SAN FRANCISCO — Andrew Wiggins has always been the quiet one in the Golden State Warriors mix of stars, content with chilling in the background while the big personalities and loud voices hoard all the attention. The stage of personality, with its burdens, isn’t worth mounting.
He would sit back and smile, shaking his head as Draymond Green talked his talk, laughing uncontrollably as Steph Curry danced his dance. And when the festivities were done, win or lose, Wiggins would scoop up his young daughters and head home to be with his family, like his father taught him to do.
But over the previous two seasons, Warriors coach Steve Kerr noticed a different kind of quiet taking hold within one of his most important players. Something more than his usual reservedness. Something deeper. As Mitchell Wiggins’ health deteriorated rapidly, his son withdrew. From the team, from the game, from everything.
“It was brutal because it was an ongoing thing for such a long time where his dad was suffering,” Kerr said. “To see someone you love, your father, suffering for such a long period of time — you can imagine how that would impact your daily existence.”
Wiggins took an extended leave of absence to be with his father two seasons ago and missed some time here and there last season as Mitchell went through various treatments. His numbers declined significantly, his defensive energy disappeared and the Warriors went right down with him.
Those who suffer in silence tend to sacrifice empathy. What exactly was wrong, how deep his hurt, was kept locked behind Wiggins’ penchant for privacy. Thus, he was a central figure of blame for the Warriors missing the playoffs and became the subject of the fan base’s trade wishes.
If only fans knew how much none of it mattered.
“Not caring about basketball as much,” Wiggins said. “You got your life to worry about. You’ve got certain things going on in your life that are your priority. Basketball is kind of in the shadows. You try to figure out a good balance.”
Mitchell Wiggins died in September at the age of 64, devastating a close-knit family. Mitchell and his wife, Marita Payne-Wiggins, were both stellar athletes in their younger days, and they helped their children navigate the cutthroat world of professional sports while not losing sight of the most important things in life.
Three months later, the fog has lifted enough for his soul to breathe. The hurt has settled. After wading through months on top of months of pending grief, bereavement has subsided. Life continues for Wiggins, even with the dad-sized hole in his heart.
Where Wiggins once felt lost and helpless while watching his father suffer through various treatments, he has managed to rediscover his spirit and find reconnection in the wake of his death.
It has been an up-and-down start to this season for the Warriors as they search for the help Curry needs to make another run in the Western Conference. One of the most encouraging signs for them to this point is the reappearance of Wiggins’ smile and the return to the souped-up role player who was so integral to the Warriors’ 2022 title.
After two years of missed games, uneven performances and trade rumors, Wiggins is showing signs of emerging from the fog. His father’s death in September, and the long health struggles that preceded it, shook him and his family to the bone. The mourning will never abate, but Wiggins looks like a man at peace with his surroundings.
“My mind is definitely in a better place,” he said.
Andrew Wiggins warms up before a Golden State game at Chase Center. (Noah Graham / NBAE via Getty Images)
It has been a long road to get here. One game before the All-Star break in 2023, Wiggins left the Warriors. He missed the final 25 games of the regular season for what the team called personal reasons. No more specifics were given at the time, and he returned for the playoffs, where the Warriors were bounced in the second round by the Los Angeles Lakers.
Wiggins was a more regular presence last season, playing in 71 games. But for a large portion of the season, he wasn’t really there. He averaged just 13.2 points per game, almost four points lower than his previous career low, as a rookie with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2014-15. He shot 35.8 percent from 3-point range, took only 2.7 free throws per game and floated on defense to the point that Kerr chose to take Wiggins out of the starting lineup for the first time in his career. The Warriors knew Wiggins was carrying a heavy burden while his father was in and out of the hospital.
This season, his numbers are back where they belong — 17.3 points, 4.1 rebounds and 42.6 percent from 3-point range, all numbers at or better than his lone All-Star season in 2021-22. There are still uneven nights, like a 1-for-7 shooting performance from 3 in a loss Monday to the Indiana Pacers. But there are also real glimpses of the difference-maker Wiggins can be, including in a game last weekend against his former team.
As the Warriors started to pull away from the Timberwolves in the fourth quarter on Saturday, burly forward Julius Randle grabbed the ball and took Wiggins to the paint. If this was last season, Wiggins might have given in as Randle backed him down. He might not have been able to summon the strength and the give-a-damn to bow his back, absorb the first hit and respond with force.
Wiggins was giving up a few inches and more than 50 pounds, but he clenched his jaw and got into the fight. He took the first collision, and then a second as Randle backed him down and elevated for a turnaround jumper. Wiggins held his ground, kept his base strong and went right up with Randle, shoving the shot right down the Wolves forward’s throat to preserve a seven-point lead with three minutes to play.
