We’ve seen his long arms, his spring-powered legs, the defense and the dunks. He even gets some jump shots to drop through the net every now and then. All of those signs seem to solidify Andrew Wiggins as the no-brainer choice for NBA Rookie of the Year.
Throw in the former Kansas standout’s season averages through 71 games — 16.0 points, 4.4 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 1.1 steals, 2.0 turnovers, 43.7% shooting, 32.5% on 3-pointers — and the absence of well-known competition due to injuries to fellow top-three draft picks Jabari Parker and Joel Embiid, and the hardware seems all but guaranteed to reside in Wiggins’ trophy case.
However, with the season winding down, and award season approaching, a swell of anti-Wiggins arguments has appeared over the past couple of days.
First, [the Rookie Ladder feature at NBA.com][1] bumped Wiggins from the No. 1 spot this week.
Scott Howard-Cooper, who runs the rookie-tracking blog, instead bumped defensive-minded Philadelphia big man Nerlens Noel to the top of the list, citing the following:
– Noel is 6th in the NBA in blocks — 2.0 a game
– he’s 9th in steals (1.8 a game), despite playing fewer minutes than seven players ahead of him
– the Sixers’ big man leads [rookies in rebounding][2] — 8.0 a game (Wiggins is fifth among rookies who have played at least 50 games)
– Noel is 6th in rookie scoring — 9.6 points a game (on a list that includes Milwaukee’s Parker, who played 25 games, and New York’s Langston Galloway, who has only played 35 games)
Wiggins had occupied the No. 1 slot since the first week of January, but Howard-Cooper pointed out the 20-year-old’s shooting touch has slipped in March.
Entering Friday’s game at Houston, the young Canadian had made 43% of his shots this month. That’s pretty close to his season average. But the glaring statistic is his 3-point shooting: 15.4%.
That’s almost bad enough to make you forget about his freakish athleticism.
http://instagram.com/p/0tML_TFmXa/
Almost.
Then came this argument: Andrew Wiggins isn’t actually that great, he’s just putting up numbers on a bad team.
Credit writer Ben Detrick for backing that theory with some advanced statistical data. He questioned Wiggins’ impact by citing VORP (value over replacement player) — defined by basketball-reference.com as:
> “a box score estimate of the points
> per 100 team possessions that a player
> contributed above a replacement level
> player, translated to an average team
> and prorated to an 82-game season.”
Mumbo jumbo? Kind of. But this particular advanced metric ranks Wiggins as the sixth-most valuable rookie in his class — behind Noel, Chicago’s Nikola Mirotic, Boston’s Marcus Smart, Orlando’s Elfrid Payton and Denver’s Jusuf Nurkic.
Rookie of year candidates, ranked by VORP: Nerlens Noel (1.4), Mirotic (1.0), Smart (1.0), Payton (0.4), Nurkic (0.4), Wiggins (-0.1).
— Ben Detrick (@bdetrick) March 27, 2015
Andrew Wiggins could potentially be first rookie of the year with negative VORP since Darrell Griffith (’81). Not a convincing argument.
— Ben Detrick (@bdetrick) March 27, 2015
Before you just dismiss this, at least take a look at [the NBA’s top-10 players in VORP this season][3]. It reads like a who’s who of impact players in 2014-15: Steph Curry (6.7), James Harden (6.7), Russell Westbrook (6.5), Chris Paul (5.7), LeBron James (5.2), Damian Lillard (4.8), Anthony Davis (4.7), Draymond Green (4.1), Marc Gasol (4.0) and DeAndre Jordan (3.8).
Really, no one you would want to build your NBA team around resides in the same neighborhood as Wiggins (-0.1).
Does this mean Wiggins won’t win Rookie of the Year? Probably not. Plenty of people around the league still love what they’ve seen from the youngster and realize even better days are ahead for him — which is kind of frightening when you consider the things he is doing on the court.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AfqQobNoWU
And, of course, he has plenty of time to improve his shooting, efficiency, ball-handling, basketball IQ and everything else.
If Wiggins still doesn’t have an impressive VORP five seasons from now, then he’s got a problem.
Just so you know: Kevin Durant’s rookie VORP was 0.4. That’s obviously better than where Wiggins is at now, but you get the idea. He has years to acclimate himself as a player and make an even more meaningful impact in the league.
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*- Keep up with the production of all the ‘Hawks in the NBA [daily at KUsports.com][4].*
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*- [Follow @BentonASmith on Twitter][5].*
[1]: http://www.nba.com/2015/news/features/scott_howard_cooper/03/25/2014-15-rookie-ladder-week-21/index.html
[2]: http://stats.nba.com/league/player/#!/?PlayerExperience=Rookie&sort=REB&dir=1
[3]: http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2015_advanced.html
[4]: http://www2.kusports.com/news/mens_basketball/hawks_nba/
[5]: https://twitter.com/BentonASmith
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