Vaughan

calls from James, Kevin Durant,
and—perhaps the most telling of his
potential stature in the game—Michael
Jordan himself. He’s definitely found
himself entrenched in that rarified
“Next Big Thing” status.
While Canadians are used to sports
stars entering the pros out of high
school in hockey, as Sidney Crosby
did when he was drafted by the
Pittsburgh Penguins, basketball
differs in that players must spend a
year in college, or overseas playing
pro in Europe, before they reach the
minimum 19-year-old age requirement
the NBA has set. Otherwise, Wiggins
may have been able to make history a
year earlier, after finishing his senior
year at Huntington Prep in the U.S.
Making history may just be something
that the former student at Vaughan
Secondary School should start getting
used to. On February 25, he became
the first Canadian to win the Naismith
Prep Player of the Year Award, given
annually to the top male and female
basketball players. Taking one look
at the list of players who’ve won it in
the past—Kobe Bryant, LeBron James,
Dwight Howard—and Wiggins already
finds himself in elite company.
Wiggins is currently the most sought
after high school hoops star among
US colleges. Many of the schools
falling over one another to bring him
in are doing so knowing that he is
almost certain to exercise his right
to go pro as soon as he completes
the mandatory one year of service
between high school and the NBA.
Wiggins’s story is only just beginning.
What happens from here on out,
from the school he chooses to attend
next year to what team selects him
in the NBA Draft, all of that will
help to dictate how this story will
eventually play out. The rest of it
falls squarely on the shoulders of the
great Canadian hope, the kid raised
in Thornhill, the kid who helped fill
a gym of hyped fans and journalists
from across the country during his
school’s recent visit to Hamilton to
play against the best high schoolers
from that city.
If Wiggins plays to the level expected
of him he won’t just be the next
LeBron James. He’ll be the first
Andrew Wiggins, the player every
other prospect that follows him will
be compared to.
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