Andrew Wiggins Is Playing The Best Basketball Of His Career

Something magical happens to players after capturing their first NBA championship.

Superstars feel the weight lifted off their shoulders if they previously faced criticism for coming up short. Lower-tier stars and role players, particularly those who were viewed as negative-impact players in the beginning stages of their career, discover how important the small details are in the midst of a playoff run.

Andrew Wiggins, six months removed from being the second best player on a title-winning team, is using the momentum he gained in the playoffs to fuel this next phase of his career. In the matter of three years, he’s flipped his reputation by turning into one of the best two-way performers in the league.

His 2022 Finals performance led to a four-year, $109 million extension from the Warriors in October. At 27 years old, he’s a talent worth investing in long-term and keeping alongside Stephen Curry for as long as possible.

Wiggins is playing with the highest level of confidence we’ve seen since he was drafted in 2014. Once known as a guy that loved bad shots and left much to be desired defensively, the newly-crowned champion is molding into exactly what Golden State envisioned when they acquired him.

Averaging 20.9 points per 36 minutes while shooting 56.5% from two and 45.0% from deep, Wiggins has embraced the Warriors’ style and continues to reap the benefits of a fast-paced, read-and-react offense.

The slight adjustments to Wiggins’ shot diet have guided him to stronger efficiency from all three levels. Since being traded to Golden State, he’s reduced his time on the ball and learned to become a valuable chess piece in a motion system.

Off-ball duties — or simply the responsibility of spacing the court for other ball-handlers to attack — weren’t a high priority for Wiggins in Minnesota. He was touted as the franchise cornerstone in a culture that would never be confused with a winning environment. His teammates lacked deep playoff experience while the roster construction continued to funnel him into a primary creator role. Wiggins had no choice but to fill that role, which was failing to optimize his talent.

This is technically Wiggins’ fourth season in Golden State, although he only suited up for 12 games at the end of the 2019-20 campaign. From the moment he walked into the practice facility at Chase Center, the Warriors have been molding him into a dual-threat scorer — while simultaneously unlocking the defensive chops a player of his athletic stature should possess.

With the Warriors’ coaching staff and veteran leaders (namely Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala) holding every player accountable, Wiggins completely bought into the selfless approach and key principles of the team’s offense: Get off the ball early if you don’t have a shot, make split-second decisions, cut with conviction, and continually set screens as if your life depends on it.

When he first arrived on the scene in 2019-20, Wiggins averaged 3.7 seconds per touch (including the 42 games in Minnesota). He took roughly 2.9 dribbles per touch. Those numbers weren’t high, but the Warriors were banking on eliminating a certain fraction of his possessions as a creator, reallocating those to catch-and-shoot opportunities and play finishing (mostly taking advantage of the defensive miscues caused by Curry and Green’s two-man game).

Twenty games into this season, he’s down to career-lows in both average seconds (2.3) and dribbles (1.5) per touch.

For perspective on how wild that is for someone of Wiggins’ skill-set, in the prime of his career, consider how it stacks up with the rest of the league. So far this season, 154 players have averaged 40 touches per game. Among those players, Wiggins is 106th in average dribbles. The current leaders in dribbles per touch are (unsurprisingly) Trae Young and Luka Dončić, directing their offenses and pounding the ball over 5.7 times when they receive it.

Wiggins is behind Brooklyn’s Royce O’Neale in dribbles per touch, and tied with Kevin Huerter, who serves as Sacramento’s sharpshooter and off-ball weapon in the same manner Klay Thompson has for Golden State.

Think about that. We’re talking about former No. 1 draft pick, Andrew Wiggins, who accumulated a high usage rate during his first three seasons (26.3%) and routinely fell in love with bad pull-up twos.

After tasting the locker room champagne and celebrating his first title, he knew this was part of the winning formula. He has tailored his game to Steve Kerr’s offensive preferences, largely because they led to success. In any professional field, it’s often hard to justify change if the results aren’t tangible. A certain level of patience is required, of course, but they has to be a form of gratification for players to understand why a style adjustment is necessary.

