The NBA rookie of the year race is pretty much a two horse race between the Chicago Bulls Nikola Mirotic and the Minnesota Timberwolves Andrew Wiggins. Also, Philadelphia, as bad as they are, have a couple guys who could become dark horses in the race (as we’ve covered here).
We’ve covered Mirotic in detail, now we’ll talk shop on Andrew Wiggins.
Bruce Bernstein is the Coordinating Producer for ESPN’s NBA shows that are based in Bristol: NBA Coast to Coast and NBA Tonight. He was gracious enough to sit down with me for an interview on one of the NBA’s busiest days, MLK day to talk Andrew Wiggins and a whole lot more.
The podcast is below with the Andrew Wiggins talk beginning around the 6:oo mark.
Bernstein agrees that it’s a two horse race between Wiggins and Mirotic.
“They’re definitely the top two. Wiggins will end up having more numbers but he’s playing on a bad team. So when you’re on a bad team you get lots of garbage time minutes because they’re 5-30 or whatever.”
“I think we’re in kind of a unique position here, those of us working on the NBA, in that we watch every game every night. We watch the Milwaukee Bucks and some of these other teams, where a lot of people who vote, the writers in their local markets, watch only their team and whoever they’re playing on a given night.”
Andrew Wiggins, along with Ricky Rubio and Kevin Martin, are one of the few pieces Minnesota has. They rely on him despite his inconsistency. Even defensively, he has not established himself yet like people thought he would. Offensively, he’s extremely inconsistent. He had the same scoring issues during his one-and-done year with the Kansas Jayhawks.
Andrew Wiggins also has a poor field goal percentage.
Adnan Virk (@AdnanESPN) wears many hats at ESPN: SportsCenter, NBA, college football, college basketball etc. Anchoring Baseball Tonight is one of his primary gigs, and he really knows his MLB. Virk was gracious enough to sit down with me for an exclusive chat about a whole host of topics, including Andrew Wiggins.
The podcast is below:
“I would go with Andrew Wiggins personally, again I’m biased because he’s from my hometown of Toronto,” said Virk.
“He’s started to pick it up lately for Flip Saunders. Sometimes you’ll see this, rookies will put up great numbers for bad teams because there’s nobody else there, but I do think Wiggins has amazingly ability. Avery Johnson was just telling me he could be another Tracy McGrady type player.”
Virk also sees the race as being down to just Andrew Wiggins and Nikola Mirotic.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive Inc.
You can read Banks’ feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)