Trade Analysis: The Athletic experts examine Warriors-Timberwolves swap of D’Angelo Russell for Andrew Wiggins
By Seth Partnow, Sam Vecenie and Danny Leroux 2h ago
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Editor’s Note:
Below is a conversation between three of The Athletic’s NBA analysts with different specialties. Seth Partnow (analytics), Sam Vecenie (NBA draft/scouting) and Danny Leroux (CBA/Salary cap) discuss and break down Thursday’s deadline deal between the Warriors and Timberwolves
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The Trade
The Golden State Warriors trade D’Angelo Russell, Jacob Evans and Omari Spellman to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Andrew Wiggins, MIN’s 2021 first round pick (protected top-3 in 2021 and unprotected in 2022), and MIN’s 2021 second round pick
First Impressions
Leroux: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
(one for every million remaining on Wiggins’ contract)
Vecenie: I’m not surprised that Minnesota is trading for Russell. We’ve known that was a possibility for a while. I’m not even surprised that Wiggins is involved in such a deal. However, I am surprised that this deal is happening now versus in five months. Doesn’t it make more sense, given that there is only one first rounder involved for Golden State, to wait until the offseason and see what other offers are available when you know how the lottery has shaken out? Would it have been possible to pair Russell and their lottery pick for a better offer than this? Isn’t this deal likely on the table in six months anyway, given Minnesota’s incessant chase of Russell? I would have wanted to find out, personally.
Having said that, I think it’s a much more reasonable deal for the Warriors than most, in large part because I believe more in Wiggins than many and I think this pick has a shot to be really valuable. And the Gersson Rosas seemingly avoided a Karl-Anthony Towns mutiny by acquiring Russell, so that’s nice.
Partnow: I suggested DeMar DeRozan for Wiggins in our Timberwolves breakdown, and this is kind of the next best thing. I don’t see either player as particularly impactful so this deal might end up with one of the highest heat-to-light ratios of any swap in recent memory. That said, have to like the upside for the Warriors if only because of the top 10 pick equity they acquired.
Cap Implications
Leroux: Russell and Wiggins have strikingly similar contracts for players given their max signed almost two years apart: after this year, Russell makes $90 million over three seasons while Wiggins gets $94.7 million over that same time period. As such, the larger financial difference comes from the other players included. The Warriors picked up 2020-21 rookie scale options for both Evans and Spellman so they make a combined $3.8 million this year and $4 million next season with fourth year options that the Timberwolves will decide on before Halloween.
The craziest part of this trade is how it affects the Warriors’ luxury tax obligations. After this deal and their previous salary dump of Glenn Robinson III and Alec Burks, I have them $3.1 million below the tax threshold but they have an astonishing NINE players on roster. As such, the front office has to try to figure out a way to fulfill the league requirements for roster size while spending less than that sum but Bob Myers should be able to make that happen.
On the floor impact
Partnow: The first thing that needs to be said is that the reputations of the main pieces of this deal far surpass their career achievements. Yes, Russell was selected as an injury replacement for the All-Star game last year, which was more a testament to the stickiness of pre-draft reputations than actual production.
Neither player has ever had a season in the top 100 in single year RAPM, and only Wiggins (in 2016-17) has a season with meaningfully positive (greater than +1.0/possessions) estimated impacts. Aside from Russell’s rather fluky finish (86th) last year, neither player has ever finished higher than 347th in single season DRAPM. As both are poor to very poor defensively, they derive what value they have on the offensive end. And the story there has not been pretty:
Thus far this season, Russell is approaching league average efficiency, but every other season both players have been well below.
Draft Implications
Vecenie: The Warriors will receive a Minnesota 2021 first round pick that has very light protections, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. The pick is top-three protected in 2021, and then unprotected in 2022 if it gets that far.
You might be asking yourselves: Why would Golden State want Minnesota’s 2021 pick? Shouldn’t they be better next season when Russell is paired with Towns? Golden State, according to sources, actually prioritized a 2021 pick in their negotiations with Minnesota as opposed to Minnesota’s 2020 pick. I see three reasons why that would be the case.
First, the Warriors are already slated to have a lottery pick incoming in 2020. Does it make sense for a team that will be ostensibly competing for a title next year to develop two high-end rookies at the same time? I’m not sure it does.
Second, the 2021 draft looks much, much better than the 2020 iteration. The 2020 draft, particularly throughout the lottery, looks to be the weakest since the 2013 draft, and maybe the second-weakest overall in the one-and-done era. On the other hand, the 2021 draft looks quite good. Cade Cunningham, Evan Mobley, and Jalen Green would all pretty clearly be No. 1 overall picks in the 2020 NBA Draft. The freshman class entering the college or overseas ranks next season is considerably stronger in terms of depth, meaning there is a greater chance that more good players will emerge over the next 18 months. In general, executives feel much better about 2021 than 2020, which is why you’ve seen over the course of the deadline that more teams are willing to part with this season’s draft picks.
