How did ‘22 Andrew Wiggins make superstar Luka work so hard?

After seeing Luka Doncic dominate the West bracket, the Warriors need THAT Wiggins to return.

When the Golden State Warriors buried the Dallas Mavericks in the 2022 Western Conference Finals in a tidy five games, one of the most fascinating subplots of that series was how their defense suffocated Dallas’ offense led by Luka Doncic.

And in retrospect it’s easy to forget just how much trouble people expected Doncic to give the Warriors in that series.

Mavs Moneyball (the only Mavericks’ blog I trust) had a pre-series roundtable that featured juicy quotes such as:

The Mavericks win in 6 but a 6 that feels like it should be five. Luka Doncic is going to feast but so is Jalen Brunson. The Mavericks will make life hard for Stephen Curry who is at worst a top 15 player in the history of basketball. Overall I think people will be shocked at how much the Warriors will struggle to score on what has become a fantastic Mavericks defense.

Dallas won the regular season series 3-1 including going 2-0 post-Porzingis trade. Dallas has the best half-court offense in the playoffs and are absolutely going to force their pace onto Golden State. Not to mention, the fact remains, there’s simply no one who’s going to put a lid on Luka Doncic.

Simply no one eh? Enter Andrew Wiggins. Wiggins may be remembered most for dunking so viciously on Doncic that every Mavs’ fans soul left their bodies…

…But it was Playoff Wiggs’ defense on Doncic that really set hte tone for Golden State’s efforts to stymie Dallas’ offense. I defer here to a great Reddit thread that breaks down just how Wiggins hounding defense limited the warriors from having to help out excessively on Doncic:

So, in the Mavs-Warriors series, Wiggins was Luka’s primary defender on 213 possessions (the next closest Warriors defender was Steph with 39 possessions). Luka compiled the following stats in those possessions:

69 pts (nice)

23/48 from the field (48%), including 10/23 from 3 (43%)

13 ast

11 TO

13/14 from the line

But let’s look at how Wiggins did at limiting Luka’s scoring and playmaking volume:

In summary, Luka did score efficiently in these possessions, with 64 TS%. However, it’s a small sample and some of that efficiency results from unusually hot shooting from 3 and from the line. But Wiggins did a great job of limiting Luka’s scoring volume and not fouling while also not requiring much help defense from the rest of the Warriors defenders. And a 27% reduction (45 pts/100 to 32 pts/100) in scoring volume is insane.

I want to key in on how Wiggins and the Warriors suppressed Luka’s assist rate in this matchup. As you can see in this video, the Warriors were pretty comfortable guarding Luka 1v1, especially with Wiggins as the primary defender. This kept the Warriors out of rotation on many plays, limiting Luka’s assist opportunities. Now, obviously you would expect Luka to score efficiently in 1v1 situations, but the Warriors wagered that limiting easy kickout passes to the Mavs many shooters would be a winning strategy overall.

It appears they were right.

From that experience Doncic has evolved and matured into a helluva superstar. Every great player has to take their lumps and get better. Wiggins gave him plenty to think about in that 2022 Western Conference Finals.

Sigh, we can always remember the good ol’ days.