James Wiseman is going to get plenty of playing time with the Warriors. The ones in Santa Cruz, that is.
The Warriors’ G League affiliate plays in San Francisco at the Chase Center the day after Thanksgiving, before the Warriors’ game against the Utah Jazz that night, so Wiseman will be with Santa Cruz at least until then. Steve Kerr told reporters that it was the best way to get Wiseman playing time.
“We want to give him maybe 10 straight days, something like that,” Kerr explained. “We all know things happen in this league. He’s going to find his way back to the rotation at some point, but the best thing for him is to play a lot of minutes and get a lot of reps.”
Wiseman had fallen out of the rotation after a brutal start for him and the bench rotation. The team has been outscored by 73 points in the 147 minutes Wiseman has been on the court and is +75 without him. The team is 3-1 since Kerr buried Wiseman on the bench after a 3-7 start. He’s simply not NBA-ready.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, since Wiseman has hardly played basketball in the past few years. He played only three games in college at Memphis due to a draconian NCAA suspension for accepting a $11,500 loan to move, a number that seems laughably small in the NIL era. The COVID pandemic robbed him of a Summer League and rookie camps, while the season started less than five weeks after the draft. Wiseman played 19 games before a wrist injury cost him three weeks, and then he tore his meniscus in April. The multiple surgeries and rehab setbacks kept him out until this fall, and the Warriors won a title without him playing a minute.
The Warriors simply want Wiseman, who has played only 50 pro games, to get some minutes. Jordan Poole, a first-rounder who also spent extended time in the G League, urged him to keep his spirits up.
“James is going to have to be laser-focused,” Poole told reporters. “He’s a special talent. He’s gifted, he’s humble and he has all the right tools to be successful. I’m going to tell him to go down there, take 50 shots, get techs, hang on the rim, do it all.”
The clock is ticking on Wiseman’s improvement and not just because of the Warriors’ championship ambitions. He makes $9.6 million this season and is due to earn $12.1M next year. With the Warriors well into the luxury tax this year and facing an even larger tax bill in 2023-24, removing Wiseman’s salary would save them more than $70M in salary and taxes. Paying tax for Steph Curry and Andrew Wiggins is one thing. That’s a stiff price for a young player who, despite his potential, can’t stay on the court.
Exiling Wiseman to the G League may help turn his career around, as it did for Poole, but it also may be the first step to the Warriors acknowledging that the No. 2 pick from the 2020 draft is a bust.
