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THUKSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013
COMMENTARY
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Students,media wait for Wiggins to excel
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Sports Illustrated. ESPN The Magazine, GQ. All feature Kansas to start the college basketball season. OK, they're featuring one player, but the letters K-A-N-S A-S stand across his chest.
Welcome to the 2013-2014 season, where fans and the media alike expect Andrew Wiggins to do something great. They're just not sure what it is.
After attending a practice this year, ESPN's Jeff Goodman questioned Wiggins' hype and quoted NBA scouts who weren't so sure about Wiggins' surethinking No.1 pick status.
thing no1 pick stats
CBS sports.com's college
basketball columnist Gary
Parrish wrote a column
anointing Wiggins as their
preseason pick for National
Player of the Year, and you can't
blame them for it.
Oh, and there's Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine and GO.
The exhibition games are over. The season starts Friday against Louisiana Monroe.The real season starts Nov.12 against Duke in Chicago.
So here we are, on the cusp of the most anticipated Kansas basketball season in years and no one knows what they want out of the player they're most excited about. Sure, students and fans want a championship or a final four berth, but this isn't about the team in March. This is about an all-everything player in early November with who-knows-what expectations
It's so easy to want something great out of a player, but Andrew Wiggins isn't going to be a college Kevin Durant. He isn't going to score ga-ga points a game and shoot his team to success or failure. He's playing in a system that gets every player on the court involved, that gets the ball inside for high percentage shots.
Last season Ben McLemore led Kansas with 16.4 points per game. He did this shooting just over 50 percent from the field and 43 percent from the three. Those numbers are absurdly good — and don't forget his dunks, either.
There was Sports Illustrated. There was ESPN. Understandably, there wasn't any GQ. It's easy to forget how talented Mr. McLemore was.
Yet McLemore earned a reputation for not being assertive enough or disappearing at times. Expectations were even high for the team's best player last year.
The fact of the matter is Wiggins may not be a better college basketball player than McLemore. He certainly has a chance to be, but it's not certain he will be. Yes, they're two different players. McLemore thrived shooting the three while Wiggins is likely to be a slasher and attention grabber.
This isn't to discredit Wiggins at all. It's impossible to quantify his effect on the team and no one knows just what he'll do. But that's part of the excitement. There will be flashes of greatness and lulls of freshmanitis. It's only natural.
With a basketball season approaching, it's easy to ask,
"How good is he?"
Wiggins has been featured in GQ, Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, USA Today and many newspaper and TV stations.
How about a different question: "What do you want from the guy?"
Edited by Kayla Overbey
Andrew Wiggins, freshman guard, dunks during the Pittsburg State exhibition game on Oct. 29. He faces extremely high expectations and a lot of pressure to perform on the court this season
Despite media frenzy, Wiggins stays grounded
MICHAEL STRICKLAND/KANSAN
MAX GOODWIN
mgoodwin@kansan.com
The gold ink from the pen swirls over the glossy cover of another crisp copy of Sports Illustrated. Andrew Wiggins is signing autographs after a 9 a.m. open practice attended by more than 10,000 Kansas faithfuls.
The cover that he autographs at least 50 times features a photo of the freshman wedged directly between two of the most dominant players to ever play college basketball. "From Wilt...to Manning...to Wiggins" it reads.
Bill Self had no reservations when SI approached him with the story pitch, though he didn't know then what the cover would look like or how much it would help fuel the unimaginable hype.
"Maybe I should try to shelter him more, but I still think the best way to prepare him is to prepare him by having him live and go through it," Self said at Big 12 media day in Kansas City, Mo.
The hype is impossible to hide from at this point. Later in the day at the Sprint Center, reporters surrounded a table where Wiggins sat alongside three teammates.
Reporters and photographers discussed how to handle all of the questions coming at one time. Naadir Tharpe, Tarik Black and Perry Ellis all sat down at the table. The media was informed that Wiggins was busy doing an interview with ESPN, but would be along shortly.
After a few rounds of question, a man with a camera on his shoulder asked, "Andrew, we obviously hear about the hype with the program nationally, but what's the buzz like in Lawrence with the students?"
The man posed another question, again addressing Wiggins, who wasn't present.
The three players looked confused, before Tharpe finally answered, "Well, students love him, of course...I'm as excited that he's here just as much as the fans are."
That's when Tarick Black realized the reporter thought he was Wiggins.
Sports Illustrated isn't the only magazine to feature Wiggins. ESPN The Magazine and USA Today featured him on the cover of their college basketball
"Whoa, he's not here right now, my dude," Black said.
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previews. The young star has also been featured in GQ, Slam and newspapers worldwide.
