Andrew Wiggins vs. 2003 LeBron

ByDAVID THORPE
December 23, 2014, 3:06 PM

— -- It makes sense in so many ways to compare this year's No. 1 overall draft pick, Andrew Wiggins, to the current best player in the world, LeBron James. Not just because each was the top pick in loaded draft classes -- and drafted by Cleveland -- but because they are both elite-level athletes at the wing position who dominated their peers in high school and were clearly the best prospects in their classes. That's no small similarity.

Since 1998, the only players who were ranked as the top players in their class by every major high school scouting service were LeBron, Dwight Howard, Greg Oden and Wiggins. In fact, scouts who studied Wiggins in high school wrote that he was the best athlete as a forward since LeBron.

Is Wiggins on track to be a superstar like LeBron? Let's examine how LeBron played as a rookie, compared to what we're seeing from Wiggins. Given that Wiggins spent a year getting fine coaching on the fundamentals at Kansas, is he a better player now than LeBron was in 2003?