Wiggins with less natural hops but more natural intelligence.
I watch a lot of TWolves basketball, and Wiggins comes to mind as a comparison because of everything from spin-move fluidity to getting to the free throw line to streaky jumpers to surprisingly polished (not nearly Kobe-esque polished, but more so than people thought coming out of college) post game to slightly-overrated defense (although the Brown looks like a better defender than Wiggins at the same stage) to mediocre decision-making.
The only huge differences I see are Brown's demeanor (he seems more outspoken, less shy, and much more well-spoken), Brown's lack of Wiggins-esque hops (although Brown is still an above-average NBA athlete), and his ability to get rebounds. Brown seems more of a "thick" strong than Wiggins, with his "wiry-strong" build, which I think will make Brown a significantly better rebounder.
If Brown were on a terrible team, I could easily see him averaging 16ppg, a la Wiggins.
Interesting. I was thinking about Wiggins, as well, but then I remembered that he has a pretty good midrange game and step back jumper, right? I don't see him, a lot, so yeah 
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Not really. Here's his shot chart from this past year:
The thing with Wiggins is that his jumper looked a lot smoother than people thought it would coming out of college. All of a sudden, people starting praising this (seemingly) suddenly not-broken jumper that Wiggins had.
Wiggins rookie year, his coach was the late Flip Saunders (RIP), who hated three-pointers and loved the midrange shot. (Sam Mitchell, the TWolves intern head coach this past year, also had an affinity for the midrange, but he slowly got away from it as the year went on.) As a result, a majority of Wiggins looks these past two years have been from midrange. So when it came time for ESPN to rave about Wiggins' revelatory jumper, all the highlights were of midrange jumpers.
One of Wiggins' bad habits is relying too much on his athleticism, which can partially explain the shot chart. He would too often: 1) pull-up when he should have gone all the way to the hoop 2) take a one-dribble pull-up shot when he should have taken a three-pointer before the close out got there. These looks seem good from Wiggins' perspective because he can jump so high, but in reality they were contested and statistically inefficient.
When he's rolling, his midrange jumper does look like butter, kind of like how vintage Kobe would just hang in the air and shoot over two defenders in the lane. When it's off, though, you're left wondering why the smoothest athlete in the room wouldn't take one more dribble and poster somebody, like how vintage Kobe shot ~40% from the field. Wiggins got a lot better this year at not settling and getting to the rim, hence his very-respectable 45% field-goal percentage despite his weak jumper. The next step for him is taking even fewer midrange jumpers, shooting more from beyond the arc, and converting at a 35%+ clip. Hopefully the new regime in Minny is more analytics-based and continues the trend of more threes that the last group started to implement late last year. (People forget that Minny was a top-13 offense despite their terrible 3-point shooting)
EDIT: Also interesting is Wiggins shooting splits from each side of the floor. This trend goes all the way back to his college days and is worth monitoring as the years go by.
Wow, TP for the info. I'm not a fan of analytics, so I like how Minnesota emphasized the midrange game, and as you pointed out, they still had one of the best offenses in the league. Still, players should play to their strengths (I mean, duh, lol
), and since Wiggins is a pretty good post player, slasher, and developing midrange shooter, he should probably just stick to that, for now.
That's not to say that he shouldn't continue to develop his game, but you get what I'm saying, right? I just watched some of his highlights, though, and I have to say that, as of right now, the only thing Wiggins and Brown share is a great spin move, imo, although Wiggins' is obviously more developed, but still. Isn't the knock on Wiggins his inconsistent motor, btw, or have I confused him with someone else?
Topic: Your Jaylen Brown Comparison (Read 22755 times)