Andrew Wiggins gets paid, but is he worth it?

ByKEVIN PELTON
October 11, 2017, 2:48 PM

— -- Even the owner who signed Andrew Wiggins to an extension on Wednesday?acknowledges Wiggins' play so far hasn't merited max compensation.

"To me, by making this offer, I'm speculating that his contribution to the team will be more in the future," Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor told The Associated Press in August, before Wiggins agreed to the deal. "We've got to be better. He can't be paid just for what he's doing today. He's got to be better."

That's natural for any young player like the 22-year-old Wiggins. However, in the case of the No. 1 pick of the 2014 draft, the gulf between performance to date and perceived potential is unusually large. How can Wiggins bridge the gap and live up to his new deal?

Wiggins' scoring empty so far

During 2016-17, his third NBA season, Wiggins averaged 23.6 points to rank 16th in the league, right between All-Stars Paul George and Kemba Walker. Much of the hope for Wiggins' future is founded in his prodigious scoring. Among players during their age-21 seasons (as of Feb. 1; Wiggins turned 22 shortly thereafter), his scoring average ranked 12th in NBA history,? according to Basketball-Reference.com.

Not counting his Minnesota teammate Karl-Anthony Towns, who ranked just ahead of him last season, all 10 other players ahead of Wiggins developed into All-Stars. Every retired player ahead of him save Terry Cummings is in the Hall of Fame. Hence, high expectations for Wiggins' future.

Yet, advanced statistics show Wiggins did unusually little to help his team for such a prolific scorer. Among players who averaged at least 23 points, Wiggins' 0.3 wins above replacement player (WARP) by my metric were the third lowest since 1977-78, the first season the NBA tracked individual turnovers.

Part of the issue was that Wiggins' scoring output was predicated more on volume than efficiency. Among the 33 players who averaged at least 20 points last season, Wiggins' true shooting percentage -- points scored per shot attempt or trip to the free throw line -- ranked 32nd, ahead of only second-year Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker.

Scoring efficiency alone doesn't account for Wiggins' near-replacement value, however. Given the heavy share of the Timberwolves' offense he was responsible for creating (Wiggins finished 29.2 percent of Minnesota's plays with a shot, trip to the free throw line or turnover while he was on the court), he actually rates slightly better than average as a scorer.

The bigger culprit is the lack of impact Wiggins made in the box score besides the points category. Despite his athleticism, the 8.8 percent of available defensive rebounds Wiggins grabbed was worse than the average for guards (10.9 percent), and his 1.3 steals per 100 plays were identical to the average for centers. And Wiggins rarely set up teammates; his 2.8 assists per 100 plays were slightly better than the average for centers (2.7) and worse than the average for power forwards (3.0).

In particular, Wiggins' defense hasn't lived up to the lofty expectations for him coming out of Kansas. Because of his limited involvement as a help defender, Wiggins ranked 93rd out of 95 shooting guards in the defensive component of ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) last season, 3.2 points per 100 possessions worse than an average defender.

Where Wiggins goes from here

That's enough about where Wiggins has been. Let's talk about where he's going. Because the contrast between Wiggins' scoring average and his WARP is so extreme, it's difficult to find good comparisons for him. Every player since 1977-78 before Wiggins who averaged at least 20 points during their age-21 season also posted at least 5 WARP. So let's open up the criteria to players who averaged at least 17 points to generate our list of Wiggins comps.

This looks like a reasonable list. Though not quite as highly touted as Wiggins entering the NBA, all of these players were drafted in the top 10 and were expected to become stars. And while they all went on to long careers and four of the seven became All-Stars, I'd still say this group fell short of the expectations for Wiggins. Here's a summary of their performance:

While these players collectively made seven All-Star appearances, Stackhouse was the only one to reach the 10-WARP threshold that is typical for All-Stars. That's no surprise: the perception gap we see with Wiggins because of his scoring persisted for the best of these players -- most notably DeRozan -- into their prime years.

The most important category here is the WARP players contributed over the five seasons that Wiggins' extension will cover (age-23 through age-27). Typically, it costs teams about 3.5 percent of the salary cap to buy a win in free agency. So to justify a salary starting at 25 percent of the cap, Wiggins will need to produce about seven WARP per season. Of the seven comps, only Stackhouse (7.4) reached that threshold. None of the others came particularly close.

How can Wiggins defy that trend? Continuing to develop his 3-point shot might be key. Of the players in the pool of comparables we've identified, only one (O.J. Mayo) shot better than 34.5 percent from 3-point range in his career. While that wasn't surprising for big men Juwan Howard and Joe Smith, inaccurate or infrequent 3-point shooting limited the value of the perimeter players to some extent.

Wiggins already shot 35.6 percent from beyond the arc last season, and according to SportVU tracking on NBA.com/Stats, he made 40.9 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3 attempts. Wiggins' overall percentage was dragged down by 27.3 percent shooting on pull-up 3s, which accounted for nearly two-fifths of his 3-point attempts. The arrival of Jimmy Butler as another ball handler on the wing should mean more catch-and-shoot opportunities for Wiggins, so if his improvement was legitimate (he shot 34.6 percent on catch-and-shoot 3s in 2015-16), he could become a more efficient scorer this season.

At the other end, it's certainly possible for Wiggins to become a good defender despite his poor rebound and steal rates. Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors is worse in both categories, yet Thompson is regarded as one of the NBA's best perimeter defenders. (He finished sixth in voting for last year's All-Defensive team.) Wiggins has the physical tools to become a wing stopper like Thompson with the ability to switch on bigger opponents, though it was surprising and disappointing that he didn't show more improvement during his first year under Tom Thibodeau.

That kind of development at both ends of the court will be what the Timberwolves and their owner expect from Wiggins now that they've committed to a max extension. And they'll need it, because otherwise his new contract could be a max mistake.