Yahoo Sports Andrew Wiggins reportedly asked Canada's national team to pay for his play
Andrew Wiggins can’t escape criticism.
After an offseason that saw the 23-year-old’s underdeveloped game repeatedly scrutinized due to Minnesota Timberwolves teammate Jimmy Butler’s trade request from a roster he believes is too reliant on disengaged youngsters, Wiggins wasn’t exactly welcomed home with open arms, either.
In the hours before Minnesota’s 112-105 loss to the Raptors in Toronto, the Wolves announced that Wiggins — the highest-paid athlete in Canadian history and one of the country’s greatest basketball exports — would miss his only game of the season in the city that raised him. His right quad soreness wasn’t met with much media pushback beyond a “Wow” and some mild surprise, even if it was only the second NBA game Wiggins has ever missed since being selected No. 1 overall in the 2014 draft.
Wiggins nearly left without incident. Timberwolves teammate Karl-Anthony Towns drew most of the rolled eyeballs from those looking to confirm Butler’s assessment, asking out of a game he appeared disinterested in. Then came a Toronto Sun column alleging that the Wiggins family made several demands from Canada Basketball in exchange for his potential participation on the national team.
Via the Toronto Sun’s Steve Simmons:
The back-and-forth went something like this: If you want Andrew to play, it’s going to cost you money. And if you want Andrew, you’re going to want his brothers, too. This wasn’t your typical tryout invitation and recruiting session. This was part-negotiation, part-stick-up, or so the story goes.
And Canada Basketball did what it believed was necessary at the time. It apparently paid decent money for Wiggins to play for Team Canada. No one will tell you how much is pretty good money, but an organization without a lot of cash, had to come up with some.
What is Andrew Wiggins’ experience with Canada Basketball?
Wiggins hasn’t played for Team Canada since the 2015 FIBA Americas, when he was benched down the stretch in a loss to eventual champion Venezuela that cost his country its first Olympic basketball bid since 2000. He has declined invitations to play with the team each of the past three summers.
In 2016, Wiggins cited his commitment to building the Timberwolves into a contender, even though Minnesota had not made the playoffs since 2004. The following year, the risk of injury as negotiations on his max-contract extension in Minnesota remained unfinished presumably precluded him from participating. This past summer? TSN’s Josh Lewenberg explained Wiggins’ absence thusly in May:
According to multiple sources, one factor in Wiggins’ decision to decline Canada Basketball’s most recent invitation is his strained relationship with head coach Jay Triano, stemming from his previous and only experience playing with the senior men’s team in 2015.
The explanation at the time from Canada Basketball assistant GM Rowan Barrett, a member of the country’s last Olympic basketball team and father of presumptive top 2019 NBA draft pick R.J. Barrett:
“His initial desire was to play. I do think he had some circumstances come up that are going to limit his ability to play for us in June. The door is open for September potentially as well.”
Could those “circumstances” be the Wiggins family’s demands? That we don’t know.
‘I’m going to try and play, but we’ll see what happens’
What we do know: Wiggins has two older brothers, Nick and Mitchell Jr., both of whom played college basketball and neither of whom have ever appeared on Team Canada’s senior team. Their father, Mitchell Sr., played for the U.S. national team at the 1982 FIBA World Championships, and their mother, Marita Payne-Wiggins, represented Canada as a sprinter in the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics, all of which makes Andrew’s unwillingness to play for his home country an even greater mystery.
Nick, now playing in Argentina, is better known for tweeting “Hallelujah” upon learning of Butler’s trade request, prompting social media outrage. Andrew told reporters in Toronto on Wednesday that he disagreed with his brother. “We’ve always been cool,” he said of Butler. “Even after all that stuff happened this summer, from what people made it seem like, nothing happened. We’re always cool.”
As for whether everything is copacetic with Team Canada, Wiggins added, “I’m going to try and play, but we’ll see what happens,” which is pretty non-committal, considering he appears to have an open-ended invitation from the team and qualifying for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is fast approaching.
Wiggins on what he saw from Team Canada this summer: "They played good together. They didn't need me to win those games. They were hooping, playing good together, playing as a team. Everyone brought their own thing to the table."
— Josh Lewenberg (@JLew1050) October 24, 2018
Team Canada is in good hands. Jamal Murray, Cory Joseph, Kelly Olynyk, Dwight Powell and Tristan Thompson headline a host of NBA talents. Barrett and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are waiting in the wings, along with several other potential prospects. But it is weird that Wiggins — the most hyped basketball prospect in the country’s history — may never play in an Olympics for his home country.
Do national teams often pay professional athletes?
It’s even weirder that he would demand payment from a Canada Basketball program that is still trying to put itself on the map and, as Triano told the Toronto Sun, “can’t afford insurance for the players” without contracts. Wiggins, however, has the ultimate insurance — a five-year, $148 million deal that makes him the highest-paid athlete in Canada’s history and one of the NBA’s most overpaid players.
It is not illegal to pay players for participating on the national team, but it’s certainly not a customary practice in FIBA Americas circles. USA Basketball compensates players for their expenses and gives them a per diem during the time with the national team, and Canada provides similar financial assistance through the Athlete Excellence Fund, but Wiggins has reportedly sought another pay raise.
Canada, like most countries, does provide a bonus for Olympic medalists, but as Butler might as well point out at the next testy Timberwolves practice, that would require Wiggins winning something.
There is no basketball escape for Andrew Wiggins.
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Ben Rohrbach is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
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