It should be the summer of Andrew Wiggins’s 19-year-old life.
He was the NBA’s No.1 overall pick, a title that rings out loud, pure and clear in the warm months before it ever gets sullied by anything like actual performance.
A few weeks ago he signed a two-year contract that guarantees him $11.25-million. He’s got a multi-million dollar shoe deal with Adidas and on Monday he was the star of a photo shoot for BioSteel, a Toronto-based sports drink, that took place on the playground courts of his old public school.
It’s the stuff dreams are made of.
Tragic then, that Wiggins finds himself questioned as a competitor, rejected as a possible teammate by LeBron James, the best player on the planet, and in all likelihood shuffled off to Minnesota, the one NBA market that has a more fraught relationship with franchise players than his hometown Toronto Raptors do.
Um, check that.
Either Wiggins is a more accomplished actor than he is a basketball player, or he really doesn’t care about all the drama that’s been swirling around him non-stop since LeBron James announced he was returning to Cleveland and Wiggins was conspicuously absent from the list of Cavaliers teammates he was hoping to play with in an open letter he published in Sports Illustrated.
Talk that Wiggins (along with fellow Canadian No.1 overall pick, Anthony Bennett) were going to be traded for Minnesota Timberwolves star Kevin Love started almost immediately thereafter and it’s all but acknowledged that the deal will be completed on August 23, the first day allowed under NBA rules.
And yet in his first appearance in Toronto since draft night, Wiggins couldn’t have come across as less rattled.
How was your summer Andrew?
“It’s been cool,” he said while standing in the shade of Glen Shields Public School in Vaughan, where he attended Grade 2 through Grade 8. “I’ve been trying to spend as much time with my family as I could. Just really enjoying the time, enjoying what summer has to offer.”
But the drama Andrew, the trade rumours, surely they’ve been dragging you down? Have you been listening to them?
“I’ll listen to music, I listen to my family, that’s about it,” he said. “I don’t worry about anything out of my control. I just know I’ll be playing basketball in September.”
We kept trying.
Someone from the PR agency handling the appearance piped up with “sports drink questions please” – and he was largely ignored.
What about playing in Toronto one day? What about being ‘the man’ in Minnesota compared with a role player alongside LeBron in Cleveland?
Your college coach Bill Self said you actually wanted be traded to Minnesota, for the challenge, is that true?
It went on like this for not very long, but it seemed longer. Wiggins expertly got in some product promotion – “if you drink the pink, you’ll know” – and was just as adept at sidestepping any questions about his immediate or long-term future, before finally invoking a high power to quiet the mob.
“Whatever God wants,” he said, laughing. “God has a plan for me.”
And presumably he does.
It will be interesting to follow. Wiggins has all the athletic gifts in the world but has managed to become something even more irresistible to basketball fans: a bundle of potential shrouded in just a whiff of mystery.
How good he can he be is what all the fuss is about. How good he will be is the mystery and what makes James’ decision – and no one is pretending he agreed to come back to Cleveland without having a team constructed to his specifications — to pass on Wiggins that much more intriguing.
Does it give him a chip on his shoulder, to be doubted like that?
“I think every competitor should play with a chip on their shoulder. Everyone has something to prove,” he said. “I’m a competitor, so yeah.”
In the long run it should all work in Wiggins’ favour. Snubs are like rocket fuel to stars and Wiggins has been gifted buckets of them before he’s even officially joined a team. Most athletes as talented as him have to manufacture hurdles, Wiggins has had one laid out for him.
“That’s an adversity that he has to overcome, and I had to overcome on my own,” said Steve Nash when ESPN talking head Jason Whitlock mused that it was Wiggins’ perceived lack of drive that was behind the Cavaliers wanting to trade him last month. “I had to prove that I was athletic enough. His athleticism isn’t in question, they’re worried about his motivation and desire. It’s good for him. He’ll overcome it. He’ll take bad criticism as he always has the last four and five years and overcome it.”
He’s got no other choice, really. Proving people wrong and taking sleights personally is part of the job for athletes called upon to fill the roll Wiggins will be expected to grow into in Minnesota.
That is yet to come of course. For now Wiggins is a kid, enjoying his last bits of free time before heading off to work. The best part of his afternoon on Monday was when he was shooting baskets with a gang of elementary school kids participating in the photo shoot.
The plan was for him to rise above the playground and dunk on the crowd, which he did pretty easily, except for the one time when it appeared one of the youngsters stepped in to inadvertently draw a charge and Wiggins had to take some spectacular evasive maneuvers to preserve both his limbs and the kids.
And then they took turns throwing him alley-oops, which required a brief delay so he could show them the right height to toss the ball – about a foot over the rim, as opposed to the 14 foot tosses the kids were giving him, in defiance of physics.
“Don’t be crazy,” he said, laughing.
Later he said being back on his old school yard brought back memories.
“When I come here I forget about everything,” he said. “When I was playing basketball I forgot it was a photo shoot, I was just having fun with the kids playing basketball.”
And why not? It’s summer.
It will be time to get to the serious work of proving doubters wrong soon enough.