Aaron Wiggins Saved Basketball: How popular Thunder role player became a meme

Cody Burton, then a high school sophomore, was half asleep in his Hurricane, West Virginia, home when he created a meme that makes no sense yet somehow needs no explanation: “Aaron Wiggins Saved Basketball.”

The words, in classic meme fashion, framed a GIF of Wiggins, in his Maryland jersey, screaming into a camera.

The Thunder had just drafted the Terrapins wing with the 55th pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. Because Burton liked Wiggins as a prospect, Burton declared Wiggins the savior of basketball well before Wiggins became an adored role player in Oklahoma City.

Burton’s words were prophetic.

Wiggins, averaging 15 minutes per game off the Thunder’s bench, is the ultimate utility guy. He’s averaging a career-low 6.3 points per game in his third season, but he’s shooting an astounding 50.5% (54-of-107) from 3-point range — a mark that would rank second in the NBA if Wiggins qualified (minimum 82 makes).

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Wiggins is better known for his timely cuts to the hoop, his hustle plays and his pesky defense. Wiggins logged his first start of the season Friday against Phoenix in place of the injured Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Outside of OKC’s Big Three, Wiggins might have the highest approval rating of any player among Thunder fans.

The guy saved basketball, after all.

“I’m literally just Aaron Wiggins,” he said in his exit interview last April.

That too turned into a meme.

On Thunder media day in October, this was the first question to Wiggins: “What things have you done this summer to continue saving basketball?”

Wiggins gave a canned answer, ending with, “just trying to take it one day at a time, saving more and more basketball every day.”

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OK, so what’s going on here? How did this whole Aaron Wiggins Saved Basketball business become a thing?

I crowd-sourced for answers on Thunder Reddit and a Maryland basketball blog.

Wiggins said the meme dated back to his college days, but none of the Terrapins fans I heard from knew anything about it. Wiggins was in a Maryland uniform, yes, but the meme didn’t originate when Wiggins was at Maryland.

I needed the help of Thunder fans.

“Oh Joe, sweet naive Joe, you really thought it’d be that easy?” one Reddit user replied.

The snark (which I appreciated) didn’t end there.

“It started the first time he saved basketball, obviously,” another said.

“It is a religion,” said another.

Then I received an email from Christian Huerta, a 28-year-old Thunder fan in Austin, Texas.

Huerta cracked the code, pointing me to one of Burton’s two Twitter accounts.

I messaged Burton: “Random question: Did you start the Aaron Wiggins Saved Basketball meme?”

“Yeah lol,” he responded.

Hallelujah.

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Burton, who runs the @LuDortBurner fan account, which has 16,000 followers on X, was down to chat.

Burton said he got the idea from a baseball meme. The one Burton remembers was “Marwin Gonzalez saved baseball.”

Marwin Gonzalez played for the Astros, Twins, Red Sox and Yankees. He was never an All-Star, but a utility man who played all over the diamond. Sound familiar? Marwin Gonzalez is like the baseball version of Aaron Wiggins.

Saying “Mike Trout saved baseball” isn’t clever. Neither is saying “LeBron James saved basketball.” But Gonzalez and Wiggins? Those are deep cuts. Names only the diehards know.

The more Burton shared the meme, or just tweeted “Aaron Wiggins Saved Basketball,” the more it spread and evolved. The original meme is hardly in use anymore.

“After Wiggins kept on growing and growing as a player, it just took off even more,” Burton said.

To the point where Wiggins has been asked about the meme several times and his teammates have referenced it.

“Yeah, that’s crazy,” Burton said.

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Burton, now a senior in high school, was born and raised in central West Virginia, basically no-man’s land for an NBA fan.

He started following the Thunder in 2015-16, Kevin Durant’s last season in Oklahoma City, but he went all-in on his fandom in the dog days of the pandemic, before the bubble playoffs in 2020.

Lu Dort, still on a two-way contract, scored 30 points in a Game 7 loss to the Rockets in the first round of the playoffs. Still a key cog in the Thunder’s starting lineup, the defensive-minded Dort became Burton’s favorite player, hence Burton’s @LuDortBurner handle.

Burton used to tweet each one of Dort’s baskets, rebounds and assists. The better Dort got, the more unsustainable that became.

Dort, by the way, is still Burton’s all-time favorite Thunder.

“He’ll always be,” Burton said.

But wait a second. Aaron Wiggins saved basketball. Burton himself penned that verse in the Thunder basketball bible. What more does a guy have to do? Burton laughed but did not answer.

And just to be clear, what does Aaron Wiggins saved basketball even mean? It makes Wiggins sound like a superhero of the sport.

“I’m not sure if it truly has a meaning, but, like, by saving the sport as a whole, his existence…”

Burton didn’t know what he was saying. I didn’t know what I was asking.

There’s no explanation. It just is.

“Shoutout everybody who believes I saved basketball,” Wiggins said after a game in early March.

Shoutout to Cody Burton for spreading the word.

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Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at jmussatto@oklahoman.com. Support Joe's work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Aaron Wiggins Saved Basketball: How Thunder role player became a meme