Now, he’s primarily focused on taking the right shots and, most importantly, letting those opportunities naturally come to him. That’s not to suggest he wasn’t fully committed to the motion-heavy style in 2020. But, like most players who walk into the Warriors’ culture, he needed a few tweaks.

Only 10% of his shots are coming from the “long mid-range” area, 15 feet extended to the arc. Three seasons ago, that was at 16% of his offense while shooting below the league-average efficiency on those attempts. He’s now more selective with his pull-up jumpers, turning those long twos into more beneficial three-point looks for the team’s offense.

Here are Wiggins’ shot-charts for each of the last four seasons, with this year shown in the bottom right. The larger the dot, the higher the volume. Blue colors indicate cold areas while orange points to greater efficiency:

Just within the Warriors’ system, Wiggins has shifted his tendencies to a degree most didn’t expect.

There’s a more striking contrast, however, once you remember the type of player he was in Minnesota. And consequently, the archetype people thought he should resemble moving forward.

When Wiggins entered the league, the idea of a 6’7” wing being anything other than the offensive engine and living in the mid-range like Kobe Bryant or Kawhi Leonard was pretty uncommon. It would’ve been considered radical to suggest Wiggins’ best role is a souped up 3-and-D threat — a guy that will mostly feast on spot-up threes, get the occasional post-up on a mismatch, and focus majority of his energy shutting down the opposing forwards.

Examining his highest-usage season (2016-17), Wiggins took 84% of his shots from two-point range, including 30% from 15-feet extended. That meant only 16% of his looks were threes. In a modernized offense, he’s now taking 46.7% of his attempts from beyond the arc. It’s partly why this new version of Wiggins is nearly 5 percentage points above the league-average True Shooting mark (he was slightly below-average last year).

But Wiggins shouldn’t only get credit for adjusting his shot selection. The bigger story is how tirelessly he’s worked on improving his long-range shooting, particularly off the catch.

Shooting right at 45% from downtown on nearly seven attempts per game, he’s transforming into one of the NBA’s top-tier snipers. There will always be the group of movement shooters that belong in their own category because of how insanely difficult it is to run off screens, stop on a dime, and let it fly. While he’s fast, Wiggins will never be that type of off-ball scorer.

The larger this sample becomes, though, he’ll inevitably have defenses terrified of giving him an inch of space. When Curry is dictating the Warriors’ offense late in games and Kerr elects to use more pick-and-rolls in the postseason, it becomes a nightmare for defenders if they aren’t able to cheat off certain players spaced around the perimeter. At this rate, Wiggins is going to adopt the ‘gravity’ trait and stretch defenses to their breaking point.

Per NBA.com tracking, Wiggins spent approximately 15% of his offensive possessions spotting up. Since becoming a Warrior, he elevated that to 22% during his first full season. He’s currently receiving the highest proportion of spot-ups in his career, making up 27.7% of his individual offense:

Take a look at his production (points per possession) as a spacing threat.

Did anyone have Wiggins ever being a more efficient catch-and-shoot threat than Klay Thompson on their bingo card?

So far, 126 of Wiggins’ 149 three-point attempts have come without taking a dribble. That’s 84.6% — for context, Thompson’s rate is 80.4%.

Among all 58 shooters to attempt at least 80 catch-and-shoot threes, Wiggins’ efficiency is the fourth-highest. He’s shooting 48.4% on those opportunities, with only Devin Vassell (48.6%), Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (49.4%) and Damion Lee (50.6%) above him.

Overall, his effective field goal percentage is 7.3 percentage points higher than last year and currently in the 94th percentile of all forwards.

None of it happens without Wiggins being purposeful in his workout routines. That includes taking hundreds of spot-up jumpers each day and knowing how to position himself around Curry and Green’s unique form of playmaking.

