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Wolves Season in Review: Andrew Wiggins

By Ben Beecken

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This is Part Fifteen, the final player in the Wolves Season in Review player capsule series.. We’ll be looking at every player that finished the season on the Wolves roster, excluding ten-day contract signees. We’re starting with the players that played the fewest minutes and working our way up the roster to those that logged the most playing time. Today’s featured player is Andrew Wiggins.

We’ve spent a ton of time covering Andrew Wiggins here on DWW this season, and rightfully so. He was the number-one overall pick last June and was the key to the Kevin Love trade in August. Since the regular season ended nearly a month ago, Wiggins has been named Rookie of the Year and mused positively about his future in Minnesota.

Of all the things that yours truly has written about Wiggins, the most damning came back around the holidays. It was right about when the Wolves’ prized rookie was beginning to flourish and show more consistent effort as well as stretches of seemingly effortless scoring. From the piece:

"The number-one overall pick dropped in 27 points on 9 of 16 shooting, including a perfect 3 of 3 from long-range on Tuesday against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. On Friday night in Denver, Wiggins scored 22 points on 8 of 18 from the floor and 1 of 3 from beyond the arc. He also added a combined 7 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 blocks between the two contests.He may be turning the corner and figuring out how to be a more efficient scorer. After all, attempting 6 threes and 16 free throws over the two games is an encouraging sign."

The above-linked article goes on to explore why so many of Wiggins’ shots were coming from the mid-range and not too many were being attempted from the paint or beyond the arc.

As Wiggins got hot and played extremely well for a stretch spanning December and January, comparisons started to fly, at times irresponsibly. There were comps to the likes of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, which would certainly fall into the category of irresponsible. Chad Ford and Kevin Pelton of ESPN settled on something like a cross between Paul George and Luol Deng, and we explored that a bit further here.

But after the dust began to settle and we were left with a still improving but more consistently impressive version of Wiggins in the home stretch of the season, it became clear that there was something tangible, something encouraging. Here’s a look at his progression in efficiency, written a couple weeks before the season came to a close.

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Moving forward, we’re going to dive much deeper into exactly what and how Wiggins improved, and exactly what he’ll need to next season to keep himself and his team on the right track. For now, I think it’s fair to summarize his season as encouraging, and equally better-than-expected in some areas while worse-than-expected in others.

Even though the three-point percentage cratered a bit as the rest of his game improved, finishing the year at 31% on 1.5 attempts per game after shooting just 34.1% from three-point range at the University of Kansas is actually not terrible. His shot is still mechanically sound and he just needs to improve the range.

As expected, the dribbling handles need to improve somewhat but Wiggins was able to use sheer athleticsm to get to the rim and score as well as draw fouls often enough to be effective as a rookie. This should improve in time as well.

The defense wasn’t quite as good as advertised, but the tools are there and he obviously has some level of understanding of defensive positioning and schemes. This too will improve in time.

All things considered it was a very good rookie season for Wiggins. We’ll dig into some of the peripheral numbers and shot charts in the near future, but in the mean time, being named the NBA Rookie of the Year is the decorative icing on top of a very promising first season — something that Wolves fans have been missing.

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