The road has not been particularly kind to the Florida Panthers so far in the early stages of the new NHL season.
Despite holding a strong 5-1-1 record on home ice, Florida has faltered when traveling away from Sunrise.
So far through five road games, the Panthers are just 1-4-0 while being outscored 18-8, and now they’re starting a west coast trip that could just as easily chew them up and spit them out.
The first if four games out west begins on Tuesday night against the Anaheim Ducks.
Anaheim has been one of the surprise teams of the Western Conference early this season.
They enter play Tuesday holding one of the three playoff spots in the Pacific Division, skating to an impressive 7-3-1 mark through their first 11 outings.
The Ducks have currently won three straight games, five of their past six overall and are 5-1-1 over their past seven, a stretch that includes last Tuesday’s 3-2 shootout win over the Panthers in Sunrise.
Youngster Cutter Gauthier has been on fire of late, riding a six-game point streak in which he’s logged four goals and nine points.
Veteran Chris Kreider, one of the newest Ducks this season, has started his career in Anaheim with six goals over his first seven games, including tallies in each of his past two outings.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Tuesday’s tilt with the Quackers:
Photo caption: Oct 28, 2025; Sunrise, Florida, USA; Anaheim Ducks right wing Troy Terry (19) scores a goal past Florida Panthers goaltender Daniil Tarasov (40) during an overtime shootout at Amerant Bank Arena. (Jim Rassol-Imagn Images)
We were certain that, with a new-look roster and tempered expectations, the Boston Celtics’ viewing experience would be largely stress free. We were convinced fans wouldn’t feel the bumps in the road as much as they have in past seasons, where every loss in a championship-or-bust campaign felt like a stomach punch. If this new campaign was going to be a bit of a roller coaster, we were prepared with transition-year Dramamine.
We couldn’t have been more wrong.
The losses still gnaw at you — in large part because, while the team looks different, the losses often look the same.
These Celtics can’t hold double-digit leads. Their play vacillates wildly from quarter to quarter. When their 3-point shots are not falling, they remain a tough watch, particularly given their propensity to let empty offensive possessions impact their defensive effort.
On Monday night, the Celtics should have been eager to dust themselves off after a beatdown from the championship-chasing Houston Rockets at the tail end of a five-game-in-seven-days stretch. That one was easy to chalk up as a schedule loss. But Monday was the ultimate “get right” game against a Utah Jazz team that had gotten pummeled in Charlotte the night before and was missing one of its key bigs in Walker Kessler.
Yet, somehow, it was Boston that didn’t have enough gas in the tank in the second half Monday night, as offensive rebounds still came back to bite the Celtics.
After a defensive gem of a first half that put the Celtics ahead by double digits, Boston’s defense disappeared in the second half, the team’s effort waning as it repeatedly clanged quality 3-point looks. Keyonte George morphed into Michael Jordan for a stretch, 37-year-old Kevin Love rolled back the clocks, and Jusuf Nurkic’s putback in the final moments lifted Utah to a 105-103 triumph at TD Garden.
The Celtics’ 3-point shooting was historically bad for their volume. The C’s set an NBA record by missing 40 their 51 triples, posting the lowest 3-point percentage (21.6 percent) in league history by a team with 50-plus attempts.
Would it make you feel any better to know the NBA tracking data suggested all those 3-point looks were pretty good? It probably won’t, right? But 50 of Boston’s 51 attempts came with 4+ feet of space from the nearest defender. The Celtics made just 2 of 21 attempts with 4 to 6 feet of space, and 9 of 29 attempts with 6+ feet of space.
NBA tracking suggested 50 of Boston's 51 3-point attempts vs. Utah were open or better (4+ feet of space from defender).
Celtics made just 9 of 29 (29%) wide-open 3s, and 2 of 21 (9.5%) of open 3s.
Derrick White and Payton Pritchard, who both made 3s in the opening minutes when Boston ripped off a 10-0 run, quickly reverted to their season-opening struggles. There are 178 players who qualify on the list of NBA’s 3-point percentage leaders this season. Here’s where Boston players rank:
178th: Payton Pritchard
171st: Derrick White
95th: Anfernee Simons
92nd: Jaylen Brown
69th: Sam Hauser
Pritchard and White were a combined 7 for 19 on Monday night, which is actually progress. Hauser improbably went 1 for 8 from distance. Simons wasn’t much better (2 for 8). Brown missed all nine 3-pointers he attempted, though he kept Boston’s offense afloat by making 13 of 19 shots inside the arc while producing a team-high 36 points.
