Warriors owner Joe Lacob wants to be clear: Drafting James Wiseman wasn't just his decision
The Golden State Warriors are nearing the three-year mark of their James Wiseman project, and it's not going well. The 2020 second-overall pick is yet to earn a regular place in the rotation, let alone the starting lineup, and was relegated to the G League for a period earlier this season.
Hindsight is 20-20. We all know the players the Warriors could've taken in place of Wiseman, starting with LaMelo Ball, who went one pick later to the Hornets. Onyeka Okongwu would be a massive help to Golden State right now. Devin Vassell would be good for any team. Tyrese Haliburton is a franchise player. Tyrese Maxey. Desmond Bane. All of these guys and more are good to potentially great players in the league already.
It's not fair to talk about the players that went later in the draft. There are always surprises. Nobody drafting at No. 2 in 2020 would have been looking at a Vassell or a Maxey or a Bane. But Ball. Haliburton. Okongwu. These were guys in legit conversations among all teams at the top. This is to say nothing of the trade value that No. 2 pick had to Golden State.
But the Warriors loved Wiseman. Notably, owner Joe Lacob, who is central in footing the bill (which could balloon well north of $400 million next season), loved him. A few months after the Warriors made it official with Wiseman, in November of 2020, Lacob had this to say to The Athletic's Tim Kawakami:
"To be honest with you, he was my No. 1 forever, basically. I just think he's a once-in-a-decade kind of guy. I would argue that, other than [Joel] Embiid, I don't know that there's another center prospect that's come along in the last decade that you would put in the same category. Different players, maybe. But this guy is immensely talented. …
"When you see him in person, it's pretty compelling. And when we watched him do his workout, it's pretty compelling. … Some of the things he does on the court for a guy his size, he's very mobile, really good ball-handling for someone his size. Anyone who says he can't shoot is crazy. He can shoot. He's going to get better; he can shoot. And he's obviously going to be a very good defender. He's going to be a rim protector and shot blocker, so there's a heckuva lot of things to like. And I just think he's a great fit as well with what we needed and with our team."
This was merely one of the first glowing remarks about Wiseman's potential over the first few years of his Warriors tenure, not just from Lacob, but from anyone and everyone in the organization with a voice, from players to coaches to Bob Myers and front office folks. They painted this guy's talent and potential with almost otherworldly colors. Looking at him through such optimistic lenses, Wiseman did provide a few early flashes that lent at least some credibility to Golden State's hyperbolic enthusiasm.
But those days are pretty much gone. And now that the Wiseman experiment is on the brink of going bust, at least with the Warriors, Lacob -- for anyone out there trying to saddle him with the responsibility for falling in love with Wiseman and, shall we say, putting his heavy-handed stamp on the pick -- wants to be very clear: Drafting Wiseman was not his decision alone.
"... I want to correct something for you and our fans: Our entire front office and head coach wanted to draft James Wiseman. We were universal in that regard," Lacob said during a recent appearance on the aforementioned Tim Kawakami's podcast. "I know people like to make up stuff. We all loved him, and I think we are all still very high on him. The question will be what do we have to do with roster. How important is winning today vs. two years from now? We have to balance all that, and we have to balance financial. So I think there's a lot of ways this thing could go. But as of right now, I'm still very, very positive about the young man."
None of this is surprising. I don't think anyone who is at all serious has ever suggested that Bob Myers or Steve Kerr or others in the Warriors organization weren't as high on Wiseman and Lacob (or his son, Kirk, for that matter) simply put his foot down. I think people have considered the idea that Lacob, as the final-say guy when it gets down to it, was surely emphatic in his Wiseman enthusiasm, while carrying significant weight.
Either way, what's done is done. All the Warriors can do now is evaluate Wiseman for the player he is today, the one they believe he can be in the future, and whether they are willing to wait any longer for the latter to come to fruition. If they can't wait any longer, he becomes a trade candidate, as tough as it would be for an organization to cut bait on a player in whom they invested so much from an opportunity-cost standpoint, especially one that doesn't even have much trade value at the moment.
Lacob spoke to that scenario as well when Kawakami asked if there is a timetable on Wiseman in terms of his showing the Warriors he can still be the player they envisioned in 2020 or at least one who can meaningfully contribute to a team trying to win a title.
"There's always a timetable in Sports, whether we like it or not," Lacob said. "But [Wiseman is] 21 years old. You have to put this in perspective. He's an immense talent, he's an incredibly hard worker, he really cares, these things matter, and he had a lot of really bad breaks as we all know, both at Memphis (University) and then coming to us, getting a late start and then COVID, I mean could go through it, you all know what it is, and I do think he's very, very talented.
"He's also in an organization and on a team which is trying to win a championship," Lacob continued. "It's different than if you're playing somewhere where they're just throwing everybody out there and young guys are putting up numbers and getting a lot of experience. It's hard for our young guys to do that here. And our coach likes to play veterans, and I don't blame him. He's trying to win. That's his job. So there's a lot of nuance to this. I think obviously there's a timetable. [Wiseman] has to play well, start playing better, but I'm going to argue to you that he actually played pretty well his first year. He missed his second year. His third year here, you know, circumstances didn't start all that great. [He] had a little injury now which he could've been getting some minutes with JaMychal Green out ..."
So listen, this is a lot of words that don't really say anything. It's a lot of Lacob tripling down on how talented Wiseman is and the usual line of it being different for young guys on winning teams because they can't play through their mistakes. There's truth to all this. It's also a pretty clear effort to veil the reality that the Warriors are nearing the mark of admitting Wiseman isn't going to work out the way they hoped and now they're trying to preserve some trade value by not looking desperate to dump him.
This is standard speak. And Lacob isn't lying here. Again, to a man, the Warriors raved about Wiseman's talent from day one. To think Lacob went into the war room and demanded Bob Myers draft Wiseman when everyone else wanted Ball, or someone else, would be a work of fiction. The truth is that Lacob wanted Wiseman badly. So did everyone else. The Warriors perhaps made the mistake of thinking too much in terms of roster need than the best overall player, but that was still a consensus strategy.
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Now the question becomes: Is the decision of what to do with Wiseman now still "universal" among those with a say? The situation has changed. The Warriors are trying to win a title and Wiseman almost certainly isn't going to help them do that. Are Lacob and his son holding too proudly to the Wiseman pick that they're going to die on the hill? It doesn't sound like it to me. To me, it sounds like an owner who can see the way this is going and is simply still efforting to say the right things.
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