Andrew Wiggins is set to make his NBA All-Star Game debut in February after being voted the starting forward in the Western Conference.
The 26-year-old small forward became an important piece of the Golden State Warriors since joining a team in 2020 via a trade from the Minnesota Timberwolves.
According to a former NBA champion Richard Jefferson, having a player like Wiggins is a huge benefit for the Dubs as he is a type of player between Kevin Durant and Harrison, both of whom played for the team in the past.
“I think for me when I look at this Warriors team, when you go back and look at the 2016 team, they had Harrison Barnes as that kind of third scorer Harrison struggled in one of the postseasons, then they replaced him with Kevin Durant,” Jefferson said on ESPN’s NBA Today.
“That’s an absolute different problem that was never going to be addressed. And so then when you have Andrew Wiggins, now Wiggins is kind of like an in-between Harrison and KD. With all due respect to my guy HB, he’s a little bit more aggressive offensively and more athletic but he’s not quite Kevin Durant.
“So if Wiggins plays like that, everything else is going to be fine. If you’ve got a third tier scorer that is a started in the All-Star Game, they still don’t have Draymond, they were still able to win the game only shooting 39 percent, that was my biggest takeaway is that if Steph can struggle and all that can happen and they can still win that game, the Warriors are going to be a problem fully loaded.”
This season Wiggins is averaging 18.2 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 2.1 assists in 31.7 minutes per game for Golden State.