A reporter from the Canadian television station TSN interviewed Wiggins after the exhibition game against Pittsburg State. Wiggins is from a suburb of Toronto, and Canadians will be able to watch every Kansas game this season on the network.
"He hasn't asked for any of it," Self said, at the podium in front of the media at the Sprint Center. "If you talk to him he's about as humble and low-key of a guy that deflects attention as anybody I've ever been around. It's not fair, because he's not that. I don't even know of one player that I can think of that he's like. He's just Andrew."
Wiggins has shrugged off the comparisons for the most part, at least in front of the media.
He's still an 18-year-old whose favorite player is Kevin Durant, and though he's flattered by the comparisons to the players he's been mentioned with, he doesn't think he's earned it yet.
"Those are the best players in the world right now and I'm still in college." Wiggins said. "I think it's really unfair to compare me to someone of that caliber. Hopefully, one day I can be compared to
long way to go."
The most likely place to find Wiggins off the court is in his apartment playing Call of Duty and listening to Drake or Kendrick Lamar.
them, but I have a long way to go."
In one of Wiggins first official practices at Kansas, he drove the baseline and launched into the air with his head at rim level as he slammed the ball through with ease.
Junior point guard Naadir Tharpe said if his face wasn't in magazines and on the internet, it would be hard to tell he was the top-ranked player in the country coming out of high school.
on. He walks all the way to the showers and then turns back, like 'I forgot my ankle braces,' Tharpe said, laughing along with teammate Tarik Black.
Another day after practice, most of the team was cleaning up and getting ready to leave when Wiggins ambled over to take a shower.
"My man is about to get into the shower with his ankle braces
Wiggins wasn't expected to choose Kansas over Kentucky or Florida State by most media outlets.
Tharpe describes Wiggins as laid-back, goofy and even clumsy at times.
"That's just who he is," Tharpe said. "He doesn't try to show out, he's just always himself all the time."
"He can't live up to the hype. It's impossible ... But should we expect him to be great? Yes, we should."
BILL SELF
Kansas basketball coach
Together they pose for a photographer without saying a word to each other on the court at the Sprint Center, where the
earlier. "I would just say there is a lot of pressure on him right now. He is under a microscope from the world that is bigger than anybody would think, bigger than he knows. Whatever he does will be magnified times a million, just because of the hype. Whatever he says, does, however he acts."
two of them could meet again in March for the Big 12 Championship game.
"When I came on my visit, it just kind of caught my heart." Wiggins said, while sitting on James Naismith Court during Kansas basketball Media Day. "This is where I felt I belong. The team is just one unit, no one is really left out. I felt more at home here than anywhere else."
But Kansas felt like the best fit for him. The question often asked by reporters is, "Why Kansas?" and the answer is always the same. The team felt like a unit. No one person is valued any more or any less by the rest of the group.
Back in Kansas City, the Big 12 preseason player of the year, Oklahoma State guard Marcus Smart, and the freshman of the year, Wiggins, stand side-by-side.
"I wouldn't say he is overrated.",
Smart told USA Today a few days
Smart's jaw is clenched, his chin up and hands ready. He
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"I know if it was me," Smart said later in the day, "don't just give it to me. At least make me earn it. All the hype, good for him. Congratulations to him, don't get me wrong. I'm not taking anything away from Andrew Wiggins, anything like that. He's a good player. I hope he does well."
The expectations that have been placed on Wiggins are nearly unprecedented in college basketball.
looks like a boxer at the weigh-in of a heavyweight title fight.
Wiggins looks more like a kid being asked to pose for a photo on the first day of school. His hands in his pockets, a sheepish grin on his face and a black tie that is a couple inches too short.
The target on his back when he steps on the court against the
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best players at the college level, intensifies among media members, autograph seekers and whoever else thinks he could be valuable to them.
There are times, after thirty minutes of questions, that Wiggins has grown quiet and limited answers to one or two words. But if any of the hype has worn him down, he hasn't made it obvious.
"It could wear him down," Self said. "All the great players deal with crap and all the great players deal with expectations, time demands and all that stuff. He's dealing with that at an earlier age than most. But it's also preparation too. He can't live up to the hype. its impossible...But should we expect him to be great? Yes, we should."
Self said he will begin to limit Wigings' media appearances.
As he sat in Allen Fieldhouse that morning in September, he contemplated what it would be like to avoid the hype.
"I don't mind it," Wiggins said.
"I If I had the choice to not do it, I might not, but I don't know."
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Wiggins feels the weight of the expectations, but in the end he believes it will only strengthen him.
"There's pressure," Wiggins said, "but for me it's motivating, pressure. People give me big shoes to fill and I'm just doing my best to fill them."
Edited by Trevor Gra
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