Minnesota Timberwolves: Player matchups vs. the Rockets

3. Andrew Wiggins vs. Trevor Ariza

If anyone has followed my articles, they’ll know I’m one of the biggest Andrew Wiggins believers out there.

Countless times, he gets the bad end of the stick. Folks are always knocking Wiggins down for not showing emotion, or for being a great shooter. And this has caused people to overlook his ability to defend.

This season, Wiggins’ offensive decrease has been due to more mouths to feed. Towns has seen his points per game drop significantly just as much. During the beginning of the season, we saw a lot of flashes of defensive potential. As the season went on, those flashes were starting to come a lot more regularly.

Since Butler went down, Wiggins has been great defensively. He’s not in the same ballpark as Butler, of course, but the amount of growth we’ve seen is great to see. We’re seeing more hustle plays from him, including more batted passes, blocks, steals and lock-down on-ball defense. His off-ball contributions still needs to improve, but it’s getting better.

Trevor Ariza is an underrated player for this Rockets team. He doesn’t do too much, but he defends and shoots the ball well.

Overall, Minnesota has the edge in this matchup, though look for Ariza’s experience to really play a huge roll in this battle. Wiggins needs to continue playing the way he has over this last month if he wants to make this a competition.