Written By Tom Schreier
I think he’s hit the rookie wall here for a little bit, and somehow we’ve gotta find a way to go right through it. He’s got to find a soft spot in that wall and bust right through the wall.
— Flip Saunders on rookie Andrew Wiggins, 1/23/15
At the risk of sounding super-meta on something that should be pretty simple, I’ll propose a question: What is the rookie wall?
Most people have experienced “hitting a wall.” The working professional experiences it when they are done with a long week at the office and are about to head over to a friend’s house for a night on the town when all of a sudden decide to hang back in order to get a few extra hours of sleep. The college kid experiences it when he or she passes out at another person’s house at 10:00 p.m. before everyone goes out and wakes up at 2:30 a.m. and realizes that everyone’s missing. And parents experience it when they have to apologize that their otherwise content kids have suddenly started acting up in the middle of dinner because it’s past their bedtime.
Wiggins is expected to hit a wall because he is playing 40 minutes a night. And because he only played 35 games at Kansas last year. And because almost everyone in the NBA is stronger and faster than the competition he’s played against up until this point.
The problem is that Wiggins really can’t hit the wall. Nikola Pekovic is just getting back, Kevin Martin suffered a setback, and Ricky Rubio tore some muscles in his calf and cannot feel his toes, according to Saunders. On top of that, Shabazz Muhammad has an abdominal strain. “We can’t have everybody,” said Saunders, in jest, after a Jan. 12 practice that Gorgui Dieng missed due to sickness. “I mean, it wouldn’t be good to have everyone at practice, it would be too easy.”
Then factor in that Mo Williams is 32 and is playing more minutes than he expected to at the beginning of the season, Anthony Bennett has lost his way after a strong start and nobody else is providing significant offensive contributions. If Wiggins drops off the face of the earth, the already offensively-limited Wolves may struggle to score 80 on certain nights. “Let’s face the facts: What’s been carrying us in games has been Mo and Wig,” said Saunders after the Wolves 98-75 loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Jan. 23. “In the last two games, those guys haven’t had great games — they’ve been below-average by their standards. When your two best players are at that, you’re probably gonna struggle some, especially when you’re playing a good team, and they’re playing at such a high level.”
Wiggins can’t hit the rookie wall; he’s the main source of Minnesota’s offense right now. He’s got to burst right through it.
Can Wiggins bring down the wall?
It’s cool; I’m young. I love the game. When I step on the floor, all the pain just goes away, and then I just play for the love of the game.
— Wiggins addressing the rookie wall after practice, 1/20/15
The visualization of Wiggins beating the rookie wall has to be something like one of those Mercedes commercials where their high-powered, well-armored cars bursts through a virtual concrete barrier in slow motion to an epic score. The subliminal message of the commercial is, of course, that your weak little Geo Metro would turn into an accordion if it ran into a wall at that speed. Only those with the means to purchase this beast of a vehicle would get to the other side without so much as a scratch.
The expectation for Wiggins, of course, is that he’s the Mercedes, not the Geo.
“And as I’ve told him, everyone’s always gonna evaluate him,” said Saunders before Minnesota’s Jan. 3 contest against the Utah Jazz. “[To] be the No. 1 pick is very difficult because everyone’s looking at the things that you can’t do, not the things that you can do. From his perspective, just his temperament, he’s got a great temperament, he just keeps working every day. And as I tell him, he’s gotta look and understand that when you are evaluated — no matter who it is: coaches, the players, media, whatever — you’ve gotta use that to motivate yourself.”
The problem is that, to hear Saunders say it, he may have already hit the wall. If so, this is a slow crunch; the Geo Metro hitting the wall in slow motion. In short, he’s becoming an accordion one game at a time. After Wiggins’ big night in Denver — the one in which he dropped 31 on the Nuggets, going 11 for 17 from the field (.647 percent), 4 for 5 from three and 5 for 6 from the stripe — he scored only 12 against the Charlotte Hornets in one of Minnesota’s worst losses of the year.
If that is the case, however, he appears to at least be putting a crack into the proverbial wall. He may have found a soft spot against Dallas, when he put up 18 points against a good Mavericks team. And even after that breakout game against Cleveland he had a 10-point game in Oakland against the Golden State Warriors, so an unproductive performance here and there isn’t, by itself, really a sign of slowing down. These things happen, and they may indicate that he simply has a little less horsepower than before due to wear and tear on the motor, but he’s still capable of bringing down the wall.
After all, he’s supposedly a once-in-a-generation player, and once-in-a-generation players are expected to do what the average player cannot.
He is offering consistent production on a nightly basis
Surprised? No. I always have been confident in myself, I just needed to know how to do it at the NBA level. It’s way different than college, high school, stuff like that.
— Wiggins after practice, 1/20/15
If Wiggins is about to hit his rookie wall, he’s going to collide with it at full speed. Wiggins said that he turned a corner during the Wolves Dec. 23 matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers. The young Canadian dropped 27 on the team that drafted him first overall this season and subsequently traded him away, punctuating his performance by throwing down a massive tomahawk jam on Kevin Love, the player he was traded for. “I would say after that Cleveland game it was a turning point for me,” he said at a recent practice. “One of the coaches was like, ‘Any player can do it one night, but a great player does it every night,’ and that really stuck in my head, that really motivated me to just go out every night and try to do what I did that day, every night.”
Asked which coach told Wiggins that, he paused for a second, smiled, and said that he didn’t remember. The Canadian sensation may have just made that up, but regardless of the genesis of the comment, it is correct: Any player can have a great game out of nowhere (ahem, Mo Williams), but the best of the best do it on a consistent basis. And Wiggins has begun to offer consistent production every night.
