A couple weeks back, my fellow co-editor Ben Beecken wrote this piece sharing his thoughts as to why Andrew Wiggins should not win the NBA Rookie of the Year award this season, although he probably will.
While Ben makes some very good points in his article regarding rate-based statistics and Wiggins’ somewhat lack of efficiency both offensively and defensively, I feel like these points can be countered with one simple argument.
The responsibility that was placed on Wiggins’ shoulders for basically the entire length of the season was enormous. As far as rookies go, he was asked to do so much more than the likes of Elfrid Payton, Nikola Mirotic, and Nerlens Noel.
First of all, Wiggins quickly became the Timberwolves’ only viable scoring threat, as injuries quickly plagued the Wolves early on in the season. This forced Wiggins into the primary scoring role, usually drawing the opponent’s best defender. While he did struggle early on, boy did he make progress as the season wore on. Timberwolves head coach Flip Saunders increasingly utilized offensive sets that would often get Wiggins isolated with the ball on the wing, allowing him to use his arsenal of moves to either finish at the rim or hit the step-back jump shot.
Blue Man Hoop
According to nba.com/stats, in the second half of the season (post All-Star break), Wiggins was able to average 20 points per game on over 44% shooting, which is fairly efficient considering his volume of shots (averaged 15.3 field goal attempts per game after the All-Star Break). He also increased his rebounds per game to five and his assists per game to 2.3. In the first full month of the season (November) he averaged just 12.3 points per game and 3.8 rebounds and shot 38% from the field. So, for those who argue that Mirotic or Noel should win because of the way they have improved over the course of the season, Wiggins improved just as much, if not more.
Plus, when looking at the team Wiggins usually had with him on the floor, it’s easy to understand why he was asked to handle so much. Many of his teammates that were on the floor with Wiggins had less floor experience than him. Zach LaVine, Lorenzo Brown, Adreian Payne, and Justin Hamilton are just a few guys who have played less NBA minutes than Wiggins, and they all played key roles in the rotation towards the end of the season. Moreover, Wiggins was far and away the most talented player on the Wolves this season, so Saunders trusted him with being somewhat of a leader on the court as a rookie.
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Adding onto the whole responsibility issue, one stat that amazes me the most about Wiggins’ rookie season was his gigantic amount of minutes played. The kid played the second most total minutes in the NBA this season, falling by only 12 minutes to James Harden. Wiggins started all 82 games for the Wolves this season.
Defensively, even though his plus/minus may say otherwise, Wiggins is still a pretty good defender. When a 19 or 20-year-old kid is asked to guard the likes of LeBron James, James Harden, Kobe Bryant, and even the scoring champ Russell Westbrook, it can be tough to appear as a good defender. Wiggins used his supreme athleticism to, at the very least, hold his own against these elite scorers in the game.
Ben attached this video to his article, and I like it so much that I’m going to attach it to mine as well. Just an example of Wiggins playing tremendous defense on arguably the best scorer in the NBA and turning that great defense into offense on the other end.
In my opinion, the NBA Rookie of the Year goes to the rookie that performs the best throughout the entire season. It doesn’t have anything to do with the team’s record or playoff seeding – that’s for the MVP award. Efficiency statistics are important and good indicators of the impact a player has on a team, but they don’t show the complete picture. Wiggins passes the eye test for the award, meaning that he’s shown that he’s simply better than Mirotic, Payton and Noel. Don’t get me wrong, those three guys have a ton of potential and will likely be stars someday, but Wiggins’ ability to carry the enormous responsibility that he did and still perform at an extremely high is more meaningful to me than those efficiency or advanced statistics.
I’ll leave you with one question. If you had to pick one rookie from this season, based on performance, to plug into your starting lineup for Game 7 of the NBA Finals, who would you choose?
You know the right answer.
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