(The original text was published on November 27. The author is Ric Bucher of Fox Sports. The content of the article does not represent the translator’s point of view)

It is easy to understand why the Warriors believe that Wiseman can become the basket protector urgently needed by the team, provide support for the gradually old core stars, and maintain the status of the Warriors as the Championship competitors.

At the same time, it is easy to understand why people outside the Warriors will question this.

Wiseman is 2.13 meters tall and weighs 109 kilograms, but his huge body can move horizontally and vertically flexibly. After graduating from high school, he was the best newcomer in the United States and successfully entered the University of Memphis. When Wiseman was a freshman, the Warriors on the other side just achieved the feat of three championships in five years. Durant switched to basketable nets in the offseason of the same year. Curry and Klein played only five games in the 2019-20 season. In the end, the Warriors swallowed a bleak record of 15 wins and 50 losses in the regular season, and at the same time, they also won the list of selected Wiseman.

“Water Flower brothers” will soon be able to return to the spotlight, and at the same time the Warriors have gained a young and athletic cap hand. In other words, the warrior dynasty will continue.

In the 2021-22 season, the Warriors reached the top again and won the fourth championship ring in nearly eight seasons, but all this had nothing to do with their young center.

On the contrary, Wiseman was extremely struggling in NBA. Last week, he was placed by the Warriors as an affiliated team of the Development League-Santa Cruz Warriors, a place 70 minutes south of the Warriors’s San Francisco headquarters.

Warrior coach Steve Cole said in an interview with Fox Sports: “Wiseman is an amazing child, so firm and sincere. He just has never played a high level basketball game. He needs to have the chance to play every night to get better. In fact, this is unfair to him and us.”

This season is the third NBA season for Wiseman, and his influence on the court is still very limited. After the rookie season suffered a tear of the menisci, Wiseman has played only 50 NBA games so far and missed the entire second grade season. So far in his career, Wiseman has averaged 10.5 points, 5.4 rebounds and 0.8 cap.

A former NBA center said of Wiseman: “His intuition on the court is very bad. His ability to control fouls while protecting RIM does not reach the NBA level. When there should be confrontation, but in the vertical jump, I can’t figure it out. His athletic talent shows that he will get better and better in the future, but at present he needs a lot of learning and practice.”

All these are the reasons why the Warriors gave Wiseman a lot of playing time at the beginning of the season. The first five games were played for 17 minutes. Wiseman proved that he could become an efficient scorer, but the defect on the defensive side led to the first five games. Wiseman had four positive and negative values, both of which were two-digit negative. After the Warriors suffered a wave of five consecutive defeats, Coach Cole had to shorten the rotation time of Wiseman. Even three consecutive games were not activated, and the training plan was stranded.

Wiseman was not the only reason why the warrior lost, but without him, the warrior played a wave of winning streak, and at the same time, the defensive side also improved, naturally, there is no courage to restart the Wiseman training program.

The final result was that Wiseman was delegated to the development alliance for exercise last week. Cole said there was no schedule for Wiseman to return to the NBA, but he would stay for at least 10 days in the development league team.

Warriors don’t need to emphasize how important Wiseman’s development is to them verbally. Look at Wiseman’s first game in the Development League last weekend (Santa Cruz Warriors vs. South Bay Lakers), it is clear who appears on the sidelines to watch the battle. The coach team and players of the Warriors went to Houston to prepare for the next two away games, but basically the decision-making team of the entire management drove to the south, including the boss Joe-Lake bu, son of Boss and vice president of basketball operations for the team Kirk-Lake bu, assistant general manager Mike Deng Liwei, player development coach Hilton-Armstrong and Livingston, director of player affairs.

Judging from Wiseman’s performance that night and his performance against Salt Lake City Stars in Utah two days later, 10 days is far from enough.

The defenders of the South Bay Lakers shot on Wiseman without scruple, passing the big guys to the team, and finally defeated Santa Cruz Warriors 111-91. Wiseman’s foul problem was also not solved in the Development Alliance. The fourth quarter was just two minutes after he was blown for the fifth time.

The head coach of the Santa Cruz Warriors, Seth Cooper, praised Wiseman and said he had tried his best to play effective defense. Cooper said: “Many players come to the Development League and want to keep controlling the ball and cut 30 points, but Wiseman’s defensive attitude is really incredible.”

Although warrior defender Jordan Poole encouraged Wiseman to enjoy unlimited fire power when he went to the development alliance, Wiseman said that all his attention was on improving the ability of protecting baskets. He said: “I want to make sure that I can cover the opponent’s attack basket and limit them. It’s a bit like playing cat and mouse games with defenders and polishing the vertical technology, which requires constant training and repetition.”

