MINNEAPOLIS -- Marita Payne-Wiggins sprinted her way to a pair of Olympic silver medals during a time when doping East German women reigned supreme. Has a park named after her in Vaughan, Ontario. Left her folks behind in that Toronto-area suburb to chase championships at Florida State. Met her husband, Mitchell Wiggins, in the Seminoles athletic department's training facility.
Today, though, she's just mom. Which is why she, her former NBA-playing husband and family relocated from Vaughan to Minneapolis when the Timberwolves traded for her youngest son Andrew in August.
"It was something that we wanted to do because Andrew was only 19 years old going into a new world," said Payne-Wiggins, whose 1984 Canadian 4x100 and 4x400-meter relay teams claimed second at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. "To know that I'm here most of the time or some of the time just makes me feel better, you know? Instead of saying 'Mom, I'm sick,' or 'Mom, I'm this' and I'm in Canada and they're out here, that's kind of the worst feeling ever that you can't be near your child."
Cheryl Johnson-LaVine can relate.
The mother of Minnesota's other 20-year-old rookie, guard Zach LaVine, was a star softball player in her day. Married a former NFL and USFL football player by the name of Paul LaVine. Was the first to embrace her son when the Wolves drafted him 13th overall last June. Moved here with Zach's dad and youngest sister, Camryn LaVine, shortly thereafter.
"I don't think my mom was going to try to leave my side anytime soon," Zach LaVine said with a smile. "If I'm going to get an apartment, she's going to be down the street, or in the same state for a while. She got that motherly attachment."
That's been the case this year, with the LaVines keeping their home in the same Minneapolis apartment complex as Zach. His mother and sister have since moved back to their Bothell, Wash., home for personal reasons, Zach LaVine said, but plan on living in a similar situation here next season.
Wiggins shares a house near Cedar Lake with older siblings Stephanie and Mitchell Wiggins Jr., as well as one of his best friends from Toronto. Mitchell Sr., Marita and younger sisters Angelica and Taya -- both of whom played basketball for the state champion Hopkins program this past winter -- live close by in Golden Valley, with their mother bouncing back and forth between the Twin Cities and the Toronto area.
A deep athletic gene pool is one thing. But Wiggins and LaVine, both players say, have been granted more than that during quite possibly the most significant transition they'll ever face.
"They've been through what (I'm going) through right now," Andrew Wiggins said. "Whenever I need any words of advice or experience things, they always tell me, because they've been through it, they've done it.
"It's always good to have them."
It's not unprecedented for members of a star's inner circle to pack up and move alongside him. And this isn't Wiggins or LaVine's first time away from home; Wiggins migrated to West Virginia at the age of 16 to play basketball at Huntington Prep, and both lottery picks spent the 2013-14 school year in college -- Wiggins at Kansas and LaVine at UCLA -- before declaring for the draft.
But life on campus comes with built-in structure and fewer adult responsibilities, which most college graduates don't tackle for another three or four years.
"You're on your own," Zach LaVine said. "You're on your own in college, but you get sheltered a little bit more with the coaching staff and everything. Here, you have your own apartment, house, car, your responsibility to get to the arena, and if you're late you're fined. You've got to pay your own bills, cook. So it's always good to have that fatherly and motherly figure to help you out, because they've gone through it."
Finances. Cleanliness. A home-cooked meal -- LaVine's mom makes a mean French dip, while Wiggins is a fettuccine Alfredo guy.
And of course, there's darn Uncle Sam's annual visit.
"Freaking taxes," LaVine, who just turned 20 last month, said when asked what most surprised him about adulthood. "Taxes suck. They really stink. . . . I had no clue about taxes at all. I didn't know they hit your paycheck. There's something that you've always got to put money away for. I didn't know you've got to put money away for it, even though it's coming out your own money. It's like, 'What the heck?'"
But there's more than just paperwork and practical tasks -- what Payne-Wiggins commonly refers to as "life stuff." There are lessons in professionalism and how to carry one's self only a voice of experience can perfectly impart.
Mitchell Wiggins Sr. played in the NBA from 1983-92 but had his career derailed because of cocaine usage -- a mistake he's taught his six children to avoid at all costs. Paul LaVine played for the USFL's Portland Breakers in 1985 and three games for the Seahawks in 1987 after a standout football career at Utah State.
And few know the ins and outs of navigating pressure situations like a former Olympian.
"He's still a young pup growing up," Mitchell Wiggins Sr. said of his son, the favorite to win NBA rookie of the year. "(His age) is his only weakness. I just think that he's been blessed with special talent and great athleticism, but also I want to instill the knowledge in him, the IQ that separates you. Bird had the IQ. KG had it. Mike had it."
Mitch Sr. sits down with Andrew before every game and goes over scouting reports with him. Mom's advice is more philosophical in nature -- work your tail off, because you're not as good as the world says you are.
"Ability's really just mental," she often tells him.
Whenever he makes the short walk to his parents' pad, LaVine can tap into a similar font of knowledge.
"I come over when I want to talk or when I'm bored or different things like that," LaVine said, "but after a bad game or something like that, I'm not trying to talk."
The move has allowed Wiggins to attend his sisters' games at Hopkins. Angelica, a senior, played a reserve role on the Hopkins varsity squad, while Taya was a member of the Royals' sophomore squad. Both of them and LaVine's sister Camryn can often be found somewhere near the Target Center family waiting area after Wolves home games, anticipating a chance to greet their brothers once they've showered and entertained questions from the media.
It's never easy for a junior high or high school girl to uproot and leave behind close friends and relatives, but both players' sisters have adjusted well, they said.
"At first, I was like, 'We can move,'" Taya Wiggins said. "That's good, because we'll get a fresh start. And then I started to miss my friends back in Toronto. But it's fine now, because I visit them a lot."
It's required a series of sacrifices. But then again, that's the nucleus of tight-knit family life, anyway.
"It's a job. And when you're 19, you don't always realize it," said Jim Petersen, FOX Sports North's Wolves color analyst and a former Rockets teammate of Mitchell Wiggins Sr. Petersen's son, Sanjay Lumpkin, just wrapped his sophomore season of hoops at Northwestern. "You're going into a real job like that, you've got to have somebody to bounce things off of. I think having your folks there is a great idea. I would've done it if I was able to."
Follow Phil Ervin on Twitter
