriors. Oubre is said to seek a contract in the range of $20 million and numerous teams with cap space are interested in his services. The Warriors will have competition if they want to bring Oubre back, but my guess is they would prefer not to.
I’m open to the argument that Oubre should be better next year if he’s on the Warriors roster — he’s unlikely to have a prolonged 20 game slump where he shoots 25% from the three point line and I’d like to imagine Steve Kerr will trot out more sensible lineups next season. But Oubre was negatively impactful this year and he cost Joe Lacob about $80 million in luxury tax penalties, all for the Warriors to miss the playoffs.
With all that in mind, I’d imagine the Warriors would prefer to keep Oubre’s salary slot open through the aforementioned sign-and-trade to create a TPE with which they can try and acquire another player in the range of Oubre’s projected salary or... simply let the TPE expire. Kelly Oubre Jr. is not worth $15-20 million to be a 15-20 minutes a game bench player. That would be his best role next year, but I doubt Oubre would want that. I also doubt Steve Kerr wants to be in a position where he has to find 20-25 minutes a game for Oubre when a healthy ish Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green, and Juan Toscano-Anderson are all more worthy of minutes than Oubre.
I’d be very surprised if Kelly Oubre Jr. is on the Warriors next year. I suspect the Warriors will try to create a TPE in a sign-and-trade deal with Oubre simply because they have no other avenues to getting a player more expensive than the taxpayer MLE outside of the draft and trades. And even then, the Warriors have very few tradable assets outside of James Wiseman and their draft picks — Kevon Looney has a $5 million dollar salary that could be useful filler, but he’s also the team’s most reliable center. Jordan Poole is a good player now, but his salary is insignificant and I’d imagine he’d probably be the type of filler a team demands in a big trade. Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins would be difficult to trade without attaching draft compensation and I for one, don’t think the Warriors should trade Draymond.
Unless the Warriors manage to create a TPE in an Oubre sign-and-trade deal (or get players back, which strikes me as the far more unlikely scenario), Andrew Wiggins is probably their most tradable contract and he has a bad contract. You can only really make Wiggins trades without draft picks involved for say, someone like Al Horford or Kristaps Porzingis or Otto Porter Jr., which I doubt the Warriors are interested in. Wiggins would be the obvious piece to move in a deal for another max contract level player like Bradley Beal, but in that type of trade, the Warriors would almost certainly have to give up all of their draft picks. I’m fine with that for the right deal, but it’s a bit of a boom or bust situation to be in.
For that reason, it makes sense for the Warriors to try and do whatever they can to not let Kelly Oubre Jr.’s salary slot expire. If Oubre is on the team next year, I’ll be absolutely shocked. But I wouldn’t be opposed to his return if the Warriors signed him to a friendly deal with a team option, which again, I doubt Oubre wants. That’s pretty much the rub of the situation; the circumstances in which Kelly Oubre Jr. could return to the Warriors are probably not desirable to Oubre and vice versa, which is why I suspect we’ve seen the last of Kelly Oubre Jr. in a Warriors’ uniform.
Andrew Wiggins: B
I nearly threw my phone at the ground when I found out the Warriors traded for Andrew Wiggins in February of 2020. Wiggins’ reputation fits the description of the player types I generally despise — a contact averse, hyper athletic player with a poor handle and clumsy feel for the game. I felt a bit better when I found out the Warriors got the Minnesota Timberwolves top three protected 2021 FRP, but it didn’t dull the pain of my favorite team picking up someone who drew comparisons to Harrison Barnes with a worse jumpshot.
My memories of Wiggins prior to his Warriors stint are marred by ugly and unnecessary fadeaway jump shots and unused athletic ability. I tried to have an open mind about Wiggins in his first game as a Warrior and I was pleasantly surprised. Wiggins defended LeBron James with obvious effort, hit some open jumpers, and showed the tantalizing athletic gifts that made so many scouts and NBA talent evaluators gaga about his potential.
