The Prospect Post: Andrew Wiggins Best or Worst?

This article is part of our The Prospect Post series.

Andrew Wiggins Is The Best. Andrew Wiggins Is The Worst.

This article aims to provide an ongoing evaluation of the NBA's rookie class from a fantasy standpoint while also offering deep dives on college players with bright futures. Projecting young talent is very subjective, so an open dialogue is encouraged, both in the comments section and on Twitter: @RealJRAnderson

Full disclosure: I am an Andrew Wiggins fan.

I had been waiting to write about the No. 1 pick in the draft until there was a large enough sample size to start drawing significant conclusions, but of course that is not how evaluations work in the age of social media and unlimited websites that need to produce content on the NBA. Instead of writing about his game after he is just getting his feet wet as a pro, it seems more important to write about the way his game has been analyzed from a variety of perspectives. Ever since Wiggins debuted as a freshman at Kansas, there have been people who want to poke holes in the kid who was labeled by many outlets as the best prospect to come out of high school since LeBron James. While not setting out to be anything more than an excited observer of the Canadian phenom, I found myself carrying a torch for Wiggins as an act of protest against those who wanted to bury the youngster and write him off for a variety of reasons that did not seem to carry much weight.

We are now 30 games into his professional career and not much has changed. There are those who find Wiggins underwhelming for the same reasons he did not capture their imaginations in college, and there are those who have an abstract fascination with Wiggins. The statistically-minded analysts do not think the future is bright for the 19-year-old with just over two months of experience as a professional on a horrible team, yet many of the scouts, players and beat writers seem to be excited about his potential.

A simple Twitter search returns a handful of analysis from just the last 17 days from a wide range of sources. Let's go from the hyperbolically good to the hyperbolically bad.

Andrew Wiggins by the time he's 25..oh man he's gonna be a problem

— Tony Jones (@Tjonessltrib) December 31, 2014

Kobe: "I remember being Andrew Wiggins...It's like looking at a reflection of myself 19 years ago."

— Serena Winters (@SerenaWinters) December 15, 2014

LeBron James on rookie Andrew Wiggins: "He's a great talent. We all knew that for sure. Very poised, very efficient. They got a good piece."

— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) December 24, 2014

Seems like an unusually high percentage of Andrew Wiggins' made jumpers are swishes, one reason he fares better by eye test than stats.

— Kevin Pelton (@kpelton) December 31, 2014

Tony Jones, a Utah Jazz beat writer, was simply echoing what many think when they catch a first glimpse of Wiggins doing something awesome like this:

Kobe Bryant, who rarely compliments young players, seems to love what he sees in Wiggins.

David Thorpe is a coach/scout who writes for ESPN and determined that while James was a better scorer and passer through his first two months as a rookie, Wiggins is a better shooter and defender than James was at this stage in his career. Those conclusions are purely subjective, but Thorpe has a relevant voice in the NBA prospect industry.

LeBron James gives a politically correct quote, but there is no sugarcoating the fact that he labeled Wiggins a "good piece" and certainly did not echo Bryant's sentiments about seeing a lot of himself in Wiggins. Obviously after orchestrating the trade to send Wiggins from Cleveland to Minnesota, James has something at stake here, but his opinion is still relevant.

Kevin Pelton, a statistically minded NBA analyst for ESPN, offers an astute and accurate observation about Wiggins' game appealing to the eye test.

Neil Paine wrote a scathing column for Five Thirty Eight about how Wiggins should not be compared to LeBron James (more on this in a minute), and has been one of the worst players in the NBA this season according to the Value Over Replacement Player stat, among other metrics. He links to the >448-player VORP leaderboard (on which Wiggins is dead last) on Basketball Reference, and it is worth noting that Gal Mekel, Nick Johnson, Dion Waiters, Jimmer Fredette, Doug McDermott, Thomas Robinson and Austin Daye were the only players from 400-448 who play on teams with winning records. This is not like Wins Above Replacement in baseball, because in baseball, your teammates have effectively zero impact on your play. In basketball the opposite is true. So while this stat is useful in some respects, it tells half the story, or less than half the story in other cases. To demonstrate this point, five of the 14 worst players in basketball this season, according to VORP, play for the Timberwolves. In fact, two of the five worst players in the league by this measure have been Mo Williams and Zach LaVine, the two players entrusted with running the offense in which Wiggins is averaging 20 points while shooting 51 percent from the field over his last four games.

