"Forensics: Self Saying Wigs Should Be B12 POY"
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Bill Self threw Gary Bedore an interestingly timed bone today.
Seemingly out of nowhere, to this reader, since Gary Bedore did not provide the circumstance in which the question was asked, Gary asked Bill who Bill thought should be B12 POY.
The story portrays Self as diplomatic and respectful of the competition; saying there was no clear cut favorite and, given that circumstance, Bill thought the best player on the best team ought to be the POY. Self said KU won the B12 decisively and so Bill thought Andrew Wiggins, despite not having numbers that Bill thought would blow anyone away, still was the logical choice.
It doesn’t really matter why Gary asked the question now. What matters is: why did choose to Bill answer the question now?
Let’s see, eh, Joel Embiid, the footer and rim protector par excellence, is presently modeling XXXL suits behind the KU bench during games.
This same Joel Embiid appeared to be a reason why, after early on routing the offense through Andrew Wiggins, Self double clutched and down-shifted the team rig into big man gear; that was sometime ago now.
And from the time that the down-shift was made, Self, while mostly staying upbeat and protective about Andrew Wiggins, and the too great expectations forced on him, has also tended to say that while the staff is happy about Andrew’s productivity, they feel that he could do better.
Self has flashed a little wrath on Wiggins, but all in all quite a bit less than most players, even most star players in the past. Andrew has not been ridden to the point of appearing to want to fight with Self in a huddle, as appeared to occur with Mario Chalmers, another draft choice. Self has never unloaded on Andrew in print as Self did a time or two on the Twins and EJ. And when Andrew appeared to be in a slump, he was never subjected to the kind of XTReme Demotion that Brady received (i.e., at one point being told to play mop up minutes). And so on.
And yet Bill has also not lavished Wigs with praise either. Essentially, Self has chosen to reroute the offense through the bigs, let Wigs do the kind of drives he has been capable of doing, since shortly after exiting the birth canal, and, despite often not finishing, or dishing, get his points on the FT line.
In essence, Self has steered the scorching media spotlight off Andrew Wiggins as much as possible and kind of let him find his own way through D1, since rerouting the offense through the bigs.
Why Bill even routed the offense through Tarik Black against Texas Tech, apparently to help Tarik off on the right foot on the first of apparently two starts, maybe three more in the conference tourney, and maybe as many as six more in the Madness, if Joel Embiid’s back problem proves persistent.
But now that Tar got off to a good start against not very good TTech, suddenly Bill is talking up Andrew Wiggins for POY.
Eh, does anyone else here sense that there might be just a leeeeeeetle more to this than Bill’s probably honest thinking on the matter? Does anyone think that maybe Bill is taking the saddle weights off the race horse and putting on the ultra light saddle and saying, the gates about open, run you sunnuva gun, run??? It crosses my mind.
It is useful at this point to recall who KU is about to play next without Embiid. They were about to play one of the meanest, baddest, man bra wearing hombres in the old northwest territory. KU is about to play Bob Huggins and his Mountaineer team full of stud guards and a four man rotation of green bigs that gave us some muscle sandwiches with Embiid, and should now be even better and stronger.
Hmmm, is it jest a little bit possible that Self thinks, well, my thoroughbred that I have been working out of the lime light for the last month or so, may be needed to get out and run for some stakes, to get him ready for post conference season play?
And is it jest a leeeeeeetle bit possible that Self feels this way, because he knows that WVU is likely to be able to bang enough to disrupt Tarik and turn The Designer into a discount label for this game, since The Designer often does not like these sorts of teams?
(Note: I am predicting The Designer to continue to come out of his slump, even against the Blue Meanies of Bob Huggins’ Mountaineers. I believe The Designer is ready to drop some Haut Couturier spin moves on these lugs. But that is a prediction and Bill Self has to operate in the real world of what if he doesn’t?)
If you are Bill Self and you are confronted with a Huggo Muggo muddy it up game, don’t you want your sky walker ready to go in over the top of them and beat them at the line, where they can’t muscle you?
Slayr put this next thought in my mind.
A few weeks back it seemed like Embiid and Wigs ought to start playing a lot of two man action, but Embiid never showed that much aptitude for the two man action and he got hurt.
But here we have Tarik Black emerging from some kind of sci-fi chrysalis and showing the whole team how to play off a big man. We have the Black Knight, as someone memorably nicknamed him, we have the man mountain now available to set picks that stay made! And able to roll to the basket and finish off a dish.
What if Bill has had Andrew Wiggins, the man with the assist hole in his game, working every day this week on sky walking AND dishing?
What if the Black Star is being used to set up a gravitational field for Andrew Wiggins to slingshot around?
I know I am throwing one heckuva lot of metaphors against the locker door here.
But what if?
We’re coming for ya Huggie.
We’re going to exploit your green wood, Huggie.
West Virginia, mountain momma/ take us home,/ Wigs and Tar/
Sing it Henry John Deutchendorf Jr., where ever you are up there.
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Andrew Wiggins is still just a human. He doesn’t have magic fairy dust that will allow him to go backwards in time and rewrite history. He is just like the rest of us, and if history proves anything it is the fact that he has only one crack at making it.
Very soon, the national spotlight on Andrew Wiggins will intensify to a brightness he has never encountered before. Our entire country, and many parts of the world, will be glued on his every move.
Andrew has already proven to us this season that he doesn’t fold to pressure. His ability to endure heaps of criticism and accolades, moments apart, speaks volumes for his attitude and intelligence.
All that is left for him to accomplish at the college level is a few more games. He could vanish in the wind, like a Kansas storm, or he could explode arenas, like a Kansas twister. What will he do, who will he be?
History exposes life as a one-shot deal. The greats in any endeavor always leave their mark, something for historians to write about.
What mark will he leave behind?
Andrew has verbalized little. But what he did say was he wanted to face the ultimate challenges, and he would do his best to succeed.
The ultimate challenge awaits him now.
This has always been about March Madness for Andrew Wiggins… that is why Self is juicing him now!
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@jaybate 1.0 Hahaha, that’s awesome.