In the 12 games Wiggins played before the Covid-19 pandemic, I saw some things that made me mildly optimistic that Wiggins could be at least a neutral contributor for the Warriors. Wiggins’ athleticism was very real and despite a stiff handle, his first step was so explosive that he could burn defenders from a standstill, unlike Harrison Barnes, who had neither the handle nor the explosiveness to do much of anything off of the dribble. I was also impressed by Wiggins’ ability to make passes to shooters deep in the paint; a while back Ethan Sherwood Strauss talked on a podcast about scouts distinguishing between players who pass off the dribble when handling the ball in PNR’s and those who pass more or less at the rim — Wiggins doesn’t have the vision to be the former, but he’s a capable passer when he’s met at the rim by defenders.
But what was most encouraging about Wiggins’ brief time with the tanking Warriors was his defense. There’s really no reason Wiggins should have been a bad defender for most of his NBA career. He’s got the athletic ability to keep up with pretty much any guard or wing in the league and he’s stronger than he looks, especially when offensive players try to post him up. But for whatever reason, be it lack of motivation, bad coaching, or the residual effects of playing for bad Timberwolves teams, Wiggins had a well-earned reputation as a bad defender. Still, Warriors coaches were very public in their excitement over Wiggins’ defensive ability and with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that their excitement was warranted.
For the first time in his career, Wiggins was regarded as a plus defensively. Although he won’t be on any All-Defense teams, much to Bob Fitzgerald’s chagrin, he was the Warriors’ best perimeter defender this year and held his own against most star wings in the NBA and even won a few of those matchups this season. Wiggins Island became a thing on Twitter this season and it didn’t feel like a joke! The impact stats are mostly in agreement he was a positive defender and some non-public tracking stats on defensive ability apparently love Wiggins. Although Wiggins will never be worth his ___ million dollar contract, his defensive prowess was a pleasant surprise and I regarded every other positive thing he did as a cherry on top of that.
Wiggins had the most efficient season of his career and this was without the benefit of playing with Klay Thompson, whose presence would have created even less resistance in the paint for Wiggins’ dribble drives and cuts to the basket. In the offseason, I thought there was a good chance that Wiggins would be a more impactful player for the Warriors than Harrison Barnes, his frequent comparison, was. My logic was simple — Wiggins would get open shots from the three, his athletic ability would translate better to the Warriors’ system than Barnes, and his ability to blow by defenders would make it less likely that Wiggins would have as useless a streak of games as Barnes 2016 Finals.
Thompson’s injury changed everything for this year’s Warriors and was probably most harmful to Andrew Wiggins. And yet, Wiggins was just fine. He hit open shots, he was actually quite efficient in isolation, and while he was an inconsistent shooter, he still shot above average from behind the three point line this year. He wasn’t an excellent player and the impact stats all agree he was pretty eh offensively, but that’s not surprising; Wiggins was thrust into pretty much the same role he played in Minnesota as a second option on offense. A simple way to think about what advanced impact metrics quantify is; how well did a player perform in their given role? By that standard, it’s not surprising that Wiggins was a pretty mediocre second option.
Again, a second option on offense was not the role the Warriors imagined for Wiggins when they acquired him. At this point in his career, Wiggins is who he is. Maybe his efficiency can bump up a bit with some tweaks to his shot form (my god the spin on his jumper is hideous!) and electroshock therapy to excise the step back two’s from his game, but any changes to his career trajectory will be minor from here on out. Wiggins will never be worth his contract, but he’s useful to the Warriors and for the most part I actually... kind of enjoyed watching Andrew Wiggins play this year.
Some of it might be Stockholm Syndrome, or maybe I’m just more forgiving of the flaws of players who are asked to do more than they are capable of doing, but I thought Andrew Wiggins was the least of the Warriors’ problems this year. To quote George W. Bush (I probably won’t do that ever again), the “bigotry of soft expectations” made Wiggins’ flaws more tolerable to me than they did for Timberwolves fans who pinned their entire franchise’s hopes on him.
I’d probably have given Wiggins a B+, based entirely on how he surpassed my low expectations for him if the Warriors’ had made the playoffs. But Wiggins left a bad taste in my mouth after the play-in game against the Memphis Grizzlies when he blew a potential game-tying bunny in the fourth quarter and airballed a pull-up three off of a pindown screen with 14 seconds left on the shot clock late in the game. On some level, it’s cool, I guess, that Wiggins had the confidence to take that shot. But also, why the fuck did he take that shot with 14 seconds left on the shot clock in a close game?