In the past four years, Wiseman did not have a lot of experience in the game. Whether it was NBA or the development league, this was not entirely beyond his control. When he was a freshman at the University of Memphis, he was punished by NCAA for 12 games, because Wiseman accepted the former NBA defender Penny Hardaway (now the head coach of the University of Memphis, at that time, it was only the status of alumni and teaching assistants), which moved the whole family from Nashville to Memphis. Wiseman played only three games before being banned. In order to protest his withdrawal from the college team, he never played in the rest of the year.

Fortunately, in the end, the Warriors chose Wiseman with their eyes. Obviously, he was the most potential player in that rookie. The Warriors were eager to increase their athletic ability and physical advantage, to complement the team’s outstanding outside talent-Curry, clay, Wikins and Poole.

Wiseman’s absence from the game continued to extend due to the new Championship epidemic, because the subsequent NBA summer league was canceled, and the 2020-21 season was delayed until Christmas. Wiseman only played 39 games before the rookie season suffered a tear in the right knee, and the remaining 19 games did not appear again. After receiving the repair surgery, the entire 2021-22 season was fully reimbursed.

Is this kind of experience incredible? Wiseman is not only learning how to be an NBA-level center, but also learning how to play high-level games. So Anthony Lamb, a drop-off talent show from University of Vermont, rushed to Wiseman with a two-way contract, even before the other two young le touxiu cuminga and Moody’s, successfully entered the warrior rotation lineup.

When Kevin Looney, the starting center of the Warriors, was asked what they had in common when young players like lamb found a suitable role around the core of the team’s championship, Looney said: “These guys are usually very high players and have a good feeling about the game. Such players are very suitable for the Warrior system. To a large extent, we rely on the space on the field, the transfer of the ball, the empty cut and the precise landing, as well as the cooperation with Curry and clay. When you are the fourth or fifth person on the court and these all-stars in the partner team, you must know where you should go and play the right tactics at the right time, know when to show aggression and when not to shoot. This requires some special skills to do it and to view the competition correctly. The Warriors management has done a good job in finding such talents.”

Maybe this is the reason why Wiseman will not feel depressed about going to the development league. He has enough confidence, believes that he can develop such a stadium consciousness, and he also has enough wisdom, understand that there is such a deficiency. After years of rehabilitation training and one-on-one special training, the opportunity to play is not justified, no matter which team is like this. Wiseman said: “I have experienced a lot of dark periods, so I don’t think this is demotion at all.”

In almost any team except warriors, Wiseman can grow with less scrutiny and more patience. Few teams, like warriors, have such high expectations for Wiseman. They need a defender with cap hands and bottom line too much. It is not that the Warriors have given up Wiseman to the development league. On the contrary, the Warriors hope that he can get full experience and grow into the kind of player that the team needs in the playoffs as soon as possible. At the same time, warriors are also trying to improve their ranking, and they are currently the 10th in the West.

A former NBA player said: “The pressure Wiseman faces in the championship team is incredible, and even from some angles, it is very unfair compared with other young players. Yogueta in Spurs, he will have the opportunity to stay on the court and learn and grow from constant mistakes.”

A source inside the Warriors said that if these veterans of the Warriors did not struggle on the defensive end, Wiseman and the Warriors would have more room to make mistakes. Clay and Poole are currently the most efficient players on the defensive side of the team, and Dream Green’s defensive performance is also the worst in his career.

This is the ultimate reason why Wiseman will go to the development alliance. Cooper, the coach of Santa Cruz Warriors, made it clear that the development alliance is like an incubator, which is the most important significance of its existence and trains the talents needed for NBA. In the case of Wiseman, we need to train 3 pairs 2 and 2 pairs 1, improve the ability of grinding skills, and judge the timing of interfering with the opponent’s shooting. No matter how high the standard is set, Wiseman can try his best to reach it, and Cooper is full of confidence in it. He said: “We still believe Wiseman can reach that level this year.”

Based on the current performance in the game, some former NBA players have different views on Wiseman’s ability to interfere with shooting. A former NBA player, who is now a talent evaluator of players, said like this: “interfering with shooting is more like an inherent ability, which is a natural thing. In my opinion, what Wiseman lacks is the reaction speed under such circumstances, which is not what you can teach him.”

Another former NBA player did not refute this view, but he believed Wiseman could make enough progress in developing the league, even if he could not become an elite in interfering with shooting, you can also play efficiently. He said: “In general, NBA is an extremely difficult place to develop new skills. Wiseman has to play a lot of games, observe the fast-paced games more carefully, figure out what he can do, and help the team win the game. Warriors need a stable player, and Wiseman can only meet the team’s requirements occasionally. But I think if Wiseman has enough experience, the turning point will come.”

Perhaps this does not conform to the timeline of warrior development. The second former NBA player asked, “Does Wiseman spend 10,000 hours playing in his life? Interference shooting, a cat-and-mouse game, takes off consciousness and grasps timing completely from a lot of competition experience. For 99.9 percent of people, NBA is not a place to learn how to develop God-given talents.”

However, Warriors hope Wiseman is the 0.1 percent.

Original text: Ric Bucher

Compile: Li Taibai

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