Fun fact: Andrew Wiggins and Devonte’ Graham are separated in age by less than 24 hours. They have had very different paths to reach their success in the NBA, but these two front runners for NBA Most Improved Player highlight a similarity that has potentially gone overlooked for years.
Devonte’ Graham
Most people don’t know that Devonte’ was largely overlooked in the recruiting process and originally signed a national letter of intent to play for Appalachian State out of high school. When a new coach took over the App State program, he chose to release Graham from his commitment, allowing D-Te’ to become a Jayhawk at the University of Kansas after a year of prep school. His freshman year at KU, he never started a game and averaged less than 6 points. It wasn’t until his senior year that he became the leader of KU’s Final Four team playing 38 minutes per game. He was drafted 34th overall in the 2018 draft, and spent most of that year in the G-League before his stellar 2019 season that has the city of Charlotte buzzing.
Andrew Wiggins
Wiggins on the other hand was the top recruit coming out of high school and every college coach in America knew his name. The Canadian basketball star also played his lone season of college ball at KU before becoming the #1 overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft. He spent his first five seasons in Minnesota (as a result of the Kevin Love trade) as a massive disappointment before breaking out this season and becoming the player we all hoped he would be.
The two players, essentially the same exact age (24), had drastically different paths to the NBA before making their jump to become great NBA players at exactly the same time.
Is this merely a coincidence? Or is there something to be learned here?
The NBA provides us an easy way to study players that have made massive jumps in their basketball development — the Most Improved Player award. You’ll notice something by looking at the ages of the last 5 MIPs.
2019 – Pascal Siakam (24)
2018 – Victor Oladipo (25)
2017 – Giannis Antetounkmpo (23)
2016 – CJ McCollum (24)
2015 – Jimmy Butler (24)
Considering there are players in the NBA ranging from the ages of 18 to 42, its remarkable that all of these players made their jump at relatively the same age — the same age as Wiggins and Graham are right now. While there are always exceptions to any trend, the Wiggins/Graham control experiment gives us a great opportunity to study an NBA phenomenon that we should be paying more attention to.