While LaMelo Ball suited up for the NBA All-Star Game and Rising Stars showcase this past weekend, the Warriors are still awaiting the season debut of second-year center James Wiseman. Not even 15 months have passed since Golden State selected Wiseman with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, one slot ahead of Ball, who has flourished as a flashy playmaker for the Charlotte Hornets. Still, there’s been plenty of talk about Wiseman’s future and his rocky career so far, one that’s been derailed the past 10-plus months with a meniscus tear in his right knee.
The Athletic’s Anthony Slater joined 95.7 The Game’s “Damon & Ratto” Tuesday to give his thoughts on Wiseman at this juncture of his young career. Slater piggy-backed off a previous conversation (50-minute mark here) between hosts Ray Ratto and Whitey Gleason (filling in for Damon Bruce) about Wiseman and the Warriors. You can hear Slater’s full interview here:
“There’s some historical parallels if you want to get into it,” Slater said. “Like the Kings taking [Marvin] Bagley over [Luka] Doncic. That is disastrous for many people in Sacramento and got [former general manager] Vlade Divac fired and will have ramifications for the next decade. A lot of that is, everything else around the Kings is also going bad. So there’s a huge microscope on that. Choosing Wiseman over LaMelo Ball five years from now could look disastrous.”
Back in 2018, the Kings made Bagley the No. 2 overall pick after the Phoenix Suns drafted Deandre Ayton. The Atlanta Hawks then used the No. 3 pick on Doncic before shipping him to the Dallas Mavericks in a deal that included Trae Young, the No. 5 overall selection. The Kings recently cut ties with Bagley at the trading deadline by sending him to the Detroit Pistons, while Doncic won 2019 Rookie of the Year and just played in his third straight All-Star Game.
Wiseman played in 39 games (27 starts) for the Warriors last season, posting averages of 11.5 points, 5.8 rebounds, 0.9 blocks with a 53.5 effective field goal percentage. In 104 games (84 starts) for the Hornets so far, the 20-year-old Ball is averaging 17.9 points, 6.9 assists and 6.5 rebounds per game with a 50.4 eFG% while becoming the face of the franchise and one of the league’s most popular and marketable young players.
Whether he could put up the same numbers while sharing the perimeter with Steph Curry, Andrew Wiggins, Jordan Poole and now Klay Thompson, is up for debate. But there’s no doubting Ball’s elite talent.
Wiseman, also 20, is laying in the cut, rehabbing with hopes of returning this season. The Warriors still have to see how his knee will respond to regular scrimmages, as he was cleared for 5-on-5 contact last week. Golden State’s 42-17 start means it is in no rush to bring Wiseman back. The Hornets, for reference, are 29-31 as the No. 9 team in the Eastern Conference.
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Looking at the bigger picture, Slater wondered out loud about the Warriors’ decision to not move Wiseman – or even promising rookie Jonathan Kuminga – during the trade deadline.
“The Warriors do at least seem, more than most NBA franchises, to have stability, sustainability,” Slater said. “They’ve shown a very patient approach to trying to care for the future, while you could argue not maximizing the present, not necessarily maximizing the last prime years of Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, this core. Not going out and trading a Kuminga, trading a Wiseman for what would upgrade them this season. It could come back to cost them. We could be sitting here six years from now saying, the future plan didn't work and you may have sacrificed a championship or two in this present right now. I don’t know. Or we could be saying, ‘Oh wow, the Joe Lacob, Bob Myers plan was genius,’ and they won an extra title or two now and they have a Spurs-like run of relevancy.”
Speaking of No. 2 picks, Slater said Wiseman’s situation could ultimately remind fans of Detroit’s decision to pick Darko Milcic with the No. 2 overall pick in the famed 2003 NBA Draft.
“I’ll use the Pistons as an example,” Slater said. “They draft Milicic over Carmelo [Anthony], over Dwyane Wade over Chris Bosh. They still win the title that year, but I would say over the next 10 years, if you look back on it, had they gotten one of those franchise pillars, the next decade would have been better. We’ll see what happens with the LaMelo-Wiseman debate over the next decade. But it is not a Kings situation, we know that for sure. We still need to see James Wiseman. We’ll see. It’s wait and see how disastrous that is. But LaMelo Ball already did make an All-Star team.”
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