Andrew Wiggins: “I wasn’t ranked or nothing. I wasn’t known.”

“It gives [Canadian youth] hope, you know, because coming up when I was in Canada, I wasn’t ranked or nothing. I wasn’t known, I didn’t have no offers or anything like that.”

—Andrew Wiggins, the 19-year-old Thornhill native who on Thursday became the number-one pick in this year’s NBA draft, on the implications of his success for other Canadian NBA hopefuls. Wiggins isn’t the first to lament the narrowness of Canada’s basketball pipeline.