Andrew Wiggins finally plays as a competitor. Image: Getty Images
Stephen Curry was fascinating Friday night. If the Golden State Warriors manage to win their fourth NBA championship in eight seasons, it will be one of the most memorable championship performances in league history. Curry, a generational talent and one of the most popular players in the NBA, responded when his team needed him most.
While that’s true, Curry needed someone with the same vibe as him, someone who wasn’t ready for the season to be home the following Monday. With Draymond Green struggling for most of the game, and Klay Thompson not offering much offensive support until the second half, the Warrior in battle alongside Curry all night was Andrew Wiggins.
Wiggins had 16 rebounds, the highest of his career, when the Warriors defeated the Boston Celtics, 107-97, to tie the series at two wins each. It wasn’t just the total, it was his activity all night. Wiggins has been giving Jayson Tatum in every series as the Celtics first team All-NBA star. For the series, Tatum is shooting 34.1 percent from the field, a record low end for a player with an average of 20 or more attempts. In game 4, he took a couple of breaths while Nemanja Bjelica guarded Tatum, and then Wiggins went back to work doing yeoman’s defensive work while Tatum fired 34.8 percent from the field. Wiggins also led the Warriors in minutes with just over 43, three minutes more than Curry, and was the Warriors’ second top scorer until the end of the fourth quarter with 17 points.
And Wiggins did it in the most important game of his career, as he’s been doing all season with good playoffs against the Memphis Grizzlies and the Dallas Mavericks. It’s understandable why he told Yahoo Sports, “I’ve always been a competitor and I wanted to win. That should never have been questioned.”
He has been widely questioned since he was one of the best first-year recruits in Kansas. A player who takes off so fast that it is as if someone presses a button would spend long periods of inactivity on the court. He continued in the NBA in his time with the Minnesota Timberwolves as his No. 1 draft pick in 2014. He had seasons of more than 20 points per game, but his defense was defamed more often than not. complemented and one would not have thought that in a game he would have scored 16 rebounds.
Then there was the famous Jimmy Butler game. Remember, in 2018, when that first change in the Miami Heat failed and Butler showed up to practice and became the owner. He cursed the whole team, dominating the headlines with third string players and only made one hit. After destroying his old team, he spoke with former ESPN presenter Rachel Nichols about his problems with the organization. His problem was that his more talented younger teammates weren’t playing as hard as he was.
“Who is the most gifted player on our team? Wigs,” Butler told Nichols. “Wigs have longer arms, bigger hands, they can jump higher, they can run faster. But like who plays harder? Me. I play hard. I play very hard.”
This is entering the fifth season for Wiggins. During its seventh season, this former No. 1 general election was ceded to the Golden State Warriors.
It takes a professional level of both athletics and competitiveness to be in the NBA. Some players face one more than the other. Butler is more accomplished with competitiveness and that’s why he was so upset with the Timberwolves. Wiggins, for much of his career, has been the opposite. Butler felt that this made him a better player, and he is still a better player than Wiggins.
However, during the first half of the regular season and for the 2022 NBA postseason, we’ve seen a similar effort to Wiggins ’Butler. Without him, at best, the Warriors season is over after a four-game sweep of the Celtics. No matter how great Curry has been, MVP of the great finals, team sports do not work without help. Wiggins is giving him, the Warriors and the Celtics everything he has in every possession. It doesn’t erase what happened before in his career, but it will change how people talk about him in the future.