The defensive stand set up a Curry 3, and then another to balloon the lead to double digits. Then came the hammer, an alley-oop dunk from Wiggins and a finger-roll layup in the last two minutes to ice the victory against his former team.
“Just really grinding and just getting back to myself and being with my family and friends,” he said earlier this month. “Just remembering that I’ve been doing this for a long time at a high level. This is what I can do. At the end of the day, just going out there, defending, playing two-way basketball.”
Just like dad back in the day.
Mitchell Wiggins during his time with the Rockets in the 1980s. (Bill Baptist / NBAE via Getty Images; Tim de Frisco / Allsport via Getty Images)
Mitchell Wiggins was a dawg on the court. He was an All-American at Florida State and a first-round draft choice of the Indiana Pacers in 1983. But he made a name for himself as a defensive specialist and rugged, rebounding guard for the great Houston Rockets teams of the mid-1980s.
“He was a warrior,” said Timberwolves television analyst Jim Petersen, who played with Mitchell on those Rockets teams. “He was so competitive. He was an amazing offensive rebounder for a guard, and that tells you something about his toughness. And then also he was a lockdown defender as well. He was our defensive stopper.”
While at Florida State, Mitchell met his future wife, Marita Payne, a sprinter who went on to win two silver medals for Canada in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. They were star athletes, but family was at the center of everything. Andrew has two older brothers and three younger sisters, and the children learned about love, connection and trust by watching their parents.
When Andrew was traded to the Timberwolves before his rookie season in a deal that sent Kevin Love to Cleveland to team up with LeBron James, Mitchell, Marita and their three daughters moved from Toronto to Minnesota to be closer to him. Wiggins’ sisters were fixtures at Target Center during his time there, and the importance of family was a constant theme of his six seasons with the organization.
“You can see the tight-knit group that they were. I mean, it’s pretty evident that family is the most important thing to Andrew,” Petersen said. “And that’s the thing. Your heart was breaking for Andrew when you knew Mitchell was going through his health problems because it was affecting Andrew so much on the court. You could see how connected they are as a group.”
The bond between father and son was no joke. After Wiggins was the second-best player during the Warriors’ run to the championship in 2022, Mitchell Wiggins beamed, but maybe not for the reason you would expect.
The basketball was great, of course. For the first seven seasons of his career, Wiggins had been assailed as a disappointment, a No. 1 overall pick with all the physical talent in the world but without the motor to make a difference. He was a worthy wingman to Curry’s brilliance. Mitchell reveled in the redemption, but he couldn’t stop talking about the father Andrew was to his two daughters, about the brother he was to his siblings, about the son he was to him and Marita.
“Everybody realized the talent he had early on, the athletic talent,” Mitchell told The Athletic in the champagne-soaked postgame celebration. “But the biggest thing that me and his mom are proud of is the man and the son that he became. He’s a father that adores his kids, like I adore my kids. When I see him with his girls, his eyes light up. As a father, that’s when I’m most proud.”
Mitchell Wiggins was, is, a monument in the mind of his All-Star son. Behind the scenes, in private moments, Wiggins struggled to grapple with the reality of life without his father. Trauma tends to arrive suddenly, coming out of nowhere to alter lives. But Wiggins was stalked by it for years, haunted by its inevitability.
Even as Wiggins kept his father’s condition private, the Warriors were well aware of the heartache he endured. They never questioned his need to be away from the team. They never doubted his commitment to the organization.
“Everybody loves Wiggs because of who he is, what kind of human being he is, what kind of father and husband he is,” Kerr said. “And we know the pain that he’s been through the last couple of years. You could see it in his play, but just in his demeanor.”
His father was always there for him, so Andrew did not hesitate to leave basketball behind when Mitchell was in need. There was no debate, no pull back to the game and only steadfast support from the Warriors organization. However long it took, whatever he had to do, they were behind him all the way.
“I wouldn’t say it’s all a blur now, but it was just something that’s going on and you’re literally just taking it day by day,” Wiggins said about taking care of his father. “That’s how it was for me. You’re not thinking big picture. You’re not planning for the future. You’re not thinking about the past. You’re literally taking it day by day.”
Kerr, former GM Bob Myers and all of Wiggins’ teammates closed ranks around him, refusing to let anything leak as the public clamored for more information. It only reinforced Wiggins’ belief in what he has with the Warriors.
“This is a first-class organization,” he said. “I don’t think it gets any better than this, to be honest. This is top notch.”
One of the Wiggins family’s greatest resources throughout their patriarch’s long battle was Dr. Robby Sikka, who befriended Andrew during his time as Timberwolves vice president of basketball operations and player wellness under former lead executive Gersson Rosas. Sikka oversaw all aspects of player health in the position and led the team’s response to COVID-19 in 2020.
So when his father grew ill, Wiggins reached out to Sikka for help in navigating the byzantine health care system. Sikka was a constant presence, answering questions, reaching out to health care professionals and serving as a guiding light through the darkness.
