Andrew Wiggins is back.
But that doesn’t guarantee a thing for the Golden State Warriors.
Sources confirmed to this newsgroup that Wiggins — who has missed every game since the NBA All-Star break due to a family matter — will return to the Dubs this week.
The return of the team’s second-best player during last year’s title run is unquestionably a boost.
As, the great David Lee once proclaimed, the Warriors are “Full Squad.”
But the Warriors’ problems – which have resulted in this squad fighting for the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference – have been larger than just the absence of Wiggins.
Yes, it would be easy to blame Wiggins’ absence for every ill the Dubs have faced over the last few weeks.
But the truth is these Warriors have a complex: They can’t help but make things interesting, sometimes for no good reason.
Take Sunday’s game against the Nuggets, for instance: Had the Warriors held their nerve and their lead in Denver, the team’s path to the real playoffs would have been all but guaranteed.
Would Wiggins’ presence have helped? Sure.
Was it the singular difference in the game? Don’t be naive.
Here’s a refresher of what Wiggins can provide the Warriors when he returns this week:
– Efficient scoring for a team that desperately needs exactly that
– Athleticism and rebounding that can key the Warriors’ smallball systems
– On-ball perimeter defense that was game-changing in last year’s postseason
Any version of Wiggins is a plus for the Dubs. But after months away, will he be plug-and-play?
He will need to be.
Welcome back, Andrew — hope you’re ready to jump into playoff-level basketball.
The Dubs claim they want to avoid the play-in tournament at all costs. But apparently, the cost of playing consistently good basketball is too high.
And now the Dubs have three games remaining in the regular season and they’d be well served to win all three.
Yes, these Dubs control their own destiny, but they have proven this year to be terrible stewards.
With previous editions of the Warriors, the team could “figure it out” in the postseason. The team’s floor was high, and its ceiling was unbeatable.
It made coasting through a regular season a risk-free endeavor.
But all the evidence says the same truth does not apply to the 2022-23 Dubs.
While the Warriors’ Big Four of Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Wiggins was one of the finest four-man units in the game, per net rating, the league’s best is Kevon Looney in the place of Wiggins.
And yet the Warriors are struggling to separate from the play-in tournament teams.
The Warriors are 19-18 this season with Wiggins, and only 17-15 with both Wiggins and Curry in the lineup.
Perhaps tighter rotations in the postseason will help. Maybe the emergence of Jonathan Kuminga and the return of Gary Payton II — two things that happened while Wiggins was away — will change the paradigms.
But until that’s proven, the presumption must be that the Dubs, even with Wiggins, are mediocre. That doesn’t play in the postseason — even in a wide-open Western Conference.
Yes, the Dubs have moments where they look every bit like a team capable of defending a championship.
Then there are the other moments, like on Sunday, where the only logical explanation for the Warriors’ play is that the team needs the thrill of possible failure to feel alive.
The return of Wiggins provides an opportunity to cleanly close the book on the strange portion of the season and start a new one defined by achievement and success.
But tidy and straightforward are not words that can be applied to the 2022-23 Warriors, even with Wiggins back in the fold.
