Andrew Wiggins still wishes he wasn’t vaccinated, but he’s happy with the result

Golden State Warriors Andrew Wiggins elaborated on his COVID-19 vaccine stance — although he wishes he never got it, he’s glad having it allowed him to win. 

Andrew Wiggins just wrapped up a career year in every sense of the word. The 27-year-old small forward starred on a rocketing Warriors team, earning an All-Star nomination on his way to an NBA Championship.

But what allowed Wiggins to play the best basketball in his career is something that he still doesn’t agree with: the COVID-19 vaccine. Even to this day, Wiggins expresses concern about “putting all that stuff” in his body, but “the good part” is that having the vaccine allowed him to have the “best year” of his seven-year NBA career.

"“I still wish I didn’t get it, to be honest with you, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do” Wiggins told FanSided’s Mark Carman. “I did it, and I was an All-Star this year and champion, so that was the good part, just not missing out on the year, the best year of my career.”“But for my body, I just don’t like putting all that stuff in my body, so I didn’t like that and I didn’t like that it wasn’t my choice. I didn’t like that it was either get this or don’t play.”"

Andrew Wiggins still wishes he didn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine — yet he’s happy with the winning result

To be clear, Wiggins has been transparent for months about the fact that he did not want to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and felt “forced” to become vaccinated. He even applied for a religious exemption, yet he was denied by the NBA. New York City and San Francisco were two American cities with strict COVID-19 vaccine mandates for indoor events for a significant part of the 2021-22 season.

But, as FanSided’s Dipti S. Barot recently pointed out, Wiggins separated himself from athletes like Novak Djokovic and Aaron Rodgers by being honest about his vaccine status and reservations, and he went a step further than Kyrie Irving by choosing to get the vaccine for the greater good of his team.

"“As a Warriors fan and doctor who had spent the summer’s delta surge counseling sick patients and trying to get as many patients vaccinated as possible while we were losing thousands of Americans per day to Covid, I was livid,” Barot wrote. “Furious that a millionaire like Andrew Wiggins, who played in an arena that is a literal stone’s throw from one of the greatest academic medical centers in the world, a place where he could easily waltz in and have access to foremost experts in immunology and infectious disease — would take his doubts public instead of using all the resources at his disposal to educate himself.”“Sometimes we make sacrifices for the greater good. Kyrie didn’t and got first-round swept. Wiggins did and became an All-Star and has now been crowned an NBA champion, something nobody can ever take away from him. Sometimes when we do things for the greater good, in putting your team, or your community, ahead of yourself, you end up on top too.”"

As much as Wiggins chose to put the needs of the Warriors over his own reservations, he definitely got something out of it: an All-Star nod, an NBA Championship, and his first NBA accolades since winning Rookie of the Year in 2015.

Andrew Wiggins is partnering with Invisalign on how he gets his smile ready for game-day and post-game events.