The good thing is that Wiggins probably won’t be taking pull-up three’s in crunch time next season. Instead, he’ll be defending other team’s best perimeter players, taking open 3’s, occasionally taking someone off of the dribble, and feasting on easy cuts to the basket, just how things should have looked this year if Klay Thompson had stayed healthy. I’m not the one signing the paychecks for $35 million contract, so I’ll be fine with that as long as the Warriors front office don’t fuck up this offseason.
Andrew Wiggins’ statistical profile (career bests bolded:
71 games played, 33.3 minutes a game, 18.6points a game, 4.9 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 2.2 turnovers, 0.9 steals, 1 block, and 2.2 fouls.
47.7% FG, 38% 3P, 71.4% FT, 56.8 TS% (-0.4% league average TS), 54.3% EFG (+0.5 league average EFG).
14.9 FGA, 5.2 3PA, 3.4 FTA.
BBREF: 107 ORTG, 111 DRTG, +0.1 +/- per 100 poss., +0.8 VORP, 0.80 WS/48, 23.3% USG.
NBA.com: 108.9 ORTG, 109.1 DRTG, -0.2 net rating, 22.9% USG.
-1.0 DIFF in non-garbage time (46th percentile), 86th percentile usage, 48th percentile PSA, 64th percentile AST%, 21st percentile AST:Usg, 66th percentile TOV% among forward position.
-1.40 ORPM, 2.72 DRPM, -0.73 RPM (#71st rank of 534 players).
There’s a lot of stuff to unpack here. For one, Wiggins played all but one game this season. That’s great! It’s a lame cliche, but availability is one of the greatest assets. Onto the numbers; Cleaning the Glass, BBRef, ESPN, and EPM all have very different valuations of Wiggins. All these metrics are in agreement that Wiggins was slightly negative overall and on offense, but he ranks well defensively by Cleaning the Glass, EPM, and ESPN’s RPM. As I mentioned before, some non-public defensive tracking numbers apparently love Wiggins’ on ball defense. But he doesn’t rack up a huge number of stocks (steals + blocks) and actually ranks worse than Kelly Oubre Jr. defensively via EPM and grades equal to him through BBRef’s DBPM. Again, defensive metrics are still tricky to quantify, but Wiggins did well enough on defense against various star level creators to have earned the creation of this glorious image.
Jokes aside, the neutral and/or negative valuations on Wiggins’ offense make sense. Despite shooting career bests, I don’t think Wiggins was a genuine offensive threat on most nights. The 38% from three feels a bit deceiving. The percentage doesn’t lie, but it’s not like defenders really care about Andrew Wiggins shooting threes. Simply put, he doesn’t have much gravity. He can hit open shots occasionally and that’s fine! But he’s not a consistent or threatening shooter and his shot form and its fucked up spin lead to inconsistent stretches.
Remember when Wiggins was shooting above 40% from three earlier in the year? Well, when James Wiseman went down with a sprained wrist earlier in the season, Andrew Wiggins’ three point shot disappeared. In 10 games without Wiseman, Wiggins shot 30.5% from three. To underscore my point about Wiggins’ streakiness, check out his splits after the All-Star break: 20.3 points on 49/41/76 splits. That’s great! But for whatever reason, it didn’t translate into defenses really giving a shit about Andrew Wiggins shooting jumpers. Wiggins is a moderately reliable open shooter and because he’d never shot above 34% in his career from three before this season, defenses aren’t going to start treating him with real respect unless he’s shooting the shit out of the ball next year on high volume.
Another thing that stuck out to me; Wiggins shot career high 52.9% on 2P FGA this year, but attempted a career low 3.4 FTA. I expected that in the Warriors’ Steph Curry centric offensive system Wiggins would have a career high 2P FGA%. I’ll pat Wiggins (and myself) on the back for that. But what happened to his free throw attempts? I have a hunch, based on my unreliable eye test, that Wiggins didn’t get a lot of foul calls on drives to the hoop this year. There were lots of times this year I’d see Wiggins take it strong to the hoop and take lots of contact, only for a ref to swallow their whistle. I couldn’t make sense of it and what I’m not sure about is if he actually did get a lot of no-calls or if he drove less because of the no-calls. So let’s find out.
