UPDATE (3:55 p.m. ET): As expected, Minnesota Timberwolves forward Andrew Wiggins has been named NBA Rookie of the Year. Wiggins received an overwhelming 110 first-place votes.
The Chicago Bulls’ Nikola Mirotic, the second-place finisher, received 14 top votes, while No. 3 and 4 guys Nerlens Noel and Elfrid Payton got three apiece.
ORIGINAL STORY: MINNEAPOLIS — Andrew Wiggins started his NBA career at the front of his rookie class. He finished his first season there, too.
The Minnesota Timberwolves forward will be named Rookie of the Year on Thursday, a person with knowledge of the announcement told The Associated Press on Wednesday night. The person requested anonymity because an official announcement has not been made.
While so many of his teammates — and his fellow members of the 2014-15 draft class — went down with injuries that kept them out of action for months, Wiggins kept coming to work. Every game. Every day.
“I don’t want to hear anybody saying there is anyone close to him,” Timberwolves teammate and fellow rookie Zach LaVine said at the end of the season. “He had the best rookie year by far.”
Wiggins averaged 16.9 points and 4.6 rebounds while playing all 82 games as a rookie and averaged 39 minutes per game for a team that was routinely missing five, six, even eight players per night to injury over the last four months.
“It’s a tough league. It’s hard to play every game,” Wiggins said at the season’s end. “I feel proud of that.”
Wiggins was the No. 1 overall pick by the Cavaliers last June, but he was traded to the Timberwolves in August in the deal that sent disgruntled star Kevin Love to Cleveland. Wiggins won the first four Western Conference rookie of the month awards to make himself the prohibitive favorite to be named rookie of the year.
The Philadelphia 76ers’ Nerlens Noel, the Chicago Bulls’ Nikola Mirotic and the Orlando Magic’s Elfrid Payton closed the gap as the season wound down but not enough to overtake the dynamic Wiggins.
Thumbnail photo via Brad Rempel/USA TODAY Sports Images
