Next Season Will Be A Breakthrough For Timberwolves’ Andrew Wiggins

Timberwolves’ guard/forward Andrew Wiggins was taken with the first-overall pick of the 2014 draft due to his immense potential, but the Canadian is far from reaching that ceiling.

After two seasons in the NBA, much of Andrew Wiggins’ upside remains untapped, and it is fair to wonder just when he will make the necessary strides to become a star in the league.

This isn’t to say that he hasn’t been progressing; he looked better in his second season than in his rookie year, particularly shooting the ball and especially towards the end of the season. However, he still is not yet a particularly productive player. While there were times that he showed a knack for hitting tough shots, he lacks consistency.

Per Basketball-Reference.com, the Timberwolves scored 6.3 more points per 100 possessions with Wiggins on the court than when he was on the bench. However, some of this can be attributed to him playing the lion’s share of his minutes alongside the best players on the team.

Real Plus-Minus, ESPN’s proprietary statistic that aims to negate the impact of teammates (and opponents) in order to determine the true impact that any given player has on the court, sees things quite differently for Wiggins. This measure pegged him as the 40th-best shooting guard in the NBA last season. While this is not particularly bad, it is certainly not good.

When will Wiggins finally tap into that purportedly endless well of talent he has? It’s not crazy to think that the 2016-17 season could be a breakthrough year for him.

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There are many ways in which he is already effective. His on-ball defense is already quite impressive and only figures to improve under Tom Thibodeau. If he can also develop his ability to read passing lanes, his athleticism and length could make him deadly in picking off passes (playing next to Ricky Rubio, a master of this skill, can’t be hurting this part of Wiggins’ development).

The true appeal of Wiggins is his potential to develop into an un-guardable scorer that draws double teams nearly every time down the court. He has shown the ability to hit difficult shots, particularly turnaround shots after posting up (per NBA.com, he hit 48.3 percent of his post up shots last season, better even than Karl-Anthony Towns).

Wiggins has ideal tools to become an elite scorer in transition, a valuable asset that all teams covet. If he can improve his isolation scoring (he ranked in the 59th percentile of isolation scorers, per NBA.com), he could become a borderline impossible match-up for defenders around the league.

The biggest knock on Wiggins’ offensive game so far has been his three-point shooting, an area in which he has indeed struggled. However, look at how his shooting improved over the course of the season.

While it is true that there are some aspects of his game that need to be addressed before he can become a truly dynamic player in the league, it appears that Wiggins is well on his way down that path, and next season should be an important stepping stone for him.

Next: Timberwolves Notes: Thibodeau at Olympics, Plus Rubio

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