It’s been a peculiar start to Andrew Wiggins’ professional career. As news of LeBron James’ prodigal return to Cleveland caused a ripple effect throughout the league during the height of the free agent frenzy, it also unexpectedly rendered Wiggins’ future with the team that drafted him number one overall increasingly uncertain.
Given another set of circumstances, the timing of LeBron’s stunning announcement seemed serendipitous as it unfolded just as the Kevin Love debacle in Minnesota was reaching its nadir. For more than week now, rumors about a Wiggins-for-Love swap have dominated the news cycle, but after much speculation, a recent report from ESPN’s Brian Windhorst indicates that the Cavs will sign Wiggins to his rookie contract sometime in the coming week, which means he cannot be traded for another 30 days. This despite the fact that Cleveland had supposedly consented to include Wiggins in the proposed deal for Love after initially refusing to do so.
The general consensus among the basketball intelligentsia seems to be that the Cavs should jump at the opportunity to land a player of Love’s caliber, even if that means letting go of a potential superstar.
However, the question that no one seems to be asking is whether it makes any sense for Minnesota. Billionaire owner Glen Taylor and retread GM Flip Saunders don’t seem so sure about that; otherwise, they would have pulled the trigger on it days ago when Cleveland revealed that they had softened their stance on Wiggins.
Taylor spoke about the recent rumors in an interview with NBA TV during the Las Vegas Summer League last Wednesday:
“My preference is that Kevin will come to [training] camp — and I’m sure he will — and play with the team,” Taylor said.
“We are going to look at everything that makes sense that would make our team better,” Taylor told NBA TV. “But we are not going to move a superb player like [Love] without getting equal or more value back.”
Conventional wisdom says that you never trade a dollar for four quarters, and if Love is, in fact, the superior player in this scenario, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Minnesota to swap him out for a speculative talent like Wiggins or even a smorgasbord of young players that could potentially include Anthony Bennett and perhaps even Dion Waiters, if the recent rumors are to be believed.
To complicate matters further, the ‘Wolves are in an eerily similar position to the one they were in back in 2007 when another disgruntled power forward named Kevin forced a trade that ultimately gift-wrapped the Boston Celtics an NBA Title and two trips to the Finals in a span of three years. The Wolves are still trying to sift through the carnage left behind by former GM David Kahn, who was so spectacularly inept during his reign of terror from 2009 to 2013 that the franchise can hardly afford to make another high-profile faux pas by being tacitly responsible for the creation of yet another Eastern Conference juggernaut.
Even a theoretically more attractive offer from the Golden State Warriors that would include Klay Thompson (and perhaps David Lee) doesn’t seem to move the needle very much for Minnesota. It also bears mentioning that the Warriors have been reluctant to trade Thompson because of his abilities as a perimeter defender, which just so happens to be Wiggins’ number-one strength at this stage of his development as well.
Which points to another sticky area of this discussion: Love’s presumably bad defense. In fairness to Love, his liabilities as a defender have been somewhat exaggerated. As the saying goes, a defensive stand doesn’t end until somebody secures the rebound, and Love is one of the best in the business in this department. His plus/minus numbers are likewise not a very good indication of this as he has a plus-4.4 net rating, but the Wolves as a team were positively ghastly on defense and finished 26th in points allowed per possession last season. Additionally, there’s a general perception that Love is simply not a very good one-on-one defender at his position and offers little-to-no rim protection. Whether it’s accurate is ultimately irrelevant given that it has been something of a stop-gap in both potential trade scenarios. If the Warriors are concerned about losing Thompson’s perimeter defense, the Cavs should be too considering they also have a big question mark in the middle that Love doesn’t sufficiently answer.
Despite all the chatter, the truth is that Minnesota doesn’t seem to be in any rush to resolve the Love crisis just yet. Saunders and Taylor have both emphasized that retaining Love and convincing him to buy into their vision for the future of the franchise is a top priority, and they essentially have until the February trade deadline before they are truly desperate and facing the very real possibility of losing him as an unrestricted free agent next summer and getting nothing in return.
