James Wiseman went from coast to coast, and the world of the Warriors changed

The future beckons to James Wiseman. It’s a big open screen, like the court in front of him on Tuesday night, when he changed the game in Detroit. What he did with that opportunity, generating the Warriors’ 116-106 victory, became the preface to a novel that would turn a page to come.

We know that Wiseman sometimes resembles a jumping colt, hopping out of the corral with nothing in particular in mind, looking like all 19 in an NBA full of experienced players. We watch him make silly mistakes, and there may even be times when the Warriors draft day decision is worth examining.

Then came the 6:25 mark of the fourth period against the Pistons, the very dubious game and Wiseman’s biggest step into adulthood. With two quick steps into the scene, he smoothly blocked a 2.1-meter shot from Mason Plumlee. It was taken down by Juan Toscano-Anderson, who showed it to Wiseman, who decided to end the episode alone.

Remember that Wiseman is left-handed. From that point on the key, he used only a single left dribble in a coast-to-coast ball-handling raid that found him throwing a violent dunk with his right hand in traffic to a Golden State 95-89 lead. You thought to yourself, “How many big men do that? All why not? “Not many, and that covers the entire history of the league.

Wiseman is not about to take control of the NBA right now, nor do the Warriors expect it. They see you abandon the basic defensive principles – don’t go for the false bomb, stand upright when challenging certain pitches – and be forced to go to the bench for no reason, as you did with your sixth foul on Tuesday night with 2: 53 remaining. They see moments when he doesn’t seem assertive, not to a player of his prodigious talent. As the ball sometimes escapes their reach, they wonder if the strength of their hand compares to the giants that roam the NBA landscape.

But then everyone realizes what the legendary broadcaster Hubie Brown pointed out during the Warriors’ Christmas Day game in Milwaukee: “He’s 19 years old. No training ground. No display games. Game two, and this young man is playing as if he were in his backyard. “

Surprisingly, for someone known to need some work on his external shot, Wiseman’s accuracy became an issue. He kicks with calm and comfort from a distance of 3 points and, in a particularly revealing sequence on Tuesday night, he found himself pressed between two defenders, each running towards him with his hands raised, and even managed to pass a candy 20 feet through that narrowest of windows.

Even when the bank went crazy after Wiseman’s revolutionary dunk, and Bay Area viewers screamed in amazement, the Warriors still needed to win this game. What followed was equally impressive, in its own way, because it was mostly about Andrew Wiggins.

As much as he would like to be an extremely energetic player like Kelly Oubre Jr. or Marcus Smart, Wiggins just doesn’t have that kind of temperament. As he recently admitted, he constantly remembers “staying aggressive”, as if there is some other way to conduct his business at court. This is an ongoing problem for Wiggins and the Warriors to solve, but following Wiseman’s big splash, Wiggins prepared a pair of big 3 points to end a 27-point night. full aggression.

Other moments also spoke loudly. As if Damion Lee did not properly display his thirst for the big shot in Chicago on Sunday (a 3-point basket that won the game), he had the ball with 1:25 left, the Golden State lead decreased to five points – and he buried another long-range beauty. Oubre, whose first instinct is to attack the basket and poster someone, must learn to find Curry as a matter of habit if his superstar teammate is open. Oubre did just that at the 1: 9 mark, bypassing the unit with a kick-off for Curry, who missed 3 points and (naturally) hit the three free-throw attempts.

As the scene changes to San Francisco, it’s finally hard to say what’s strangest for the Warriors: opening a pandemic season with four games on the road or going home and seeing an empty house. From Friday night against Portland, they will have seven consecutive games at the Chase Center with no sign of home advantage. The emptiness can get totally scary after a while.

The nature of the opposition changes dramatically. How much can you learn when your first two games are against Brooklyn and Milwaukee, possibly destined for a dispute in the Eastern Conference finals, and then you take two of the worst league teams in Chicago and Detroit?

Now everything changes. The homestand’s first five games are against the Western Conference, including two with Portland and two with the Clippers, while the NBA lines up a baseball-like schedule to ease the teams’ travel burden.

One thing we do know for sure: everything that afflicted the Warriors after two games – Michael Rosenberg of Sports Illustrated described it as “a palpable sadness” – went away. James Wiseman was afraid to insist.