The dunk over Love was a microcosm of what Wiggins is about — he’s not one to talk much, but his actions speak louder than words — and appeared to put to rest the notion that because he’s not overly cocky, he lacks competitive fire. Wiggins knew who he was dunking over, he knew how many people were watching, and that’s one of the hardest dunks — perhaps the hardest — that he’s thrown down all year. His performances immediately following the dunk are about who he wants to become.
If that was the game that got him going, he established himself as a bona fide superstar in Minnesota’s 113-111 loss to the Phoenix Suns. At that point he had five consecutive games with 20 or more points, tying him with current Wolves assistant coach Sam Mitchell and Christian “The Shot” Laettner as the only such rookies to achieve such a streak. He would break both players’ record in the next game with a 20-point night in Milwaukee.
Despite missing the potential game-winning shot against Phoenix, everyone from the Star Tribune to Deadspin was singing his praises. “It was a disappointing end to an otherwise strong game for Wiggins,” wrote Kent Youngblood of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “whose production is getting more and more consistent and impressive as his first NBA season progresses.”
“Given how hot Wiggins had been shooting during the game, it was actually kind of shocking that he didn't hit that game-winner, thus cementing his first Big Moment as a pro,” wrote Deadspin’s Tom Ley. “Big Moment or not, there's still plenty to get excited about in Wiggins's recent play. Ever since throwing the hammer down on the man he was traded for, Wiggins has scored 21 points per game, shot 51 percent from the floor, and knocked down 42 percent of his three-point shots. It's just eight games, but that is a startlingly efficient run for a teenaged wing player on a dreadful team.”
Safe to say, Wiggins is getting respect throughout the league. And it’s not just the media singing his praises; he’s also garnering respect from opposing coaches.
“Flip and their staff have done a great job of bringing Wiggins along,” said Dallas coach Rick Carlisle before the Mavericks’ recent game in Minneapolis. “They got him doing things that a guy like him needs to do: He’s learned how to post up, he’s shooting the ball very effectively out the three — 39 percent shooting threes first year out of college, that’s impressive, and he’s shooting like 55 [percent] in the last five games. You have to pay attention to him inside and outside.”
Early in the season, Saunders said that he wanted to be able to look at his lineup card and know what he’s going to get from each guy. Wiggins looked like an automatic 20 points following the Cleveland game, but ever since the team has reached the midway point in their season, talk of the old rookie wall has crept into Saunders’ lexicon. The 40-minute games are adding up, as is the travel and the wear and tear of playing against the league’s best on a nightly basis.
He will be helped when the “cavalry” finally arrives
Definitely, it will be a big impact right away. They’re big parts of this team. At the beginning of the year we were banging with the best teams, and with them back, I’m sure our whole situation will be turned around.
— Wiggins on the return of Rubio, Martin and Pekovic
The players and coaching staff are certainly anticipating the arrival of Ricky Rubio and Kevin Martin, and were thrilled to see Nikola Pekovic back in action after yet another injury, but while some fans want to see their favorite players take to the court and succeed this season, others are hoping that Rubio and Martin stay off the court for a little bit and allow the team to “compete” for the No. 1 overall selection in next year’s draft.
While Rubio and Martin will not instantly turn the Wolves into a contending team, they do give them a chance to win more games in the second half of the season. For right now, however, both players appear to be a ways away from returning at full strength.
Rubio has torn muscles in his ankle, creating an injury that Saunders called “worse than a high ankle sprain,” which has caused the Spanish point guard to lose feeling in his toes. Originally slated to return in mid-January at the latest, Rubio could still be a month away from seeing the court. “I’m pushing hard, I’m not gonna lie,” Rubio said back in November when asked about his rehab. “Three days ago they started saying that I can put weight on my leg, so I got rid of my crutches and I was walking around the house; the next day my foot was swollen and painful and I go back to my crutches and start walking.
“It’s just a matter of time, matter of knowing your body and listening to your body because it’s going to react, it’s going to tell you how you feel.”
Martin appeared to be ready to join the team at around the same time Pekovic came back but suffered a setback and now is still waiting on the doctors to see when he can play next. Even Pekovic, who has returned from injury, is going to be eased into action. Saunders said that joining an NBA game after missing more than 30 contests due to injury is akin to a gerbil trying to jump on a moving wheel. “You can’t throw him in when it’s running,” he said, smiling, “he’ll end up tumbling, somersaulting all over the place.”
None of these players are going to be rushed back to action, and reasonably so. The team is not going to make the playoffs this year, and they need Rubio, Martin and Pekovic if they are going to do so in the near future. Since all three went down with injury, the team has lacked ball movement, 3-point shooting and size underneath: the three core attributes of each missing player. There’s no reason for this team to rush back their star players, pick up enough wins to separate themselves from the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks in the race for Jahlil Okafor, and then lose them to injury again — setting the franchise back another year. “We’re not,” says Saunders, “going to gamble with them.”
Still, Saunders and Wolves management is going to want Rubio, Martin and Pekovic all playing meaningful minutes at some point this season. Aside from winning a few games, which reinforces good habits and improves team morale, it will allow Wiggins to play fewer minutes if he truly is starting to wear down. For his part, Wiggins says he will be aggressive, and Martin says that they will play well together: “I feel that we complimented each other great at the beginning of the season,” says Martin. “The better player he becomes, the better complementary guy that we’ll both be for each other.”
Maybe instead of Wiggins bursting through the rookie wall alone, it will be the players around him who create the weak spot and help him break through it brick by brick, all while Saunders channels his inner Pink Floyd: Tear down the wall. Tear down the wall.
It might not be as epic as a Mercedes commercial, but with Wiggins it doesn’t have to be. He’s just gotta get through it.