It seems impossible that White and Pritchard won’t eventually get on track. But as they struggle from distance to start the season, it only makes the margins that much slimmer for a Boston team with a bunch of new vulnerabilities. And, yet, if the Celtics’ defensive energy didn’t wane in the second half, they very well might have survived a historically bad shooting night.
Spare us all the chatter about the referees’ missed call on a George trip of Brown in the final minute. Yes, it should have been a whistle. No, it’s not a valid excuse for not winning this game. We don’t need a Last 2 Minute report to confirm the referee error.
Our Last 24 Minute report notes the Celtics tripped all over themselves repeatedly in the second half without aid from the Jazz or the referees.
Brown has been fantastic, and it’s frustrating that Boston’s supporting cast hasn’t been able to help him more. It’s also annoying that, with multiple last-gasp opportunities in tight games against Philadelphia and Utah, the Celtics have been unable to get Brown a clean look at a winning shot. Brown got whistled (correctly) for a push-off before the Celtics’ final possession with 0.6 seconds to play Monday night.
Brown vented about the missed tripping call after the game but, like a good leader, eventually suggested he has to do more to help his team as this group hunts for an identity early in the new season. The truth is the supporting cast has to do more, and Brown’s efforts have been spoiled by the team’s shooting funks.
Neemias Queta will kick himself about a missed late-game free throw and his inability to box out Nurkic on Utah’s winning shot. Josh Minott can’t get in early foul trouble, which limited his floor time. Boston needs more from its bench, where every single player not named Chris Boucher was in the negative for plus/minus Monday night.
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the Celtics are experiencing these growing pains. But it all seems so preventable, which makes it harder to stomach. Boston has all the potential to outkick its tempered expectations and yet hasn’t played with anywhere near the sort of consistency that would allow that.
Chalk it up to early-season growing pains, but the Celtics’ lack of focus and discipline Monday night was inexcusable. The Rockets were simply on a different level on Saturday and the rest disadvantage didn’t help. But much of Boston’s woes in the team’s other four losses this season were largely self-inflicted.
Maybe all this team needs is White and Pritchard to get off the 3-point schneid. Maybe the Celtics just need to be mentally tougher when shots aren’t falling and lean into their obvious defensive potential instead of losing their minds.
It’s easy to say we should have braced ourselves for these bumps given the roster changes. But there’s too much talent and potential here to be OK with the Celtics losing games the way they did Monday night.
Few players in Philadelphia sparked more conversation in 2025 than Nick Castellanos. Now, entering the final year of his five-year, $100 million deal, the focus shifts from his performance to his future with the Phils in 2026.
A season blemished by tension
Castellanos’ frustration boiled over multiple times last year.
On June 16 against the Marlins, Phils manager Rob Thomson pulled him late for defense — a move that led to what the skipper later called “an inappropriate comment” from Castellanos and a one-game benching. The decision snapped a streak of 236 consecutive starts.
“I wasn’t happy about it,” Castellanos said afterward. “I spoke my mind, and he said I crossed a line.”
The situation didn’t improve after the trade deadline. When the Phillies acquired Harrison Bader from Minnesota, the outfield suddenly became crowded — Bader, Brandon Marsh, Max Kepler and Castellanos vying for consistent at-bats.
On August 20, Castellanos even told reporters that Bader was “pretty frustrated” with his part-time role, a strange comment given the two were competing for playing time.
A week and a half later, when Thomson again replaced him defensively, Castellanos voiced disappointment about the lack of communication between the two. “I don’t really talk to Rob all that often,” he said. “The communication over the years has been questionable, at least in my experience.”
Even during the postseason, the frustration lingered. After the Phillies’ Game 2 loss to the Dodgers in the NLDS, Castellanos commented on the energy at Citizens Bank Park:
“When the game is going good, it’s wind at our back, but when the game is not going good, it’s wind in our face. The environment can be with us and the environment can be against us.”
That quote reflected how his tone to the manager, the media and the fans worked against his favor this season.
Through it all, the production simply wasn’t there in his 13th professional campaign. Castellanos finished with a .250/.294/.400 slash line, 17 home runs and a -1.0 WAR. Defensively, he ranked last among qualified outfielders with -12 outs above average and -90 defensive runs saved since 2016, the worst total in baseball over that span. Each of those stats are calculated based on the “average” player showing just how substandard his defense has been.