It culminated in a blistering hot shooting performance Saturday against the Houston Rockets. Wiggins shot 8-of-10 from deep, helping him reach 36 points on 90.5% true shooting. Out of all 46 games in his career with 30-plus points, it was the most efficient.

“My shot feels good,” he said after the game. “I’m repping it out in practice, getting a lot of shots up just to stay consistent with it.”

He’s aware of how a player’s three-point percentage shapes their reputation, too. He’s on track to have his first season as a 40-plus percent shooter from long range.

“I want to be above it,” Wiggins said. “That’s what I aim for. I feel like, once you get past 40 percent, people look at you different when it comes to three-point shooting. That’s what I strive for.”

When he talks about reputation, it’s not just from a media standpoint. Taking the leap from a ‘good’ to ‘elite’ threat from the outside also forces opponents to guard you differently. All of a sudden, defenders are attached to your hip instead of shrinking the floor and taking two or three steps away from you. Guys are switching pick-and-rolls when you’re involved because they’re too afraid of conceding any room, or letting you pop open.

When that happens, the game automatically becomes easier for everyone else on the floor. More driving lanes are open for teammates. It allows for non-scoring threats, such as Green or Kevon Looney, to have more real estate when making short-roll reads.

It also puts the defense in misery any time Wiggins, or any high-caliber shooter, is involved in screening action for the best offensive initiator ever. The Warriors are now using Wiggins in their double drag actions (called “55” in their playbook) when Curry has the ball. The general alignment in these sets is a rolling big and a popping shooter.

As soon as Curry comes off and engages the second defender, Wiggins is flaring into open space:

Those are solid late contests. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years, some of the best shooters in the world only need a little bit of daylight.

It doesn’t have to be complex, either. Curry, being the unselfish phenom he is, will gladly set pin-in screens for Wiggins and his shooters when the defense isn’t ready. If you don’t switch immediately or read it quickly, the best shot in basketball will be open:

Through the first quarter of the season, 74 of Wiggins’ 149 long-range attempts have been classified as wide-open, per NBA.com. That’s nearly half of his shots coming with at least six feet of space between him and the defender.

Part of it comes down to his offensive movement in the halfcourt. However, his understanding of where to be in transition is also a catalyst for generating high-quality looks. It all starts with the Warriors’ defense, which is trending in the right direction over the last two weeks.

Here, the Warriors give multiple great efforts to contain the Rockets, ending with Green’s massive stop at the rim. From there, Wiggins is racing to the corner for two reasons: It gives adequate spacing for Curry and presents the defense with a tough decision. Wiggins knows how lethal Curry is with the ball, so he’ll always be open if he sprints to his spot:

His knowledge of when to cut to the basket is also building his percentages from all over the floor. Whether it’s recognizing when his man is stuck ball-watching, and zipping right to the rim:

Or making the “Iguodala” cut that destroyed teams for years, cutting from the weakside corner any time Green is operating in the short-roll:

More than anything, Wiggins’ awareness has grown leaps and bounds. It’s the reason why he’s getting easier looks every night. Which, as a result, leads to him shooting 71.4% at the rim and 52.2% on short-range twos (floater range).

“Just always staying ready and staying alert,” Wiggins said when asked about the key to playing in this offense. “Because on this team, we all move the ball and try to find the open man. There’s going to be a lot of shots for everybody. So you always have to stay prepared.”

The beauty of his development is that he still has the self-creation tools in his bag. Next to Steph, he’ll always be one of the first options to create something out of nothing when the shot clock is winding down. Due to his size and improved handles, he’s still a great bailout option when you need a bucket.

Those worried about his decrease in drives per game and rim attacks should understand this was always the next progression. Becoming a knockdown shooter is the most valuable skill in the sport.

From here, the next step will come organically. As he uses his outside shooting as a threat, forcing harder closeouts and attacking unbalanced defenses, it will only give the Dubs’ offense more versatility and reliable options when the playoffs arrive.