Warriors' Wiseman question has too many factors for clear answer

As the NBA trade deadline approaches, the Warriors don't have the complete picture of what their team is or can be.

Draymond Green, Steph Curry, and Klay Thompson haven't played one minute together this season, Andre Iguodala has only played in 25 games. Then, there's the big 7-foot question mark hanging over president of basketball operations Bob Myers and head coach Steve Kerr.

When will James Wiseman return? Will he? Why is it taking so long? What will his role be when he does get back on the court? How does that impact the trade deadline preparations?

The answer to the final question is, it doesn't. Myers told reporters Thursday that he doesn't feel an urgency to make a deadline deal because, as of now, he expects Wiseman and Green to return this season. The expectation is that both will do so with enough time to get re-acclimated before the playoffs.

Green gave a positive update on his rehab Thursday, and it seems like everything is on track for the now four-time All-Star to rejoin Curry and Thompson in the near-ish future.

As for Wiseman, nothing about the 20-year-old center's situation is clear or easy to decipher. Since there is no clear road map back from a meniscus repair, the Warriors can only proceed at the speed Wiseman's body allows. Up until this point, there have been more stops and starts than rush hour on the 580.

The Warriors expect Wiseman to be back sometime this season. They expected him to be back already, but the 7-footer had to have a clean-up surgery in December. At this point, there's just no way of knowing when Wiseman will come back, how he'll look, or what his impact will have on a team with a championship-or-bust mindset.

“Well, everybody probably has a different definition of what that means – reasonable expectation," Myers said about Wiseman on Thursday. "For us, it’s just about getting back to practicing first and playing. Then it becomes more about who is healthy, who is not healthy, how much time we have to integrate him. It’s a big difference if he comes back with 25 games left as opposed to 10. How does he look when he comes back? Is the role different?

"This season has been good as far as record-wise, but there still has been a lot of changes. We still haven’t seen our healthy team together for one minute with Draymond and Klay, and Steph together. We haven’t seen that at all for one second. We have to see what that looks like. We’d like to see what James looks like. We can hypothesize about what it should look like or shouldn’t. I don’t know. We just want him healthy, practicing, and then we will get a better sense of what we can expect from him."

Wiseman has progressed to the same point in his rehab multiple times, and each time his body wasn't ready to take the next step toward getting back on the court. Myers is hopeful that the next time Wiseman reaches that point, his body will give the green light. But once again, there's just no way of knowing.

“I think the thing that is tricky is that he has kind of walked up to the doorstep of contact, and each time the knee has reacted a little bit and told his body and our staff, you’re not quite ready yet," Myers said. "With a meniscal repair, you are at the mercy of how your body is going to react to it, and nobody in their right mind would push through something like that in a young kid right now. We certainly wouldn’t do that to him or his early career.

"But everybody has a different timeline. I can’t say why somebody comes back quicker or not. That’s just his body. But that’s the reason why you’re seeing us get up to that precipice and then not get past it. We’re confident that he will time, but we were confident the other times. It’s just hard to get a read on it."

There's no clear answer to why Wiseman's body isn't ready to progress to the next step. All the Warriors can do is be patient.

“The thing that it is is just more of a load amount or maybe it is the minor swelling that says not yet," Myers said. "Similar to if you tried to run on a sprained ankle and your body says you’re not ready to run yet. You can walk and you say maybe ill try and run next week or maybe I can jog but I can’t sprint. Just basic stuff.

"It’s not more complicated than that. The answer I get is that he is progressing. I ask when and the answer I get is, 'ask me in five days. If he keeps progressing, then this will be the next step.' And the next step is, whether it’s one-on-one, two-on-two, scrimmaging, you can’t rush it."

The Warriors have a 40-13 record and have achieved that without their full team playing one single game. Kevon Looney has been an iron man at center for them. Green is terrific as a small-ball five, but the Warriors have no other true center behind Looney. Wiseman would give the Warriors a lob threat they don't currently have outside of Gary Payton II and the high-flying Jonathan Kuminga.

Can the Warriors win a title without Wiseman? Of course. But the Warriors need more depth in the frontcourt, and Wiseman, when right, has a skillset that neither Green nor Looney possess. 

RELATED: Klay responds to Myers' prediction with best game since return

Of course, there is another wrinkle to the Wiseman conundrum. He is a big part of the Warriors' plan for the future. An expected building block of the post-Curry era along with Kuminga, Moses Moody, and Jordan Poole. The importance of his NBA future could outweigh the needs of the 2021-22 Warriors.

However, the Warriors are not currently thinking about shutting Wiseman down for the season to make sure he is full-go for the 2022-23 campaign. Wiseman is one of many current Warriors who have little to no playoff experience, so seeing how they all work together is crucial as Kerr maps out a postseason rotation.

At the moment, the way Myers sees it is Wiseman should still be back with enough time to show where he fits with this current puzzle.

“If it was a risk to play him, then we wouldn’t play him," Myers said. "The alternative to that is well two weeks from now, they clear him. Well, we’re not just going to sit him if he is cleared and ready to play and can get those last two months to this season and find time. You’ve seen how Steve has done it this year, whether it was the last game in San Antonio or a game where we are in a back-to-back, and we have a lot of vets -- some of them aren’t doing back-to-backs, Klay’s not doing back-to-backs, we’ve got minutes restrictions on guys. There might be a game where you throw him out there with Moody and Kuminga and Poole and say, ‘what do you got?’ I don’t think Steve is reluctant to do that.

"If we can find three or four of those games, that’s valuable for him. Now, not at the risk of injury. But if we can find those minutes, because he just needs those kind of things, those kind of experiences. Ideally, you want to play him with the guys to get a sense of what he could add in the playoffs. But we’re still figuring out – we don’t know what Moody can do in the playoffs or Kuminga, even Poole hasn’t – Wiggins. We haven’t played with many of these guys in the playoffs. So, I would just throw him into that group. We need to see him in the regular season to get a better sense.”

The Feb. 10 trade deadline is less than a week away. The Warriors could use frontcourt help, but Myers still seems confident Wiseman will be back this season. That doesn't mean he won't make a deal, but it's a factor in how hard he pursues one.

Almost 10 months removed from his initial surgery, Wiseman remains sidelined. The Warriors still plan for him to play a role this season. But at this point, there's no clear way for the Warriors to decipher one of the most important questions facing them this season. 

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