Losing two once-in-a-generation talents named Kevin back to back because of front office incompetence will be a tough pill to swallow for the fans in Minnesota, and neither Thompson nor Wiggins offers them enough immediate value in return.
Despite a recent revelation from Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski that LeBron has personally reached out to Love on the phone, not to mention the fact the he conveniently omitted Wiggins’ (and Bennett’s) name from his “I’m Coming Home” essay in Sports Illustrated, Love has been mostly mum so far about his intentions.
It seems to beg the question as to what exactly Love sees as his best-case scenario in all of this. He thrived as the number one option in Minnesota playing alongside a pass-first point guard in Ricky Rubio, but it’ll be a very different story in Cleveland with the more offensive-oriented Kyrie Irving. Will Love be content with playing second or third fiddle to LeBron and Irving? The prospect has to give him at least some pause, and there are plenty pros and cons to each scenario.
In Golden State, it would be the Steph Curry and Kevin Love show, with Andrew Bogut and Andre Igoudala buffering them as a formidable defensive tandem. However, Love would still be relegated to the unforgiving Western Conference schedule, while playing in Cleveland could potentially be a cakewalk through an already-diluted Eastern Conference field.
Regardless, Golden State is now under the impression that Love would, in fact, opt in long-term with the Warriors and forego free agency after next season, according to a report from Yannis Koutroupis of BasketballInsiders.com.
The good news for Cleveland is that they can’t really go wrong either way. If they’re able to acquire Love, then they will have made LeBron happy and put themselves in a position to make a serious run at the Eastern Conference crown next season.
If they end up getting spurned by Love, then they’ve managed to retain a promising young talent they can bring along slowly. Cleveland, quite clearly, is the most ideal situation for Wiggins in terms of his development. Wiggins, unlike Jabari Parker in Milwaukee (and unlike Wiggins in Minnesota) won’t be expected to carry the team on his back or even be the second option on offense. He’ll have the space and freedom to adjust to the pace and intensity of the NBA game while he figures out how to maximize his considerable strengths, among which are his defensive instincts, his rebounding, his length, and his athleticism.
Sure, he’ll be under a tremendous amount of scrutiny just like every other number one pick before him, but playing alongside LeBron will alleviate a lot of that pressure, and if LeBron decides to embrace his role as mentor, it isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that Wiggins could evolve into a role similar to that of Scottie Pippen in Chicago, the Robin-to-his-Batman who is willing to be submissive yet supremely capable of putting up 15-20 points on any given night while concentrating his efforts as a defensive stalwart on the other end of the floor. Whatever his current shortcomings as an offensive threat, Wiggins has already exhibited signs of his preternatural gifts as a defender, which is an increasingly rare commodity in the modern NBA and particularly unusual among young players. If he can spell LeBron on defense by guarding the other team’s best perimeter scorer on a nightly basis, it will allow LeBron, who turns 30 in December, to conserve energy and minimize the wear-and-tear on his body as he enters his 12th season in the league.
It all begs the question of just how much pressure the Cavs are feeling to win (or at least compete for a championship) right now. In his essay, LeBron preemptively tried to temper the expectations surrounding his return, admitting that climbing their way back into contention might be a long and frustrating process, but his short-term contract, with an opt-out clause after next season, might have inadvertently lit a fire under management’s seats. Even though LeBron is adamant that he wants to finish his career in Cleveland (and painfully aware how badly he would tarnish his legacy if he were skip town again), it appears the Cavs’ front office would rather not repeat the same mistakes that led to his departure in the first place, ergo their sudden willingness to include Wiggins as part of the deal for Love.
Now that the Cavs and the Warriors have both apparently acquiesced to the Wolves’ demands, the ball is in Minnesota’s court. They also have the most to lose.
What should Minnesota do?
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