Andrew Wiggins will not play in either of the Golden State Warriors' two remaining regular-season games, coach Steve Kerr said in an interview on 95.7 The Game on Wednesday.
"We gotta make sure we build him up, get his strength and his conditioning in a good place before we put him out there, so he's not going to play in these last two games of the regular season," Kerr said. "But he'll continue to work and he'll ramp it up pretty quickly."
Wiggins has not played since Feb. 13, and until recently was away from the team due to a family matter. On Tuesday, Wiggins said that his conditioning level is "not terrible," but "obviously the NBA is a different type of conditioning level that you need."
Kerr said that Wiggins scrimmaged with young players and coaches on Wednesday.
"It's full court, 5-on-5, and he looked good," Kerr said ."And one thing with Andrew is he's just got that God-given athleticism and he's one of those guys who just doesn't seem to get tired very easily. A lot like Andre Iguodala. He hasn't played in whatever it is, two months, and he's out there running around and looking pretty good.
"But he still has to really stack together a number of days like this before he's really, I think, ready to go out and play in an NBA game. We can't put him in a bad spot health-wise."
Golden State is 42-38, with road games against the Sacramento Kings and Portland Trail Blazers coming up on Friday and Sunday. The team is sixth in the Western Conference, one game ahead of the seventh-place Los Angeles Lakers and eighth-place New Orleans Pelicans. If they beat both the Kings and the Blazers, they will finish no worse than sixth and make the playoffs outright, which would make for a smoother return-to-play process for Wiggins.
"It would help him and it would help us," Kerr said. "Because if you avoid the play-in, I think you end up with about six days off. And that's a time, thinking back to last year, where we had some really good practices. We were able to install some things that we needed to install; game-planning wise, knowing our opponent; add a few wrinkles here and there and get a couple good scrimmages in. And if Wigs can take part in that, which he would be able to do, then it's a really, really good kind of ramp-up for him, not only physically but mentally, too, getting back into the mix."
Not that Golden State needs an extra motivation in this regard. Two years ago, the Warriors finished eighth in the West and lost two close play-in games, missing the playoffs despite winning 15 of their final 20 regular-season games.
"We know how dangerous the play-in is," Kerr said, "and we'd love to avoid it if we can."
