James Wiseman’s return to the Warriors lasted one game.
Wiseman, 21, suited up for Golden State’s 124-123 loss in Utah on Wednesday, but is now getting re-assigned to the G League. He, along with rookies Ryan Rollins and Patrick Baldwin Jr., are returning to Santa Cruz.
Wiseman played five minutes against the Jazz. In that second-quarter stretch, he recorded three points and two rebounds. The Warriors got outscored by three points with him on the floor.
Even when the Warriors’ offense got too 3-pointer happy in the second half, head coach Steve Kerr opted to keep Wiseman on the bench.
Wiseman, the No. 2 overall pick in 2020, has a -6.4 plus-minus on the season — 463rd out of the 482 players who have stepped on the court this year.
In 12 games with the Warriors, Wiseman is averaging 6.5 points and 3.7 rebounds per game.
Wiseman’s demotion comes after he spent three straight weeks with the Santa Cruz Warriors, starting seven G League games. Since Wiseman missed all of last year with a knee injury and only played a handful of college games at Memphis, he needs as many live reps as he can get. Given that reality, sending him to the G League when he’s out of the Warriors’ rotation is far from surprising.
“We’re just kind of taking it a day at a time depending on who’s healthy, how everything looks,” Steve Kerr said before Wednesday’s game. “The one thing I know for sure is we need him to play. So if everyone’s healthy and we feel like we’re not going to play him much in a game, we’d rather have him in Santa Cruz playing 35 minutes.”