Healed Wiggins is ready for second season

Her right knee has healed. Her game is improving. Her attitude is upbeat.

After a whirlwind year in 2008, Candice Wiggins is preparing to return to Minnesota and rejoin the Lynx, hopefully as a starter.

Last season Wiggins was named the WNBA's Sixth Player of the Year as a rookie.

This offseason she is living in Valencia, Spain, playing for Ros Casares, that country's top women's basketball team. Her team is 20-1 with five regular-season games left, followed by playoffs which could go into early May.

That will have give Wiggins plenty of time to get ready for the Lynx's lone exhibition game on May 23 against Indiana at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn. The regular-season opener for the Lynx is June 6 against Chicago at the Target Center.

Meantime, Wiggins is enjoying herself. "The biggest thing for me, it's just a dream playing with DeLisha Milton-Jones of the Sparks," said Wiggins, referring to a two-time Olympian and 11-year WNBA player. "[Ros Casares] is a veteran team, and I'm like a baby on the team."

Wiggins is averaging 9.1 points and 2.6 steals in eight games, playing almost 21 minutes per game.

Last year her Lynx season was cut short by a few games because of a knee injury. She had arthroscopic surgery for a torn lateral meniscus in her right knee on Sept. 22 at the Stanford University Medical Center.

She could not play basketball for almost three months as she rehabilitated.

"My knee is feeling so much better," Wiggins said. "I have a lot more lift when I jump. I had two surgeries on my other knee in high school in 2003. I think this surgery balanced my knees out."

Wiggins said little aspects of her game are improving, such as her one-on-one moves.

"I can't imagine my life without basketball," Wiggins said. "That's something I have always done every year since I was 9 or 10. The most I took off was a month or two."

So she could not pass up the opportunity to play in Spain, Wiggins said.

Her team recently lost a best-of-three series outside its league to Moscow Spartak in the EuroLeague playoffs. Newly acquired Lynx teammate Kelly Miller played for Spartak and impressed Wiggins.

"Kelly is focused on what she is doing," Wiggins said. "She is so consistent, so skilled. She competes and she is smart. She will be fun to play with."

Player salaries in Spain are higher than the WNBA offers -- "we make more but the season is longer" -- but Wiggins has had language problems despite taking five years of Spanish. "In Europe, Spanish is different than in South America," Wiggins said.

Her coach's pregame speeches, all in Spanish, leave her bewildered. But nearly every day, Wiggins sends an instant message to Lynx teammate Seimone Augustus, playing in Turkey. The two have formed a close bond. Wiggins has high expectations this season for a team that has made the playoffs only twice in its first 10 years.

The Lynx (16-18) tied for sixth place last season in the Western Conference.

"Last year we scratched the surface," Wiggins said. "Personally, it was not as great a season as I expected. But now we are a year older."

That could be crucial.

Wiggins said she remembers riding in a car with Nicky Anosike, the Lynx's rookie center last season. "This was after we knew we were not going to be in the playoffs," Wiggins said. "And we said, 'Oh my gosh, think how better we can be, we have a lot of room to grow.' It's going to be a better year."

Wiggins said she will do whatever her Lynx coaches ask of her. "Granted I'd love to start, that is something I feel I can do," Wiggins said. "I'm a more mature, hungry and determined."

She said her college teams at Stanford, in her first three seasons there, lost a lot of close games like the Lynx did last season. But when she was a senior, she took the Cardinal to the NCAA title game.

"With experience, you know how to close out games, you know what it takes," Wiggins said.

Long-suffering Lynx fans sure hope so.