“I was going through a lot, but Robby was always there for me,” Wiggins said. “I trust him. He’s like a brother. He’s part of the family now.”
Sikka also helped Karl-Anthony Towns when his mother fell ill with COVID and eventually died and has grown close with Anthony Edwards ever since the front office Sikka was a part of drafted him No. 1 overall in 2020.
All three players have lost a parent in their young lives (Edwards lost his mother to cancer in 2015 when he was 14). And now all three are investing in an app that Sikka is developing dedicated to giving people access to in-depth medical information and care. The Smart Health app will launch early in 2025 and is designed to help provide average people access to the same kind of expert medical guidance that professional athletes receive. It provides secure storage for medical records to expedite what can be a cumbersome process of sharing personal health data with new doctors. It uses artificial intelligence to answer health questions and it also tracks nutrition, sleep and everything else that goes into maintaining good health.
“What Robby is doing is giving everyone the opportunity to truly have full access to their medical records, so that they don’t always need to make an appointment to answer a question for themselves,” said Towns, who played with Wiggins for five and a half seasons in Minnesota. “I told Robby that as long as we can save lives, that’s all that I’m here for. I think that this opportunity truly has an opportunity to save not just one, but millions of lives.”
For Wiggins, the motivation was simple. Sikka was a crucial part of his family’s journey with Mitchell, giving him a knowledgeable sounding board in the toughest of times. He does not believe that winning Rookie of the Year should be a prerequisite for having access to that type of assistance when a loved one is sick.
“It helps cut out the hassle and gets you straight to the point,” Wiggins said. “It’s always more important and you’re more attached when it’s personal and when you’ve been through something.”
Wiggins smiled as he talked about paying it forward. And he smiled at the gift that is coming his family’s way. His fiancée, Mychal, is pregnant with the couple’s third child. This one is a boy.
“First boy in the family,” he said. “We’re all very excited. We’re all looking forward to it. My daughters are very happy. They talk about it every day. It’s going to be great.”
The Warriors’ plane ride home from Minnesota was joyous, following their much-needed win on the Timberwolves court. But Kerr found a moment even better than Saturday’s rebound victory. It warmed his heart in a way that reminded him of a significance greater than basketball. The real wins following debilitating losses.
He saw Wiggins with his daughters as they roamed the charter plane. He saw Mychal and felt the swell of warmth. He saw Wiggins’ trademark grin, the one that only surfaces from a visceral happiness. It doesn’t come easy. The rare display of Wigg’s widest smile is always a moment in that locker room, and they cherish it as such.
More than perhaps anyone in the Golden State franchise, Kerr knows what such a moment means to Wiggins and what it took to recapture this serenity.
“Just seeing those little girls on the plane,” Kerr said. “They’re just beautiful girls. And Wiggs has that million-megawatt smile. It’s so funny because he’s so quiet. But you can see the gleam in his eyes and in his smile. He loves life, and he loves his family. He’s a very simple person in that regard. He doesn’t need a whole lot. He’s not in this for the fame or the glory. No, he loves to play basketball, he loves his family and he enjoys his existence.”
His father died much too soon. But he didn’t leave his son unprepared. Wiggins, who turns 30 in February, has the blueprint for his own family. Mitchell showed him what it means to be a father from the moment Andrew arrived.
The circle of life produces beauty with its hardships. A beauty exists in this transition for Wiggins. The hurt he feels is evidence of a worthy father. The love he feels for his family is evident of a tradition of passing down.
And now he’ll have a son. Kerr called it karma, Wiggins getting the chance to recreate the wonderful relationship he had with his father.
“I’ve always been really close with my family. That’s just how we grew up. I want that for my kids,” Wiggins said, repeating himself for emphasis. “I want that for my kids.”
This will be the first Christmas without Mitchell. Andrew will be on national television as his Warriors play the Lakers. The spotlight following Curry and LeBron James is bright and sure to shine on Wiggins.
He will assuredly shy away from it as much as humanly possible. But when it does find him, it will shine on a man who again knows peace. A father who has picked up the baton of his patriarch. A son who lost a dad who will never leave.
“I think about my dad every day,” Wiggins said. “Twenty-four seven.”
The Warriors are 15-13 this season, in eighth place in the West and still very much trying to find their way to competitiveness. Wiggins finding his way back to them is a good place to start.
“It’s wonderful to see him at peace,” Kerr said. “It’s obviously a terrible outcome to all of this with his father passing away. I think just peace of mind, expecting a boy here in a couple of months and two beautiful little girls, a great family. He’s happy. And we were all thrilled to see that because of what a wonderful person he is.”
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; top photos: Nathaniel S. Butler, Garrett Ellwood / NBAE via Getty Images; Kavin Mistry / Getty Images)
