National Basketball Association

Is Andrew Wiggins the NBA's unlikeliest All-Star starter ever?

Updated Feb. 16, 2022 12:40 p.m. ET

By Ric Bucher
FOX Sports NBA Writer

From a talent perspective, the only surprise about Andrew Wiggins being named a starter in this weekend’s 2022 NBA All-Star Game is that it took this long — eight years into his career — to happen. All-Star accolades are what you’d expect for someone ranked the No. 1 talent coming out of high school and, one year later, taken No. 1 in the NBA Draft.

Considering what really goes into a player being named an All-Star starter, though, it would not have been surprising at all if Wiggins had never received All-Star recognition. And as a starter? He had no chance.

Why? Because it’s no more a measure of pure talent than a house’s value is about its construction. In both cases, it’s about location, location, location. And timing, timing, timing. What makes Wiggins’ selection even more remarkable is that no one would’ve predicted at the start of the season that this would be the place and time for him to do it.

Including Wiggins. "I’m in a totally different position than I was," he said, smiling.

For anyone who has forgotten, Wiggins initially balked at getting vaccinated for the COVID-19 virus; had he not relented, he would’ve been, at best, in the same situation as the Brooklyn Nets' Kyrie Irving, a seven-time All-Star who has played 14 games this season and finished ninth in All-Star voting among Eastern Conference guards.

"I’m still not happy that I did it," Wiggins said. "But I’m happy that I’m here and I’m an All-Star."

"Here" was an outdoor deck on the back side of the Warriors’ Chase Center arena, looking out over the sun-dappled waters of San Francisco Bay. "Here" is also on a Warriors team uniquely suited to repair and elevate the profile Wiggins brought with him after five-and-a-half seasons in Minnesota, which was: a prodigiously talented player who had no idea how to effectively utilize his talent and wasn’t particularly interested in finding out.

It’s one thing to have teammates speak up for your work ethic and attention to detail; it’s another when those teammates are Draymond Green, a perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate, and Andre Iguodala, a Finals MVP with one of the league’s highest basketball IQs. Iguodala inspired a profound shift of perspective on Wiggins by sharing that when Iguodala was with the Miami Heat last year, Jimmy Butler, who played with Wiggins in Minnesota and at one point insinuated that he was both soft and overpaid, spoke highly of the young star despite those recriminations.

"Jimmy doesn't like anybody," Iguodala said. "So when Jimmy said he liked Wiggs, I kind of started looking at [him] different."

Green, meanwhile, altered the view of Wiggins as a one-dimensional player who cared only about his offense. "Since he’s been here, he has shown he’s a very capable defender, and he has taken it up a couple of notches … which has been great for us," Green said. "He’s really changing the game at that end for us."

A few other factors also worked in Wiggins’ favor, beginning with the Warriors’ strong start, despite the absence of All-Star shooting guard Klay Thompson, who made his return after a two-plus-year, injury-driven absence on Jan. 9, 39 games into the season, and has yet to find a consistent rhythm or appear consistently in Golden State's lineup. Green also has been struggling since December with a back issue that has forced him to miss the previous 19 games and counting.

Throw in that the Western Conference frontcourt field is missing perennial All-Stars such as Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Anthony Davis because of injuries, and an opening that would’ve been unlikely in almost any other season appeared.

All that might’ve been enough for Wiggins to be selected by the league’s Western Conference coaches for one of the seven All-Star reserve spots, along with Green. Being chosen as a starter, though, isn’t just about how well a player and his team are performing. It’s also about popularity among fans and respect among players and media members, all of whom vote on the game’s 10 starters, with the fan vote accounting for 50% and players and media members splitting the other 50%.

Wiggins has never tried to cultivate much of a relationship with the media. It’s another reason the Warriors have been such an ideal fit for him. As a No. 1 pick and one of the Timberwolves’ top two players, along with Karl Anthony-Towns, Wiggins was expected to be the leader, team spokesman and face of the franchise. He has little interest in any of those duties.

"I like to hoop. I like to play basketball," he said. "The media side, I guess, is something that comes with it at this level. I was never huge on it."

Full disclosure: I did not vote for Wiggins. My three Western Conference frontcourt choices were LeBron James, Nikola Jokic and Rudy Gobert. The vast majority of players and other media members did not vote for him, either: only four of 98 media members and 46 of 171 players. Had things been decided by player and media votes, Gobert and Green would’ve been selected ahead of Wiggins.

But Wiggins was far and away the most popular of the three in the fan poll, receiving more than 3.4 million votes. Green had slightly more than 2.4 million, and Gobert had a paltry 767,505. Credit for that goes to something other than Wiggins’ talent as well.

First, there’s how the NBA voting app functions, with a default setting that features All-Star candidates in order of their scoring averages. That gave Wiggins a decided advantage over Green and Gobert, whose All-Star qualifications are based on attributes other than scoring.

Then there’s overall popularity. The Warriors are scheduled to play 41 games on national TV this season; the Jazz have 26.

Finally, there’s the business savvy of the Warriors. They hired South Korean K-Pop star, Warriors fan and social media influencer BamBam as a global ambassador. BamBam’s posts to his more than 15 million Instagram followers and nine million Twitter followers received, according to SF Gate, more attention than any other post endorsing a player for All-Star consideration. It didn’t hurt that the Warriors had BamBam post on Jan. 7, one of several days when the NBA counted every vote twice.

On Jan. 6, Wiggins trailed George for the third and final spot in the fan poll by nearly 140,000 votes. On Jan. 7, he had pulled ahead by more than 56,000.

I asked Wiggins to give me three reasons he thought he was an All-Star for the first time. "I’m a winner, I’m one of the best defenders in the league, and I’m the second-leading scorer on the team with the second-best record in the NBA," he said.

All of which are both new and true reasons, and all of which undoubtedly contributed to his selection. They just weren't the only ones.

Ric Bucher is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. He previously wrote for Bleacher Report, ESPN The Magazine and The Washington Post and has written two books, "Rebound," the story of NBA forward Brian Grant’s battle with young onset Parkinson’s, and "Yao: A Life In Two Worlds," the story of NBA center Yao Ming. He also has a daily podcast, "On The Ball with Ric Bucher." Follow him on Twitter @RicBucher.