By checking NBA.com’s tracking numbers, I found that Wiggins tied his career high in drives per game (8) but took the third least amount of shots on drives per game this season; 3.6. Wiggins was fouled on 9.6% of his drives this season, which is the third lowest amount in his career. I really don’t know how to make sense of this. In his sophomore season, Wiggins drove to the hoop 7.5 times a game and took 3.5 shots per game on his drives and was fouled 13.1% of the time he drove. Wiggins shot 7 free throws a game in his sophomore year in 35.1 minutes a game. And yet, Wiggins drove more this season and took more shots on his drives in a little more than 33 minutes a game but shot half the amount of free throws a game. If you have an answer for why this makes sense, please give it to me because I’m utterly confused by his low free throw rate.
I’m actually inclined to think the answer here is officiating. I checked up on Wiggins’ drives last season and he drove 14 times a game and shot 6.9 times a game on drives, but was fouled a career low 7.9% of the time he drove to the hoop. Whatever Andrew Wiggins did to piss off the NBA’s refs in the last two years, it would be really cool if that shit changed next season.
Andrew Wiggins’ performance in the play-in games:
May 19, 2021 vs. Lakers: 39:25 minutes, 21 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 0 steals, 1 block, 4 fouls, and 2 turnovers, 10/18 FG, 1/5 3P, 0/1 FT, 109 ORTG, 114 DRTG, 56.9% TS (-0.3 league average TS and +0.1 regular season TS), 58.3% EFG (+4.5 league average EFG and +4 regular season EFG).
May 21, 2021 vs. Grizzlies: 44:18 minutes, 22 points, 10 rebounds, 2 assists, 0 steals, 2 blocks, 2 turnovers, and 4 fouls, 10/22 FG, 1/4 3P, 1/1 FT, 97 ORTG, 111 DRTG, 49% TS (-8.2 league average TS and -76.1 regular season TS), 47.7% EFG (-7.1 league average EFG and -7.7 regular season EFG).
Andrew Wiggins was solid but still left things on the table in the play-in games. He gave a little more than 20 points on both nights, but his three point shot abandoned him and he took two free throws in both games. One or two made threes and a free throw rate on par with his regular season FTA per game could have made the difference between the Warriors winning either game — that’s the nature of close games, but it’s frustrating because the Warriors needed just a little more from Andrew Wiggins and you’d like to see him play up a level in the most important games in the season.
Maybe it’s my memory or maybe it’s just who Andrew Wiggins is, but it feels like Wiggins aimlessly floated in 20 points on both nights. I seriously don’t remember any shots made by Wiggins without consulting a video of highlights! What I do remember from his performance in the Lakers game is that he did a very good job defending LeBron James. In the first quarter when the Lakers looked stiff and out of sorts, Andrew Wiggins blocked LeBron James and looked like he was ready to own the matchup. As I scrolled through Twitter looking for some numbers oriented posts about Andrew Wiggins’ defense this season, I stumbled across this tweet:
That looks good! Out of curiosity, I did a brief rewatch of some of those fourth quarter highlights and I don’t think Wiggins did a bad job on LeBron. What I did see in a few of the Lakers’ made buckets in crunch time is that LeBron was distributing and not necessarily hunting his own shot. But because he’s LeBron James and he’s a very smart player, the reads he made were brilliant and they forced other Warriors defenders like Mychal Mulder (ugh), Jordan Poole, and Kent Bazemore to make rotations. It’s not that LeBron was avoiding Wiggins, but rather forcing the Warriors whole defense to hold up rather than seeking out a 1v1 battle with Wiggins or forcing the ball to Anthony Davis against Draymond Green. There’s not much Wiggins could have done to change that.
