'Stay tuned': Wiggins' status for Canadian Olympic team a mystery

Will Andrew Wiggins be part of Canada’s men's basketball lineup at the Olympics this summer in France?

“Stay tuned,” the Golden State Warriors wing said on Thursday on a conference call with select media.

“They had a great summer last year when they had qualified for the Olympics, all those guys did their thing and really put on [a show] for the country, and I'd be honored to play for our country,” he said.

Wiggins fell short of throwing his hat into the ring, however.

“We'll see what happens you know, you guys just stay tuned and, you know, we'll see what the road brings,” he said, as he fielded questions as part of a publicity push for CWENCH Hydration, a sports drink developed by one of the founders of BioSteel, one of Wiggins’ previous endorsement partners.

The 2022 All-Star and NBA champion tried to help Canada qualify for the 2016 Olympics, an effort that fell just short in Mexico City, and again in 2021 in Victoria as Canada tried to advance to the Summer Games in Tokyo, experiences he said he enjoyed, even if Canada fell short of the prize.

But in 2022 Wiggins chose not to commit to being part of Canada Basketball’s ‘summer core’, when the organization asked for a three-year commitment from 14 players in the build-up to the Paris Games this coming summer. He has not been part of the national team’s training camps the previous two summers.

The national team has done exceptionally well even without the presence of Wiggins, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft. Canada's strength is a deep rotation of guards and wings, most prominently Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who was a tournament all-star at the FIBA World Cup of Basketball last summer, where Canada won bronze, its first medal at a major global competition at the senior level since 1936 on the men’s side.

At one time it would seem almost incomprehensible that a team featuring Canada’s best men’s players could compete without Wiggins at his best, but the depth of Canadian talent at the moment gives general manager Rowan Barrett and head coach Jordi Fernandez plenty of options.

In addition to returning the likes of Gilgeous-Alexander, RJ Barrett, Dillon Brooks, Lu Dort and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Denver Nuggets star Jamal Murray – who is part of the ‘summer core’ and has been present at training camps the past two summers, although hasn’t suited up for Canada since 2015 – and emerging Indiana Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard are expected to play at the Olympics.

Given that Wiggins hasn’t been part of the program during the current Olympic cycle, having him parachute in at the end would likely require buy-in from the returning core as well.

Wiggins would give Canada some size and experience at the wing, but another question – on top of whether he’s willing to play or not – is which version of the Warriors forward would show up.

In his All-Star season, Wiggins averaged 17.2 points per game on career-best efficiency, and then played all-NBA level defence throughout most of the Warriors' run to the title.

But an extended absence due to an undisclosed personal matter limited him to 37 games in 2022-23, and his 2023-24 season was one of the least productive of his 10-year career, as the 28-year-old averaged a career-low 13.2 points per game and shot just 45.3 per cent from the floor. He was prominently mentioned in trade rumours as the Warriors struggled, but there was no rush around the league to take him on given the state of his game and the three years and $84.7 million remaining on his contract.

There was an uptick in his performance after the All-Star break as the Warriors tried to mount a playoff push, and Wiggins believes his 2021-22 form isn’t far off.

“That was some of the some of the best basketball I’ve ever played, you know, impacting the game in a lot of different ways and defensively,” said Wiggins. “I was really locked in and did a lot of things to change the game, change the outcome of the series … [and] you know, once you get that feeling of winning, being on top, being the best team in the world, you know, ... you want to feel that again, knowing what it takes to get there, how hard how hard it is to get there. You know, the sacrifices. You just want that again, you want that feeling.”

Canadian basketball fans got a taste of that feeling last summer when the men’s team qualified for the Olympics and won a bronze medal along the way.

As Canada heads to Paris, they would love to earn their way to the podium again.

Do they need Wiggins to make that happen?

Does Wiggins want to be part of it?

Stay tuned.