Finally, this is a bet on the Timberwolves not turning it around and becoming a playoff team next year. And honestly, I think it’s a reasonable bet just given how far they have to go to build around Russell and Towns, and how deep the West is. This is something of a re-boot, given that I think the only even average defensive players on the roster at Josh Okogie and Jarrett Culver. If they mean to keep Malik Beasley and Juancho Hernangomez, they don’t have cap space this summer, and have very few other positive assets to turn around and trade elsewhere unless they want to move their 2020 lottery pick, too. Pretty easily, I’d feel comfortable slotting both Los Angeles teams, Denver, Golden State, Utah, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City, Memphis, Portland and New Orleans ahead of them in the pecking order next year. That’s 11 teams they have to jump, and that doesn’t include Phoenix, Sacramento and San Antonio, who have talent. The West is loaded, and Minnesota has quite a climb ahead of it.
The Wolves also move their 2021 second rounder to the Warriors. If the Dubs’ bet on that lottery pick being valuable is right, the second round pick also could have value, too, as a top-10 pick in that round.
Discussion
Partnow: Before we get into the cap and asset machinations of this, we should note that Wiggins fits
better with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson than Russell would have. That better fit doesn’t change the fact that he’s never had a full season of above average NBA play. He has been below league average efficiency every year of his career, and despite his supposed defensive tools, has been a significant negative on that end of the floor every season of his career as well.
I am not particularly enamored of Russell either, but the fact that the Wolves included a lightly protected first to move Wiggins and the gut reaction is “that’s all?” says volumes of the enormity of the reclamation project in front of the Dubs.
Vecenie: This is a massive gamble from the Warriors, if only because of what it will do to Wiggins value one way or another. If Wiggins succeeds next to Curry, Klay and Dray, it will legitimately make it seem like he’s been salvaged, and thus has value to be forwarded on in another potential deal. Or, maybe it’ll mean he’s just good, and a smart addition to the Warriors.
But if it fails, and Wiggins doesn’t take the step that scouts around the league think he has in him as a project worth investing in, it’s going to be a disaster for the Warriors and crater any value he has left. Executives around the league will say, “If he can’t work with the Warriors surrounded by that talent, he can’t work with anyone.”
Ultimately the question is: Do we think Golden State can develop him and make this work?
Leroux: While Wiggins is a superior conceptual fit with the Warriors’ core, the difference between the theory of him and the reality is incredibly important. In the 2017-18 season, Wiggins took 15.7 shots per game with 23.4 usage on a playoff team that also had Karl-Anthony Towns and Jimmy Butler. Oh, and he had a 50.5 True Shooting percentage, the
ninth-worst of the 89 players with that volume. (Amazingly, Russell was 10th-worst!) It is a similar story on defense where the Canadian profiles as a capable defender but the possession-by-possession impact has only been positive for small stretches in five and a half seasons. Playing with Curry, Thompson, Green and the Warriors will put Wiggins in the best possible situation to succeed but it remains unclear whether he will make the adjustments in game and mentality necessary to fully thrive. Also, if it does not work out, the Warriors still owe him another $94.7 million after this season.
Vecenie: So, let me be clear. I share a lot of the concerns you guys do here. I’m not excited about this deal for the Dubs. But I’ll at least make the case for Wiggins having taken a bit of a leap this year.
First and foremost, he’s clearly improved as a passer. His 18.9 assist rate this year is nearly double that of his career average, and he’s looked much more comfortable reading the way defenders are playing him. Part of Wiggins old problem used to be that he couldn’t quite see the floor in the way he needed to, and thus threw up a lot of ugly contested shots. Now that he sees the floor better, and will move toward playing in a much more ball-movement-friendly scheme, I wonder if he can start to limit the hideous shots he takes at times.
Partnow: I’ll interject here to say that at least some of Wiggins increased playmaking load was more by necessity with the injuries and inexperience the Wolves have had in the backcourt. He has shown some competence in making decent reads in those scenarios, but a high level initiator he’s not, and his overall offensive game is not to the point where he should be on ball all that often for a team with Curry, Green and so on.
Vecenie: Yeah, no doubt. I’m not going to make a case that he is a primary playmaker, but rather someone who can make a read, now, and get himself out of forcing up bad shots as a reaction.
Second, while the efficiency hasn’t exactly spiked, it’s been better this season, and his shot distribution as a whole looks much more like something you’d see from a Golden State. He’s taken about 77 percent of his shots either at the rim or from behind the 3-point line, with nearly half of his 3-point attempts being of the pull-up variety. As a shooter off the catch, his numbers actually aren’t that bad. He’s hitting at a 54.9 effective field goal percentage on those shots overall this season, and has made 36 percent of such 3s. That number actually tracks from the last two seasons, where he’s hit catch-and-shoot shots at a 51.9 and 54.3 mark, respectively.
Partnow: Even that 54.9 mark on catch-and-shoots is pretty mediocre. For his career, he’s been an inefficient jump shooter:
(Russell is a better shooter unsurprisingly, but both have taken more than twice as many pullups as catch-and-shoots).