My memories of Wiggins in the Memphis game are far less fond. I do remember being impressed by Wiggins’ rebounding that night and lo and behold, he had 10 boards. But again, the missed threes and dearth of free throw attempts hurts to see. Still, nothing can match the pain of Wiggins’ bobbled layup in the final minutes of the fourth quarter and... this:
I’d have liked to see how Wiggins performed in a full playoff series with opportunities to see opponents multiple times and see how he held up against high level scouting. Do-or-die games are exhilarating but I wonder how much predictive value you can mine from two games like this. I have no problem saying Jordan Poole is ready for the big stage after two good playoff games, in part because... well, it feels good to believe that. But Poole and Wiggins have only played two such games like this for the Warriors — there was a time in Harrison Barnes’ rookie season that Playoff Barnes was a thing. Hell, he even had moments in his sophomore year in the Warriors’ seven games against the Clippers!
On the whole I think Wiggins was just fine in the play-in games but didn’t provide anything unexpectedly good (beyond the 10 rebounds) when the Warriors needed just a little more. If that’s not the perfect way to sum up Wiggins’ season, I don’t know what it is.
Restricted area: 67.8% on 192 attempts. Career high
Non-restricted area paint: 46.4% on 196 attempts. 2nd best
Mid-range: 37.3% on 203 attempts. 2nd best
Left corner 3: 43.5% on 69 attempts (nice).
Right corner 3: 42.9% on 28 attempts.
Above the break 3: 36.4% on 269 attempts.
Floaters: 42.8% on 70 attempts.
Layups and fingers rolls: 67.4% on 283 attempts.
Pull-up 3P: 39.1% on 92 attempts. +7.1% career
FGA% per total drives: 44.4%.
Assisted by: Draymond Green (96), Steph Curry (70), Kevon Looney (23), Juan-Toscano-Anderson (21), Kent Bazemore and Brad Wanamaker (18), Kelly Oubre Jr. and Jordan Poole (11), Damion Lee (10), James Wiseman (6), Eric Paschall (5), Mychal Mulder (2).
Total FG’s assisted: 116
FGM% assisted: 57.6%
FGM% unassisted: 42.4%
I had lots of fun looking into Wiggins’ shot profile and comparing it against his previous seasons. While doing so, I found the closest thing I could to a definitive answer as to why Wiggins’ FT rate plummeted this year; Wiggins shot it in the restricted area 4.1 times a game, his lowest since the 2017-18 season when he played with Jimmy Butler. Checking Wiggins’ percentages against his career, that 2017-18 season was gruesome — pretty much every single one of his percentages plummeted, save for restricted area FG%, despite lower volume.
But let’s talk about the fun stuff; Wiggins shot a career high in the restricted area, albeit on the lowest volume of his career; he took the least amount of mid-range shots in his career and shot the second best percentage of his career on those looks; and Wiggins shot it better than he ever has from three. I was not expecting Wiggins to shoot better on pull-up threes than he did on catch and shoot threes. Here, he also decreased his volume some, but between the increased mid-range and pull-up three percentages maybe we are seeing some slight and sustainable improvement to Wiggins’ jumper. To that point, Wiggins’ percentages on pull-up threes have gone up every year, save for the Butler Minnesota year. His percentage shifts are as follows; +5 ish, +6 ish, -3 ish, +2 ish, +4 ish, +7 ish. I can live with that.
I’d imagine that on next years’ Warriors team Wiggins will have less reason to take mid-range jumpers and pull-up threes and instead orient his shot profile more towards looks in the paint. The career low shots in the restricted area is concerning. The optimist in me would explain it away by pointing to the Warriors’ atrocious spacing taking away driving lanes and the no-calls on Wiggins’ drives creating negative incentive for him. But we won’t know the real answer to that until next season.
