After four seasons in the league with little to no improvement from his rookie season, former No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins‘s reputation has taken a hit of late with real questions floating about whether the Minnesota Timberwolves should be looking to trade him.
But not everyone has given up on the 23-year-old.
In perhaps the biggest endorsement Wiggins has received since he signed a five-year $148-million extension that will kick in this coming season, Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor says he’s willing to stick with the Canadian, despite popular opinion.
“I just think you want to take a person and not give up on him when they’re that young, no matter what,” Taylor told 1500 ESPN radio host Darren Wolfson on The Scoop podcast. “I just think you have to be really careful that you don’t give up on him.
“You go back and look at a lot of players and it took them three, four years to get better, and then they just keep getting better with the experience and the confidence. I don’t see why Andrew won’t be one of those people because he has such natural ability.”
Taylor is right when he speaks of Wiggins’s immense talent — he didn’t go first overall in 2014 by fluke, after all — but, as his career stat lines show, he’s done little to take it to that next level of stardom you’d expect since he won rookie of the year in 2015.
| Season | MP | FG% | 3P | 3P% | FT% | TRB | AST | STL | BLK | TOV | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | 36.2 | .437 | 0.5 | .310 | .760 | 4.6 | 2.1 | 1.0 | 0.6 | 2.2 | 16.9 |
| 2015-16 | 35.1 | .459 | 0.7 | .300 | .761 | 3.6 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 0.6 | 2.2 | 20.7 |
| 2016-17 | 37.2 | .452 | 1.3 | .356 | .760 | 4.0 | 2.3 | 1.0 | 0.4 | 2.3 | 23.6 |
| 2017-18 | 36.3 | .438 | 1.4 | .331 | .643 | 4.4 | 2.0 | 1.1 | 0.6 | 1.7 | 17.7 |
Despite this, Taylor is throwing his support behind Wiggins, but it may be more out of necessity than anything else because of the massive cheques he’s about to start writing for Wiggins.
And despite how outlandish it looks right now, at the time that the extension was made, it sort of made sense as Wiggins had just come off a season that saw him score a career-high 23.6 points per game.
Now, however, he’s going to have to really show that he’s more than just a one-dimensional slashing scorer, something Taylor is banking on.
“I have expectations of him to be much better this year,” said Taylor. “So we’ll just see what he does this summer, what improvements he can make and have high expectations of him, and I’m sure the coach and everybody else will ask him to deliver and I think that’s what Andrew’s goals are.”
The Timberwolves will also be hoping the apparently strained relationship between Wiggins and all-star guard Jimmy Butler improves as well.
Butler reportedly called Wiggins and some of the other young Minnesota players out in June, questioning Wiggins’s work ethic, in particular.
This could potentially be a huge issue for the Timberwolves moving forward, particularly because of the report that Butler had turned down a four-year $110-million contract extension with Minnesota Friday and could be looking for a big payday somewhere else next summer.
The Timberwolves were a playoff a team for the first time since Kevin Garnett left in no small part because of Butler, and probably could’ve had a much higher seed than No. 8 had Butler remained healthy, so his importance to the team’s success seems rather vital.
Taylor’s just hoping Butler’s tough-love style will rub off on his team’s young stars in a positive manner.
“I think that [Butler] just wants to win and wants to make sure that people around him play really hard,” Taylor said. “He’s just a very competitive person … and I don’t have any trouble with that.”
It’s fine if the owner doesn’t take exception to it, but what about Wiggins?
The 2018-19 season may just be a make or break kind of year for the Vaughan, Ont., native.
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