Why the Warriors’ Andrew Wiggins trade with Minnesota is the biggest franchise
Andrew Wigggins’ viral moment against Luka Doncic in Game 3 of the Western Conference final on Sunday night had endurance. Just over 12 hours after Wiggins slipped through the key and hammered an emphatic thump home over Doncic, social media, sports talk radio and ESPN were still outrageous about the sequence.
As time went on, the national conversation turned from the sludge itself to what it represented. The enduring image of Wiggins hovering over the wonders of the NBA provided striking, visual proof of what many had already come to realize: Once Wiggins was the scapegoat for the Timberwolves’ dysfunction, Wiggins is suddenly a bona fide playoff difference.
If the Warriors win their first NBA title since 2018 in a few weeks, Wiggins will deserve much of the credit. And so will general manager Bob Myers, who had to do the seemingly impossible: manage without a salary cap to parole Kevin Durant’s departure in two franchise cornerstones – one for the present (Wiggins) and another for the future (Jonathan Kuminga). ).
This season has cemented this move with Minnesota by the deadline of 2020 as perhaps the biggest trade in Warriors history. While Wiggins helps vault the franchise back on the sport’s biggest stage, Kuminga offers plenty of optimism for Golden State’s long-term future.
“I think the Wiggins deal is the key to all of this,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said Monday. “I do not know where we would be without him defensively, with his work on Luka and every other top wing we have to face. I think that move was just the most important move that Bob and the front office made to get us back to having a playoff-ready list. “
What makes all of this even more remarkable is that Myers was heavily criticized when he gave D’Angelo Russell, Jacob Evans III and Omari Spellman to Minnesota for the Wiggins, a top-three protected 2021 first-round pick and a 2021 second round election. Given Wiggins’ reputation as an overpaid ball pig, experts called that trade a desperation on the part of the Warriors.
Nick Wright of Fox Sports 1 went so far as to proclaim on live television that Wiggins was a “bad basketball player” and that Stephen Curry would never get to a new NBA Finals. Even the Warriors’ diehards worried that there might be some truth in what Wright said.
Less than seven months earlier, the team that lost Durant – one of the best players in the world – offered a future first-round pick to the Nets as part of a sign-and-trade. To meet Russell’s four-year, maximum contract of $ 117 million, Warriors sent Andre Iguodala and an easily protected 2023 first-round pick to the Grizzlies. Then there was the fact that the sign-and-trade with Brooklyn significantly limited the purchasing power of the Golden States.
In the wake of the Russell acquisition, the Warriors had about $ 10 million to pick up six more players. Anyone who lamented Myers for the complex move, however, did not see the bigger picture.
Contrary to what the Warriors might have said at the time, Russell was acquired as a merchant chip. They had no other way to add a player of Russell’s caliber when Durant decided to go to the Nets. Although Russell was a strange fit at Golden State because he took the ball out of Curry’s hands, he expected to have enough brilliance from his 2019 All-Star appearance with Brooklyn to justify decent deals.
By turning Russell over to the Timberwolves – after just 33 games – for Wiggins and two future draft picks, Myers got what he had seen since the previous summer: a legitimate starting little forward to pair with Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green . It did not matter to Myers that Wiggins was considered inefficient and overpaid. With the Warriors, he should simply be a better version of what Harrison Barnes was for their 2014-15 championship team.
Although Wiggins at times struggled as the face of the Minnesota franchise, he expected to be an over-qualified No. 3 option at Golden State that could topple spot-up jumpers, attack closeouts, run the break and play hard in defense. What made Myers even more excited were the opportunities with the Timberwolves’ top-three protected 2021 selections in the first round.
In the hours leading up to this 2020 deadline, Myers negotiated with Minnesota President Gersson Rosas over the committee’s protection. It was important to Myers that the election had no worse than a top-three protection. The 2021 draft was to be top-heavy, and he wanted to ensure the Warriors got a potential franchise building block that could help lead the team when Curry, Thompson and Green retired.
More than two years later, the Russell-Wiggins deal has worked better than Myers could have expected.
Wiggins, fresh on his first All-Star appearance, is a two-way force that makes life difficult for opponents’ top scorers and consumes offensive possessions when the Warriors need a spark. His 13.2 NET rating this post-season is number two on the team behind Otto Porter Jr. (15.0). With Wiggins on in large parts of the West Finals, Doncic has posted a plus-minus of minus-61 in 113 minutes.
Meanwhile, Kuminga – the player Warriors achieved with the top-three protected selections from Minnesota – projects as a potential multi-year All-Star. Although the 19-year-old rookie has swung in and out of the rotation in the playoffs, he probably showed upward scores in the regular season that many might think he was a theft with the No. 7 pick in this year’s draft.
And Russell? During the Timberwolves’ first-round series against the Grizzlies, he worked so hard that he was benched during the crunch time of Game 6 in favor of Jordan McLaughlin.
Such an apparent fleet of Minnesota speaks to Myers’ great understanding of what makes a good trade. It is not about what a player has done in the past, but rather about what he can provide in the future.
In several years, when NBA historians rate the Russell-Wiggins deal, they might consider it the best deal Golden State has ever made. That would be great praise. In 2011, Warriors acquired Troy Murphy and the 2012 second-round pick became Green in a deal that sent Dan Gadzuric and Brandan Wright to the Nets. A year later, Golden State Iguodala of the Nuggets landed in a three-team sign-and-trade.
But in terms of doing more with less, there may be no deal comparable to what Myers did to get Wiggins and Kuminga. Consider this: Instead of letting Durant travel for nothing, Myers somehow got two players who serve the Warriors’ short-term and long-term goals.
The robbery has become so glaring that even Wright tweeted on Sunday that his Fox Sports 1 appearance in 2020, ridiculing the Wiggins acquisition, was “my most deplorable TV recording.”
“Bob is amazing,” Kerr said.
Connor Letourneau is a San Francisco Chronicle contributor. Email: cletourneau@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Con_Chron