The three Wiggins brothers have basketball in their blood
The Wiggins brothers - all three of them - have hoops in their DNA; now the youngest, Andrew, is tipped to follow in his father's footsteps and join the NBA as a lottery pick in the June draft
An annual youth membership at the Dufferin Clark Community Centre in Vaughan, in Ontario, Canada, runs US$15 these days, which means even now it would cost Mitchell Wiggins just US$45 a year to keep his boys happy.
Sure, his three kids - Mitchell Jnr the oldest, Nick the middle son, Andrew the youngest of the bunch - had other interests growing up. But it was the basketball court that lured them in like a magnet, from an early age each trying to follow in their father's footsteps.
"They all three had a dream to follow what I did," said Wiggins, who played for several years in the NBA before finishing his career overseas. "They grew up in the gym, and mom and dad are athletes, so a lot of things came naturally for them. But they pushed each other, too."
The three precocious Wiggins boys, bound by brotherhood and basketball, already have pushed each other a long way from those simpler days at the rec centre just down the street.
By now, everybody is familiar with Andrew, the consensus No 1 overall recruit this past season and now a likely lottery pick in June's NBA draft - provided he leaves No 16 Kansas after his freshman season. He has already drawn comparisons to Tracy McGrady, who once starred for the Toronto Raptors, not far from where the Wiggins boys grew up in the suburb of Vaughan.
His shooting star is so bright, though, that it's often left his two older brothers in the shadows, both of them harbouring hoop dreams of their own.
