Candice Wiggins was a toddler when her father, Alan Wiggins, a professional baseball player died due to complications from AIDs. He passed away ten months before Magic Johnson boldly came forward about his own status. Once Johnson did, Candice’s mother decided to take her three children out of basketball where Alan had faced racism, and became, what Candice calls, a “basketball family.” Those three children went onto college on basketball scholarships. Candice ended up at Stanford, where she graduated as the highest all-time leading scorer in the Pac-10 women's basketball history. She described her Stanford coach Tara VanDeVeer, had who coached the 1996 Olympic Team, as "like a second mother to me."

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