Maryland basketball has produced plenty of NBA players, including some lottery picks, long-time pros and a few stars over the years. But for all that success, it had been 20 years since a Maryland product won an NBA championship -- until Aaron Wiggins ended the drought Thursday night, playing a key role off the bench as the Oklahoma City Thunder captured the franchise's first title since 1976, when they were the Seattle Supersonics.
He's the first Terp to win an NBA ring since Tony Massenburg in 2005, and one of just four to do it. Adrian Branch was the first, earning a ring with the 1987 Lakers. Keith Booth, the Baltimore native who helped resurrect the program under Gary Williams, was part of the Bulls' 1998 title team during Michael Jordan's final run. Massenburg, a rugged big man who spent time with a dozen NBA teams, finally got his ring in 2005 with the Spurs.
Wiggins played 12 minutes and didn't score in the Thunder's 103-91 Game Seven win over the Indiana Pacers, but he impacted the series earlier. He had 18 points in a pivotal Game Two win, 14 in Game 4 while hitting four of seven from deep, and led all players in plus-minus entering Game 5 of the Finals.
Wiggins didn't arrive in the league with much fanfare. When he left Maryland in 2021 after averaging 14.5 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists as a junior—including a memorable 27-point outburst in an NCAA Tournament win over **Alabama**—he wasn't even a lock to be drafted. Despite having prototypical size and athleticism and finishing his college career strong, he was passed over by most teams before Oklahoma City took him 55th overall, just five picks from the end of the draft.
Three years later, he's carved out a key role on the NBA's deepest roster. Wiggins averaged 12.0 points, 3.9 rebounds and 1.8 assists in the regular season on 48.8 percent shooting from the field and 38.3 percent from three. In the playoffs, he posted 6.3 points and 2.3 rebounds per game while giving the Thunder a steady boost as their seventh or eighth man, often making momentum-changing plays when the stars needed a breather.
"The moment is never too big for him. He never gets too high or too low," said Keith Gatlin, Wiggins' former high school coach and a former Maryland point guard himself. "In high school, I used to push him—'I need you to go, I need you to do more.' Once he picked that up toward the end of his junior year, the rest was history. It's really tough to go to the arena not knowing if you're going to play or how much. But he's never let it shake him."
Wiggins himself reflected on his journey earlier in the series: "I think about it all the time, being from Greensboro, my journey early on, it taught me to be grateful. To take advantage of the opportunities I get. I was kind of like a late bloomer. That helped my journey. It kind of helped me mentally to not be afraid, regardless of what moment may be in front of me, or of what is asked of me."
Now he joins a small, elite group of Terps to win NBA titles.
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