Another thing I want to point out; through all the players we’ve discussed so far, Wiggins created the second most unassisted shots for himself after Steph Curry. I suspect that number will hold up, although by percentage, Eric Paschall may have a claim to that title. I mentioned earlier that Wiggins was very efficient in isolation. Let’s look at that in detail; Wiggins had the 13th highest FG% on isolation plays this season of players to have one or more isolation possessions a game and tied for 12th highest PPP on isolation plays this season. Isolation plays accounted for 10.5% of Wiggins’ play types this season, which I think is a perfectly fine and sustainable frequency that should maintain his efficiency in the future. I also sorted by EFG% to see if that changed anything and by that metric, Wiggins ranks 23rd, so my takeaway would be that his isolation possessions tend to end in 2 point shots. This isn’t a play that I’d like the Warriors to be reliant on, but at the very least Andrew Wiggins in isolation in crunch time doesn’t me white knuckle like it would if those possessions were going to Harrison Barnes.
Finally, we have Wiggins’ shot chart from Positive Residual:
Seeing it in its full glory, I actually find the frequency of mid-range shots more offensive than I did when I was just looking at the raw numbers, which really speaks to the power of visual aids.
The lineup stats!
Starting out with Cleaning the Glass’ non-garbage time numbers as per (our new) usual.
Notable 5 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/Green/Looney: +9.6 net rating (116.9 ORTG) in 563 possessions.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: -13.2 net rating (97.4 ORTG) in 538 possessions.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Looney: +5.8 net rating (112.2 ORTG) in 401 possessions.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/JTA/Green: +9 net rating (119.4 ORTG) in 324 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Bazemore/Wiggins/Paschall: +2.1 net rating (100 ORTG) in 192 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/JTA/Green: +3 net rating (115.5 ORTG) in 155 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: -8.5 net rating (108.8 ORTG) in 102 possessions.
Poole/Mulder/Wiggins/JTA/Looney: -15.4 net rating (91.3 ORTG) in 92 possessions.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/JTA/Wiseman:-6.9 net rating (83.9 ORTG) in 87 possessions.
Curry/Mulder/Wiggins/Green/Looney: +13.2 net rating (132.6 ORTG) in 86 possessions.
Poole/Bazemore/Wiggins/JTA/Looney: +8.8 net rating (97.6 ORTG) in 82 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Wiggins/Oubre/Paschall: -16.5 net rating (88.6 ORTG) in 79 possessions.
Curry/Lee/Wiggins/Oubre/Green: -11.9 net rating (118.2 ORTG) in 77 possessions.
Curry/Mulder/Wiggins/JTA/Green: +23.1 net rating (124.6 ORTG) in 65 possessions.
Poole/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: -19.2 net rating (115.6 ORTG) in 64 possessions.
We’ve been looking at these various lineups long enough that you, dear reader, should have a sense of what I’m going to say; most lineups with Wiseman were bad, Poole and Wamaker-led bench lineups struggled to score, and Wiggins did fine with the starters. Those first two patterns have been pretty clear in pretty much every player’s lineup stats. To not bore you too much with words, I decided to do some filtering on CtG’s lineups to see what I found. First, let’s look at the Curry/Poole/Wiggins combo in 5 man lineups:
God damn, that looks nice. These lineups score the absolute piss out of the ball and…they didn’t play together all that much.
Next let’s look at Curry/Wiggins 5 man lineups without James Wiseman or Eric Paschall.
This also looks nice. There’s only five negative lineups here to play more than 20 possessions and also you’ll notice that Kelly Oubre shows up in five positive lineups here. I initially tried the Curry/Wiggins combo without Oubre as well, but I was curious to see how Wiggins and Oubre would fare together without Wiseman or Paschall. Is it technically cheating to quickly go back to talking about Kelly Oubre Jr. for a minute? Well, I’m going to do it anyway, so bear with me; I ran that same search — no Wiseman or Paschall — for Curry/Oubre and found only... 8 different 5 man lineups.
I’m less interested in the outcomes of these lineups than I am the fact there are so few of them! I’m not going to start a campaign to bring back Kelly Oubre Jr. after seeing these numbers, but tell me you’re not at least a little more curious how Oubre would have looked after James Wiseman’s injury and how he could look on next year’s Warriors? But, back to Wiggins.
Notable 3 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Wiggins/Green: +4.6 net rating (114.4 ORTG) in 1352 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Oubre: -2.6 net rating (107.2 ORTG) in 833 minutes.