The path forward
Castellanos is still owed $20 million in 2026. For a player now best suited for a designated-hitter role, that salary is a financial burden given his below average run production at the plate. The Phillies could try to trade him, eating part of his remaining salary, or, if no trade partner emerges, designate him for assignment and absorb the entire cost.
There’s reason to expect the front office to explore those options. Dombrowski said at the season’s end, “We’ll see what happens. I’m not going to get into specific players.”
With younger outfielders like Otto Kemp, Johan Rojas and top prospects Justin Crawford and Gabriel Rincones Jr. nearing solidified roles on the big league roster, the willingness to retain a declining veteran has faded – especially one who injected tension in the clubhouse.
Castellanos’ time in Philadelphia featured key postseason moments – his October in 2023 included six homers – and stretches of strong production.
But after four playoff runs without a title, the Phillies may need to do what Castellanos once told the On Base podcast: “Help the team however it needs to be to win a World Series.”
The Phillies had a strong regular season in 2025, and it wouldn’t have been possible without some superlative individual efforts. But like their experience in the postseason, two of their stars will have to overcome some fierce competition to win the big trophies.
Designated hitter Kyle Schwarber was named a finalist for the National League Most Valuable Player award, and Lefty Cristopher Sanchez is one of three finalists for the NL Cy Young award.
Schwarber, a 3-time All-Star, played his best season by far, leading the NL in home runs with 56 and RBI with 132, both career highs. The closest he had ever come to winning an MVP award was last season, when he finshed 15th in the voting. He is also a finalist to win the NL Silver Slugger.
Standing in Schwarber’s way are the other two nominees, both of whom had very strong seasons. Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers is in pursuit of his third straight MVP, and fourth in five years. He finished just behind Schwarber with 55 homers, and added 102 RBI and 146 runs scored, a mark which led the majors. He also started in 14 games, striking out 62 in 47 innings.
Juan Soto had a very good inaugural season with the Mets, leading the NL in walks (127), stolen bases (38), and on-base percentage (.396). He added 43 homers and 105 RBI, and scored 120 runs.
Like Schwarber, Sanchez also had a career year. The 28-year-old reached new personal bests in wins (13), innings (202), ERA (2.50), and strikeouts (212). He led NL pitchers in bWAR (8.0) and finished in the top five in ERA, innings, and Ks. Sanchez finished 10th in Cy Young voting last season.
The other nominees along with Sanchez are Pirates ace Paul Skenes and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Dodgers. Skenes led all of MLB with a 1.97 ERA, and finished just ahead of Sanchez with 216 strikeouts. Yamamoto, the World Series MVP, was largely unhittable, leading MLB in hits allowed per 9 IP (5.8), and striking out 201 in 173 innings.
The Cy Young awards for both leagues will be announced Wednesday, November 12, while the MVP awards will be announced the following day.
Players who were once strangers are now extended members of hundreds of thousands of families.
Ordinarily, a team as old as the Dodgers would have to consider a roster makeover. Freddie Freeman and Miguel Rojas will be 37 by the start of the next World Series. Max Muncy will be 36, Kiké Hernández 35, Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernández 34 and Shohei Ohtani 32.
But under these circumstances, how could the Dodgers think of breaking up their team?
How could they unload any of their superstars, regardless of how much they could decline in the next year? How could they not retain their key free agents, regardless of how old they are?
They can’t, they can’t and they can’t.
The Dodgers have to run this back — again.
“Obviously, we would love everybody to come back,” Freeman said.
Muncy has a $10-million team option for next season. The Dodgers have to pick it up.
Rojas and Kiké Hernández are free agents. The Dodgers have to re-sign them.
Freeman won’t be making the calls on his teammates, of course. The decisions will be made by president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, who was characteristically evasive when asked about the efforts the Dodgers would make to keep their out-of-contract players.
“Obviously, guys who have been here and been a big part of it start with a major upper hand,” Friedman said. “That being said, they’re free agents. They’ve earned the right to go out and talk to the 29 other teams as well.”
Muncy doesn’t have a choice to leave if the Dodgers exercise his option, but Rojas and Kiké Hernández have said they would like to return next season.
Whatever Friedman decides shouldn’t preclude the Dodgers from shopping on the free-agent market, with Kyle Tucker and Steven Kwan being potential additions to their outfield.
But the nucleus of the Dodgers would be even older than it was this year when their collective age presented a variety of problems.
Their 18-inning victory in Game 3 clearly diminished them more than it did the Toronto Blue Jays, who won the next two games. In retrospect, that should have been expected, as the Dodgers struggled to maintain consistency on offense over a grinding six-month regular season.
