How The Timberwolves Turned Anthony Edwards Away From Andrew Wiggins

There was a time when Andrew Wiggins personified frustration, and it wasn’t really his fault.

Drafted first overall in the 2014 NBA Draft, Wiggins poured in the basic production across his first few NBA seasons. But he did not impress those looking at the advanced stuff, and nor did he demonstrate much in the way of individual development.

In his second and third seasons in the league, playing with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Wiggins averaged at least 20 points per game, peaking as high as 23.6 in the 2016/17 campaign. A hardy player who played almost every game and a hefty minutes share, Wiggins had a go-to guy role on the offensive end, and also routinely also drew the toughest perimeter defensive assignment given his excellent physical tools for the job. And he did it all without complaining.

It did not however lead to much winning. Across Wiggins’s five full years in Minnesota, the Timberwolves compiled only a cumulative 159-251 regular season record, with one postseason series, and one single playoff victory.

Moreover, what Wiggins did as an individual was borne out more through opportunity and volume than through optimised strategy. In that 23.6 points per game season, for example, Wiggins took an extremely high amount of pull-up two-pointers, usually from one step inside the arc. He shot more of them as an individual in that one season than many entire teams now do. For all his athleticism, he seemingly wanted to be more late-career Kobe than early-career Kobe, and wanted to show off a bag rather than interpolate modern offensive principles. It was often frustrating to watch.

Still, if Wiggins failed in this role, it might have been because he was set up to. Miscast as the primary playmaker and best defender, often with little incisive actually-getting-into-the-paint guard play alongside him, Wiggins was simultaneously charged with having to handle the ball, drive and kick, be the main shooter, and still have plenty to give on the defensive end. Much as he had the backing of the Timberwolves (who gave him all of the minutes, all of the shots, all of the draft prestige and all of the money), he needed help, and to be taken out of this Doncic-esque role, if he and the team were to achieve anything. That help never came, though, and thus neither did the achievements.

Wiggins’s time in Minnesota ended at the 2020 trade deadline, when he was traded to the then-moribund Golden State Warriors, along with a first-rounder that ultimately became Jonathan Kuminga and a second-rounder that ultimately became Deuce McBride, in exchange for D’Angelo Russell and the contracts of Jacob Evans and Omari Spellman. The Warriors won that trade as a team. And as an individual, Wiggins definitely did.

Now in Golden State, Wiggins is surrounded by two of the very best shooters in the history of the game. No longer must he muddle through the pick-and-roll ball-handling to be the space creator. Stephen Curry will create the space. He just has to operate in it.

Due to Golden State’s shooting and (Kevon Looney excepted) absence of paint-clogging bigs, the floor is always spaced. Due to Curry and Jordan Poole’s willingness and ability to be the primary creators at all times, Wiggins can do more off-ball work, cut, run the court without the ball in his hands and go to the glass, all of which suit him better. When he does get the task of firing up from outside, it is more open now, less pressured, and far less often off the pull-up. And on defence, a combination of Klay Thompson and Draymond Green can do the main match-ups.

Minnesota gave Wiggins plenty of individual opportunity, but it was not the right kind of opportunity. By contrast, Golden State gave him a similarly big minutes allocation, but much less of the primary responsibility. With that shift in job requirements came better performances.

Which brings us onto Anthony Edwards.

Edwards is now in the Wiggins role, and his third season thus far is looking an awful lot like Wiggins’s did six years ago. On the season to date, he is averaging 22.6 points, 5.9 rebounds and 3.8 assists in 36.8 minutes per game, shooting a .568 true shooting percentage. And it too is not correlating to winning as much as the team would hope – having made the big trade for Rudy Gobert, the franchise would have hoped to be better positioned in the season’s early going than the 10-11 record and 11th spot in the West that they currently find themselves in.

The two players and two situations are not identical, but the parallels are obvious. Edwards’s shot profile differs distinctly from Wiggins – essentially, all the pull-up twos have become raise-up threes instead – yet the basic numbers, the team record, the physical profiles, the intrigue, the concerns and the role have been much the same. The latter of these is perhaps the main point of contention going forward.

Just as being the primary playmaker did not suit Wiggins, it might not suit Edwards either. It is true that Edwards has Russell alongside him, while Wiggins had Ricky Rubio and Jeff Teague, yet with Russell’s aversion to going all the way to the basket, the difference between those two sides is perhaps not as vast as it could be. If that is to continue, and Edwards evolves (or is forced) into a Wigginsesque playmaking load, it will not see him develop optimally, just as was the case with his precedessor.

To Edwards’s credit, he has shown some playmaking chops. Playing with less tunnel vision and predetermined offensive decisions than he did in his sole collegiate season, Edwards has had enough moments of wise and sometimes flashy passing for us to be encouraged about that area of his game. He has not had as many moments of pounding the ball aimlessly and trying to get to the inefficiency areas as a young Andrew Wiggins did, and he is more focused on – and seemingly skilled at – getting all the way to the basket in traffic.

That said, the Wolves need to cater for whatever path Edwards goes down. His scoring bag, his top-tier athleticism on the move, and his shot profile of dunks and threes needs commensurate talents around him so as to be able to be the best he can be. Trading for the paint-clogging Gobert seems at odds with this, but nevertheless, as long as Minnesota keeps up the perimeter talent level to the point that Edwards is not swamped like Luka, perhaps he can make the type of leap that Wiggins never could.

And if he is to be kept in a secondary playmaking role, let it at least not be one where he just stands in the corner while Russell tries to cook. At the very least, that’s the wrong way around.

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