Wiggins/Oubre/Green: -3.8 net rating (106.5 ORTG) in 811 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Looney: +10.2 (118.8 ORTG) in 617 minutes.
Green/Wiggins/Looney: +9.7 net rating (116.5 ORTG) 567 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiggins/Green: +5.2 net rating (112.5 ORTG) in 511 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins: +6.5 net rating (115 ORTG) in 509 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Wiseman: -11.6 net rating (98.5 ORTG) in 416 minutes.
Wiggins/Oubre/Wiseman: -16.8 net rating (96 ORTG) in 396 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiggins/Looney: +8 net rating (111.2 ORTG) in 388 minutes.
Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: -13.7 net rating (100.5 ORTG) in 385 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/JTA: +9.2 net rating (111.7 ORTG) in 385 minutes.
Wiggins/JTA/Green: +11.8 net rating (115.2 ORTG) in 339 minutes.
Wanamaker/Lee/Wiggins: +1.2 net rating (101.2 ORTG) in 306 minutes.
Wiggins/Oubre/JTA: -2.1 net rating (104.9 ORTG) in 301 minutes.
Wiggins/Oubre/Looney: +3.8 net rating (108.2 ORTG) in 275 minutes.
Because Wiggins played the most minutes of any Warrior and spent a lot of time with Steph and Draymond, you’ll notice that most of the top 15 used 3 man combos here are variants on the few starting lineups Steve Kerr used this year. Juan Toscano-Anderson shows up a few times towards the bottom in lineups that got run towards the end of the year, but there’s no Jordan Poole to be found here and depressingly few instances of Damion Lee.
Notable two man combos (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Wiggins: +3.5 net rating (113.3 ORTG) in 1569 minutes.
Wiggins/Green: +2.4 net rating (112.8 ORTG) in 1549 minutes.
Wiggins/Oubre: -5.3 net rating (104.1 ORTG) in 1097 minutes.
Wiggins/Looney: +6.6 net rating (113 ORTG) in 849 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiggins: +5.8 net rating (109.3 ORTG) in 789 minutes.
Wiggins/JTA: +5.5 net rating (108.6 ORTG) in 687 minutes.
Wiggins/Wiseman: -15.5 net rating (96.7 ORTG) in 598 minutes.
Lee/Wiggins: +1.3 net rating (108.3 ORTG) in 574 minutes.
Poole/Wiggins: +0.4 net rating (107.4 ORTG) in 497 minutes.
Wanamaker/Wiggins: -0.7 net rating (101.3 ORTG) in 400 minutes.
Wiggins/Paschall: -8.1 net rating (9.5 ORTG) in 391 minutes.
Mulder/Wiggins: -8.8 net rating (106.3 ORTG) in 313 minutes
Mannion/Wiggins: -25 net rating (89.8 ORTG) in 107 minutes.
A lot of the stuff here is predictable — bad net ratings in combos with players who played lots of minutes on the bench and/or with James Wiseman. Not much else to say here other than 107 minutes of Mannion/Wiggins is 107 minutes too many.
What’s next for Andrew Wiggins?
Unless Bradley Beal or another max contract player becomes available, Andrew Wiggins is pretty much a lock to come back to the Warriors. There’s an off-chance a Wiggins trade happens to move his money around if a Kelly Oubre Jr. sign-and-trade can bring back productive wing players as salary or in another TPE trade, but I really doubt that happens. I feel a lot better about Wiggins than I did at the end of last season. He’s a flawed player, but he was useful to the Warriors in an environment that didn’t do a great job of masking his flaws. My opinion towards Wiggins actually softened as I did this write-up. I wasn’t expecting to see him come up positive in as many lineups as he did and the evolution of his shot profile, while still mid-range heavy for my taste, hints at the possibility of sustained and improved efficiency next year.
Andrew Wiggins as a second option isn’t great, but he could be very good, if not better, as a third option for next years’ Warriors while doing the solid work I’ve grown to expect from him on the defensive end.
Next week I’ll do two pieces on the Warrior’s bigs to wrap up my season-in-review posts on the Warriors’ players. After that I’ll do reviews for the Warriors’ coaching staff and front office before finally digging into the NBA draft!