While Betts transformed into one of the league’s best defensive shortstops, he experienced a sharp offensive decline. Muncy was limited to 100 games because of injuries. Teoscar Hernández wasn’t close to being the same player he was last year.
There were times that even Ohtani started to show the effects of being on the wrong side of 30. Ohtani’s father acknowledged this reality in a congratulatory open letter he wrote to his son, which was published in the Monday edition of Sports Nippon.
“Shohei, you’re 31 years old,” Toru Ohtani wrote in Japanese. “I think that as a baseball player, you’re in your prime, but there will come a time when you have to decide between pitching and hitting. When you can’t pitch anymore, you can be an outfielder. I think that if you practice, you can definitely do it.”
That being said, the team has to be kept together.
A championship can force teams into sentimental decisions, as was the case last winter when the Dodgers re-signed Teoscar Hernández to a three-year, $66-million contract.
This winter, they will have to settle similar disputes between their hearts and minds. They should listen to their hearts.
Every team aspires to their own ‘Bomb Squad’ and the modern-day arms race is focused on unleashing heavyweight power from the bench
There was a time in rugby union when the phrase “Bomb Squad” felt novel. South Africa were ahead of the game in maximising the impact of replacement forwards off the bench and the sight of all that fresh beef rumbling on to the field early in the second half was certainly arresting. As the Springboks have proved repeatedly, it works a treat if you possess the requisite strength in depth.
As with all good ideas, however, other people love to copy them. And so we have a modern-day arms race. Everyone now has, or aspires to, their own Bomb Squad. Around the 45th-50th minute in virtually any game there will be an army of stunt doubles preparing to replace the players who started the game. And if a coach can field fewer than three specialist backline reserves in order to bolster further his forward resources, happy days.
Balco boss revealed Marion Jones used growth hormones
Conte served four months in prison over involvement
Victor Conte, the architect of a scheme to provide undetectable performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes including the baseball stars Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and the Olympic track champion Marion Jones decades ago, has died. He was 75.
The federal government’s investigation into a company Conte founded, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), yielded the convictions of Jones, the elite sprint cyclist Tammy Thomas and the former NFL defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield, along with coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.
Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown was understandably frustrated after officials did not whistle Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George for a tripping foul in the final minute of Monday’s game at TD Garden.
With less than a minute remaining and the Celtics clinging to a one-point lead, George fell to the ground, and Brown tripped over him while trying to drive into the paint. The Celtics star lost the ball as a result of the trip, and the Jazz scored a bucket in transition to take a 103-102 lead with 44 seconds remaining.
“Y’all are going to get me fined,” Brown responded when asked about the play. “You can’t have a mistake like that as an official at that point in the game. It’s fourth quarter. It’s a minute left in the game, or less. And you completely — the whole staff blows the f—ing call. Costs us the game.
“Unacceptable. You can make mistakes at any point in the game, but right there, that wasn’t good. That wasn’t good. It’s unacceptable.
“Then they’re telling me like, ‘We didn’t see it.’ How none of you see it? You can’t trip somebody in the fourth quarter and it just be a no-call. It’s some bulls—,” Brown said.
“During live play the crew observed George slip and fall just prior to Brown slipping on the same spot resulting in the ball becoming loose prior to any contact,” Scott told The Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach.
“… The crew observed both players slip and fall prior to any contact. That’s why a foul was not called during live play.”
While that explanation likely won’t satisfy Brown or Celtics fans, that no-call wasn’t the only reason Boston this game. The Jazz outrebounded the Celtics 55 to 36 and racked up 15 offensive rebounds, the last of which was a Jusuf Nurkic putback over Neemias Queta with 0.6 seconds remaining that sealed Boston’s fate.
As for Brown, he should expect to be hearing from the league at some point after sounding off on the officials Monday night.
Achiuwa, in his sixth NBA season, was waived by the Miami Heat on Oct. 18 in their final roster cuts following training camp. He was selected by the Heat with the No. 20 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft. He was traded to the Toronto Raptors before the 2021 season, and was later traded to the New York Knicks in December 2023.
Last season for the Knicks, Achiuwa played in 57 games and started in 10. He averaged 6.6 points and 5.6 rebounds per game.
Jones, now in his second NBA season, originally signed a two-way contract with the Kings in July 2024. Last season, he played 40 games for Sacramento and averaged 3.4 points and 1.4 rebounds per game in just 7.6 minutes per game. This season, he played in just three of the Kings’ seven games, totaling just 3 points.
