What Wiseman learned most from Looney’s breakout season originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
LAS VEGAS — When the Warriors hired Dejan Milojević as an assistant coach last August, the most important part to his title was missing. Milojević isn’t officially referred to as James Wiseman‘s Personal Coach. He might as well have been when Golden State signed the long-respected Serbia coach who was a three-time MVP of the Adriatic League.
Milojević’s biggest claim to fame on the sidelines is being Nikola Jokić’s coach in Serbia when the now two-time NBA MVP played for Mega Basket. The Warriors, with their first prized big man prospect in ages, sought Milojević’s services in hopes that he could mold Wiseman, a 7-footer full of potential but still in clay form. As Wiseman’s health progressed behind the scenes throughout the 2022 NBA playoffs, he and Milojević were inseparable on the court.
About an hour before Wiseman’s Las Vegas Summer League debut, there Milojević was, walking into the arena with Steve Kerr.
“He’s showed me a lot of compassion in terms of what I need to work on,” Wiseman said to NBC Sports Bay Area on the latest episode of Dubs Talk in an interview one day before his Las Vegas Summer League debut. “But he’s also given me a lot of constructive criticism, and me being willing to learn and observe — I take it as OK, I need to just do better the next day and just develop my game. I don’t look at as an arrogant perspective in terms of I’m the No. 2 pick and I don’t gotta listen. I don’t do that.
“I really just want to listen and try to be the best that I can be, and he’s given me a lot of information right now and he’s most definitely developing my game.”
What Milojević and the Warriors couldn’t truthfully know upon his arrival is how much of an impact he’d make on the player Wiseman was supposed to replace when he was drafted by the Warriors in 2020. While Wiseman was stuck to wearing street clothes all season long from complications to his surgically-repaired right meniscus, center Kevon Looney enjoyed a breakout season.
Looney played only 20 games thanks to a handful of injuries and health issues the season before the Warriors used their top pick on Wiseman. This past season, Looney played all 82 regular-season, earned MVP chants from Dub Nation to send the Memphis Grizzlies home in the Western Conference semifinals and was given a three-year, $25.5 million contract as a free agent to stay in the Bay.
And as he…