Golden State Warriors: One concerning stat from James Wiseman

At this point, I don’t have to tell you that James Wiseman did not live up to the somewhat lofty expectations he had entering his rookie season for the Golden State Warriors. Yeah… he didn’t exactly run away with the Rookie of the Year Award like some people thought he would.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is not too surprising to see that Wiseman struggled as a rookie. He only played three games in college, after all. Plus, the limited offseason and lack of Summer League or a full training camp could not have helped him much. I mean, Wiseman had roughly a month between finding out he was on the Warriors and suiting up in his first NBA game.

James Wiseman’s rookie season with the Golden State Warriors was a dud and this stat tells everything you need to know.

Wiseman has been ruled out for the remainder of the season with a torn meniscus. While an injury such as this might have been a huge cause for concern in the past, modern medicine lends us to believe Wiseman will be just fine by the start of next season. However, he must overcome this one damming statistic.

I’m not going to give you some ridiculous, convoluted advanced stat that shows you how bad Wiseman was as a rookie. No, let’s keep this simple. You really don’t need to look any further than Wiseman’s minutes per game compared to the rest of his class to see how much he was struggling to transition to the NBA.

Wiseman played just 21.4 minutes per game in his rookie season. Not bad, until you consider 18 players from his class were able to rack up more minutes each night than the No. 2 overall pick. What’s more, Wiseman played the fewest rookie minutes of any top-three NBA Draft pick since Markelle Fultz, who played just three fewer minutes at 18.1 per game in 2017.

The sheer fact that Wiseman was not even able to remain on the floor when his role as simple as rebounding the ball and setting screens for his teammates is a tough pill to swallow. In all honesty, it doesn’t get much easier for an NBA player to be tall and work around the rim. Wiseman ranked in the bottom half of the league as a pick-and-roll man and placed in the bottom 10 percent of post-up players this season.

To Wiseman’s credit, he was far from being a bad prospect. He still shot well from the floor and recorded three double-doubles throughout his first season. More encouraging is his efficiency in the paint, converting over 70 percent of his touches around the basket. He also shot a surprising 12-of-38 (31.6 percent) from the 3-point line.

The future is bright for Wiseman if he can polish his game and work on the fundamental aspects of learning motion offense and being at the right place at the right time defensively. The main thing holding him back from playing more consistently was his poor understanding of the game, which deserves a pass considering his circumstances.

Nonetheless, the lack of playing time for Wiseman sums up the anticlimatic rookie stint he just had. He was too raw of a prospect to stay on the floor for extended periods of time and that is certainly a disappointment.