Jones’ lone field goal this season came during his Oct. 24 start against the Utah Jazz.
Achiuwa will vie for playing time off the bench with other Kings centers, like Drew Eubanks, Maxime Raynaud and Dylan Cardwell.
“At the end of the day, we’re 7-2 and we’re in a position to do everything we want to accomplish and go win,” Sherrone Moore said of Michigan football.
Andrew Wiggins played a huge part in the Golden State Warriors’ title in 2022. Photograph: Elsa/Getty Images
Andrew Wiggins was among the first superstar prospects of the social media era. Born in Thornhill, Ontario just north of Toronto, Wiggins was known internationally by the time he was 13. It wasn’t always easy for the shy, small-town kid to embrace the spotlight.
After just one full season at Vaughan, Wiggins needed better competition than Canada could provide and moved on to Huntington Prep in Huntington, West Virginia — a relatively new prep school set in a small, blue-collar, sports-oriented college town near Kansas.
The head coach, Rob Fulford, had been recruiting Wiggins since he was 13, at one point watching 24 consecutive CIA Bounce games in person. “We developed a relationship with him,” Fulford said. “We recruited him harder than anyone else.”
What stood out to Fulford was the same quality that would later get the young Wiggins in trouble, which was that everything he did looked so effortless. “He could just dominate a game from a talent perspective,” Fulford says. “It just was a clear difference between Andrew and everyone else.”
But there was nothing quiet about the show Wiggins was putting on the basketball court, as Huntington quickly became the most popular high school team in the country, going from having 50 fans at a regular home game prior to his arrival to packed gyms with over 1,000 fans there to see the Canadian high school phenom with their own eyes. “A lot of people just wanted to see him play,” Rathan-Mayes says. “We tried to go and put on a show the best that we could every single night.”
But being at the centre of the basketball universe didn’t come naturally to the quiet kid from Vaughan. After all, shyness, like athleticism, runs in the Wiggins family: Wiggins’s father, Mitchell Sr, said the reason it didn’t work at his first college, Clemson, was that “I was so quiet, you couldn’t get a whisper out of me.” While a track teammate of his mother, Marita, said, “She was very quiet, still is very quiet and very unassuming.”
Unlike LeBron James, who was happy to engage with the media and put on a show for the crowd since being crowned “The Chosen One” as a teenager, Wiggins was soft-spoken and shy, preferring to pass the attention on to his teammates instead of beating his chest after a big dunk. Many people wanted Wiggins to be the version of an alpha athlete that they were used to seeing on TV, like James and Kobe Bryant. And that dissonance created a tension with the basketball media and certain segments of the fan base, who wanted more from Wiggins.
“I think we all have a certain kind of perception of what we want a great athlete to look like,” his junior national team coach, Roy Rana, says. “We want them to be fiery. We want them to be emotional. We want them to be extroverted. We want them to be demonstrative. That’s not Andrew.”
The criticism picked up during Wiggins’s second and final season at Huntington Prep when, in February of 2013, a Sports Illustrated article questioned his work ethic, suggesting that he only showed up in big games while lofting through less important ones. “Andrew Wiggins’ work ethic and motor have yet to catch up to his athleticism and raw ability,” it read, bringing up examples of previous Canadian prospects whose careers stagnated as a result of poor decision-making or a lack of skill development. And it questioned the role models in his life, including his father, who was pushed out of the NBA for cocaine use decades earlier.
The day after the article came out, Wiggins dropped a career-high 57 points in a statement win. “I think it pissed him off,” Fulford says. “He wanted to prove a point.”
“Just responding in a positive way,” Wiggins says. “Not saying anything, not … going on Twitter and saying anything … whenever you think you got something to say, just go on the court and do my thing.”
Wiggins compiled one of the most memorable campaigns in high school basketball history that season, averaging 23 points, 11 rebounds, three assists, and three blocks per game and winning the Naismith Prep Player of the Year and the Gatorade National Player of the Year awards, earning a trip to the McDonald’s All-American Game. After that, he left to go to the University of Kansas.
But the spotlight didn’t stop there. In fact, when Wiggins arrived at Kansas City International Airport in June of 2013, he emerged from the gate to find 15 fans waiting for his autograph after his itinerary had been posted on an online message board. When classes started, students began Twitter-stalking him, tweeting pictures of the back of his head in class and posting his whereabouts when he was spotted at local stores. Meanwhile, back home in Canada, Wiggins picked up the nicknames “Maple Jordan” and “Air Canada,” and all of his Kansas games were broadcasted on the national TV network TSN.
