{"id":26683,"date":"2014-06-30T00:11:50","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T04:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/?p=26683"},"modified":"2014-06-30T00:12:45","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T04:12:45","slug":"the-development-of-andrew-wiggins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/?p=26683","title":{"rendered":"The Development of Andrew Wiggins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wiggins\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This will be a short article, mainly intended to lay out a few thoughts that are too long for twitter.\u00a0 I am really excited about the Wiggins pick,\u00a0and have a half formed idea on how to develop him.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In 2011, the Cavaliers drafted Tristan Thompson.\u00a0 He was good at offensive rebounding, blocking shots, and generally being athletic.\u00a0 Over the past three years, the Cavs have focused on bulking him up and working on a jumper & face-up game.\u00a0 His block rate and offensive rebounding rate have dropped every season in the league; by some measures<\/a>, he was one of the least effective basket-protecting Big Men in the NBA.\u00a0 What if\u00a0the Cavs\u00a0had instead focused on taking his strengths and maximizing those, while working on his offense as a secondary concern?\u00a0 I think his performance and effectiveness would be better than it currently is.<\/p>\n

Now in 2014, the Cavaliers selected Andrew Wiggins.\u00a0 A small forward with\u00a0prototypical length and\u00a0ridiculous athleticism.\u00a0 A guy that\u00a0likes defense and who Draftexpress says can become a “multi-positional lockdown perimeter defender in the NBA.”\u00a0 <\/em>He is also a player\u00a0with weaknesses of\u00a0needing\u00a0to further develop his ball-handling and shot.<\/p>\n

I hope the Cavs take a position of focusing on enhancing that defensive impact, while on offense giving him a role and developing the tools to strike efficiently from within that role.\u00a0 Certainly, hitting open\u00a0jumpers, and also strong work in transition and cutting within the offense, and eventually\u00a0the ability to recognize a mismatch and take advantage from isolation or as the ball-handler in the pick & roll.\u00a0 In this capacity, he\u00a0may never\u00a0be a 25 point per game scorer with 28% usage, but that\u00a0seems fine; an efficient, relatively low usage, multi-faceted wing with a terribly disruptive defensive streak can be\u00a0a star.\u00a0 Look at Kawhi Leonard,\u00a0he of 18% usage, but an NBA Finals MVP and at age\u00a022,\u00a0already one of the 25 best players<\/a> in the game.\u00a0 If the Cavs wanted a high usage scorer, Jabari Parker was the pick.\u00a0 If they wanted a freak athlete that can\u00a0be a monster at the other end of the court, they made the right call in Andrew Wiggins.\u00a0 Focusing the team’s goals for Wiggins\u00a0towards maximizing every ounce of his existing\u00a0talents, turning him not into a good, but the best<\/em>\u00a0defender, should go a long ways towards determining his ultimate ceiling.\u00a0 Trying to turn him into something he is not will be more difficult and could inhibit his path to stardom.\u00a0 Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Lebron James; the most dominant offensive forces from the small forward position were already well on there way to being\u00a0that at 18 years old.\u00a0 That\u00a0is not\u00a0Andrew Wiggins, and that is fine; he doesn’t need to\u00a0go there to\u00a0be an outstanding player.\u00a0 Hopefully the Cavaliers can maximize what he is, molding him into his own unique kind of star.<\/p>\n

That is all.\u00a0 Go Cavs!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This will be a short article, mainly intended to lay out a few thoughts that are too long for twitter.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-26683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26683"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26749,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26683\/revisions\/26749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26683"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=26683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}