You're one game in to the new Golden State Warriors season, and you're not thinking about Stephen Curry as much as you thought. You might be thinking about James Wiseman a bit, or maybe Kelly Oubre's hair on one of his throwdown dunks, or maybe you just have a thing for Juan Toscano-Anderson that makes your friends cringe.
But mostly you're thinking about Andrew Wiggins because of the Second Rule Of Garoppolo, which states that He Or She Who Frustrates You Most Shall Occupy The Greatest Percentage Of Your Thoughts.
The difference here, of course, is that the 49ers quarterback mostly frustrates when he isn't playing while Wiggins frustrates when he does, and Wiggins is bound to do both –– frustrate and be around.
We are not making any snap judgments about his Warrior tenure based on one game –– by the standards of Short Attention Span America, that doesn't happen until mid-January. But for the Warriors to be the deep-run contender they want people to think they are, their margin for error is prosciutto-slim –– rather like Wiggins' Game 1 performance in Brooklyn. The box score was enough of a mess, the live-action replay was worse.
But it isn't that he's a bad player as much as he is wildly inconsistent player whose flaws glow brighter than his virtues, and in general his career has been a very faint orange-fringed shade of gray. In Minnesota, he has been given the half-excuse of being on a threadbare team, but that was supposed to change in the Bay Area. Last year, though, was a snowplow accident of a season, so he got the same semi-pass even though nationally his reputation has already edged into the red zone of High Draft Pick Bust.
Tuesday night, though, was yet another chance for him to make a good ninth impression, and on a night in which no Warriors managed to do so, not even Steve Kerr in his modified janitor's oufit, Wiggins' miserable night stood out because so many Warriors' hopes/dreams/unreasonable fantasies rest on him being excellent. Last year was a gap year; this one isn't –– at least not yet.
Just as the 49ers' ills this year seem to gravitate around Jimmy The Brow because people have no comprehension of the theory "Lose All Your Starters, Lose All Your Games," the Warriors' up-and-down nature is going to be pinned on Wiggins because, well, because that's how the audience works. The teeth that don't hurt don't get your attention, but the one that does is the one you hate.
In that way, this is The Year of Wiggins. He will be the player who will be castigated when poor, forgiven when good, and in either case will continue to be the subject of every rogue trade rumor the NBA's chattering classes can attach to the Warriors. "What to do with Andrew" is Topic A and will remain so throughout this opaque shroud of a season. The Second Rule Of Garoppolo will prevail.
And the First Law of Garoppolo, you ask? Don't focus on the eyebrows. They mesmerize.