Largely matched up with Celtics star Jayson Tatum, Warriors forward Andrew Wiggins just outplayed Tatum (and everyone else on the floor) in an NBA Finals game.
A 14-year-old Tatum never saw it coming.
In 2012, high school seniors Wiggins (headed to Kansas) and Jabari Parker (headed to Duke) were jockeying to top recruiting rankings. And Tatum weighed in
Tatum in 2012:
Jabari Parker is better the Andrew Wiggins
— Jayson Tatum (@jaytatum0) October 27, 2012
The Wiggins-Parker debate continued into 2014, when they were largely considered the top two prospects in the NBA draft. The Cavaliers took Wiggins No. 1 (then traded him to the Timberwolves that offseason), leaving Parker to the Bucks at No. 2.
Wiggins, in an up and down career, has found his footing with Golden State. Parker fell out of the league when waived by Tatum’s Celtics earlier this year.
Though their shared Duke allegiance might have made Tatum partial to Parker, the connection is limited. Duke didn’t discover Tatum until the next year.
It really seems Tatum just had a basketball take that aged poorly – and is now confronting him directly.
How much you want to ridicule Tatum for an opinion he held at age 14 is in the eye of the beholder. It is an amusing situation.
But personally, I think it’d more fair (though less funny) to start with the professional analysts who ranked Parker over Wiggins.