While all this might seem normal now, 2013 was the beginning of the social media era. And between the fans stalking him, the student sections taunting him at away games, and the rapidly expanding media landscape criticizing his every move, it was hard for Wiggins to feel comfortable. “We talk about it sometimes, but he doesn’t like talking about it. That’s how bad it stresses him out,” his wife, Mychal Johnson, said at the time. “Sometimes he doesn’t know what to do.”
“It was a lot,” Wiggins says now. “It was a lot.”
Wiggins just wanted to be a normal kid. He happened to love basketball and be really good at it, but he wanted an average life away from the spotlight, playing Call of Duty after games and announcing his college decision without any media present. In fact, his Twitter bio used to read “Just a average kid trying to make it.”
But when he was asked about it during his freshman year at Kansas, Wiggins said, “I used to be an average kid, when I put that up. But that … was a while ago.”
Some of the criticism directed towards Wiggins was warranted. Even Fulford acknowledged that he was no gym rat – that things came so naturally to Wiggins that he needed to fall in love with the process of improving if he was going to reach his ceiling. “I don’t think at any point ever that anyone had to go tell Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant to pick it up,” Fulford said.
Wiggins quietly improved under head coach Bill Self at Kansas, averaging 17 points, six rebounds, two assists, one steal, and one block as a freshman for the No 2-ranked Jayhawks, who went 24-9 before losing in the second round of the NCAA tournament. He even set the Kansas freshman single-season scoring record with 597 points.
Still, there were times that Self had to get on Wiggins to play harder or be more aggressive offensively, instituting a special rule at some practices that only Wiggins was allowed to shoot. “Andrew is the type of guy who could score 28, and you’d say, ‘Why didn’t he score more?’” Self said. “Critics want him to do more. I understand that because the game comes so easy to him, it’s so natural.”
Some of that on-court reticence came from the way Wiggins was raised, learning the game from his brothers and dad, who carved out a 20-year pro career as a defensive role player. “His dad taught him how to play basketball the right way,” Reid-Knight says, noting that Mitchell Sr always harped on the importance of being selfless and making the right reads. “Playing within your game and not forcing an action.”
After one season at Kansas, Wiggins declared for the 2014 NBA Draft and was selected first overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers – a foregone conclusion since Wiggins was in 10th grade. What made the selection even more amazing was that his CIA Bounce teammate, Brampton native Anthony Bennett, went first overall to Cleveland the year prior, giving Canada back-to-back first overall picks for the first time ever.
The 2014 NBA Draft also featured Canadians Tyler Ennis, Nik Stauskas, and Dwight Powell, giving Canada a record 12 NBA players. That year Canada overtook France as the second-most represented country in the league behind the United States – a record it has held ever since.
However, the best player in the world, James, returned to his hometown Cleveland in free agency that same summer. And before playing a single game in the NBA, Wiggins and Bennett were both traded to the rebuilding Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for Kevin Love, making Wiggins the cornerstone of a franchise that had not been to the playoffs in 10 years. “I just gave in to it and figured I’d be good wherever I go,” Wiggins said. “The whole thing has worked out. [Minnesota has] put me in a situation where I can grow a lot more than on the team that drafted me.”
Wiggins got off to a slow start in his NBA career before breaking out against the team that snubbed him, dropping 27 points in his first game against James’s Cavaliers. He followed it up with a stretch of six straight 20-point games, eventually becoming the first Canadian to win the NBA Rookie of the Year award after averaging 17 points, five rebounds, and two assists a game in 2014–15.
While he never turned into the NBA superstar that many people had him pegged to become when he was a teenager, Wiggins went on to have an incredible career, spending five and a half seasons in Minnesota before getting traded to the Golden State Warriors in 2020. In the Bay, Wiggins became the third Canadian NBA All-Star and won an NBA championship as the team’s second-leading scorer in the 2022 NBA Finals, when he averaged 18 points and nine rebounds.
But, for better or worse, the huge spotlight and unbalanced criticism that started to shine on Wiggins when he was a teenage phenom never left him, especially in Canada – a basketball-crazed nation that was growing hungry for a superstar.
As Wiggins once said, “I know I can never live up to expectations.”
This is an edited extract from The Golden Generation: How Canada Became a Basketball Powerhouse by Oren Weisfeld. It’s published by ECW Press for $19.95 (USD) wherever you get your books.