Now on to the James comparison, which Thorpe makes and which Paine (quite easily) shuts down. Wiggins should have never been compared to James. This is the kind of comparison that arrives from a SLAM Magazine cover story or a Sportscenter teaser headline. The Next LeBron? Because without a headline like that, how are casual fans supposed to care about a player they have never seen play? Many evaluators hate to throw out player comps because they are so often incredibly forced and because when that player inevitably does not reach the level of the player they were compared to, everyone points and laughs. Comparing Wiggins to James goes beyond this, however. Baseball scouts are not allowed to compare players to Bo Jackson, or Ken Griffey Jr., for instance. Why? Because don't be stupid, that's why. James may go down as the best player ever. Wiggins and James were both the top prospects in their class and they were freak athletes coming out of high school. That is literally all they have in common. They grew up in completely different family environments. Their games are incredibly different. Their bodies are incredibly different. These differences are obvious, but that has never stopped people like Thorpe or Paine from comparing the two, because that makes for a nice headline and it keeps the editor happy.

Speaking of editors, my editor asked me last night who Wiggins reminds me of. For about a year my answer to that question has been Scottie Pippen because of the defensive potential and the way that Wiggins could fit on a good team -- not as the alpha dog, but as the overqualified sidekick. However, it is still virtually impossible to compare the two at this stage, because Pippen played in an era where he was not encouraged to develop much of a three-point shot and he was three years older than Wiggins as a rookie.

This brings us back to Jones' tweet where he eloquently declared that Wiggins would be a problem when he was 25. That's six years away! (Now I feel really old). Bryant says he remembers being Wiggins, and many of us remember Bryant being 19. While it is just as reckless to compare a player to Bryant as it is James, Bryant at least has a lot in common with Wiggins in terms of the environment he grew up in and his physical stature.

Here is how the two compare through 30 games in their age-19 seasons:

Wiggins: 31.3 mpg, 40.6 FG%, 39.5 3Pt%, 68.8 FT%, 3.9 rpg, 1.4 apg, 1.0 spg, 0.5 bpg, 13.1 ppg
Bryant: 26.4 mpg, 43.8 FG%, 36.2 3Pt%, 75.8 FT%, 3.3 rpg, 2.4 apg, 1.3 spg, 0.4 bpg, 17.5 ppg

It is not a perfect comparison, obviously. This was Bryant's second year in the NBA, and the team constructs were completely different. The Lakers went 61-21 that year as Bryant got to play with Shaquille O'Neal in his prime, along with Eddie Jones, Nick Van Exel, Rick Fox and Robert Horry. Mo Williams is the only player Wiggins gets to play with who knows anything about winning in the NBA. His coach, Flip Saunders, has won most places he has coached, but this Minnesota team is by far the worst collection of players he has had to work with. Put 19-year-old Bryant on this T-Wolves team, and their record is about the same, ditto for putting Wiggins on that 1997-98 Lakers team.

I say all this to say that I do not believe Wiggins will come close to being the next Bryant. Nor will he ever be coached by Phil Jackson or be lucky enough to play with a player like Shaq in his prime. So much of this is out of the player's control. The point is, it is not hard to paint a talented 19-year-old in a good light, nor is it difficult to paint an athletic rookie on a bad team in a poor light. We should not be having these conversations yet, at least not to the point where bold proclamations are being made or verdicts are being finalized. Sit back and enjoy the opportunity to watch a player like this make plays like this:

If he never amounts to more than Gerald Green, there should not be a rush of people saying "I knew he'd never make it." Similarly, if he can gain confidence after his 20th birthday (a strange concept, I know) and develop into one of the 20 best players in the league, we should all just feel fortunate enough to have been able to watch a player with Wiggins' incredible physical gifts grow up before our eyes.