SAN FRANCISCO — Andrew Wiggins has always been the quiet one in the Golden State Warriors mix of stars, content with chilling in the background while the big personalities and loud voices hoard all the attention. The stage of personality, with its burdens, isn’t worth mounting.

He would sit back and smile, shaking his head as Draymond Green talked his talk, laughing uncontrollably as Steph Curry danced his dance. And when the festivities were done, win or lose, Wiggins would scoop up his young daughters and head home to be with his family, like his father taught him to do.

But over the previous two seasons, Warriors coach Steve Kerr noticed a different kind of quiet taking hold within one of his most important players. Something more than his usual reservedness. Something deeper. As Mitchell Wiggins’ health deteriorated rapidly, his son withdrew. From the team, from the game, from everything.

“It was brutal because it was an ongoing thing for such a long time where his dad was suffering,” Kerr said. “To see someone you love, your father, suffering for such a long period of time — you can imagine how that would impact your daily existence.”

Wiggins took an extended leave of absence to be with his father two seasons ago and missed some time here and there last season as Mitchell went through various treatments. His numbers declined significantly, his defensive energy disappeared and the Warriors went right down with him.

Those who suffer in silence tend to sacrifice empathy. What exactly was wrong, how deep his hurt, was kept locked behind Wiggins’ penchant for privacy. Thus, he was a central figure of blame for the Warriors missing the playoffs and became the subject of the fan base’s trade wishes.

If only fans knew how much none of it mattered.

“Not caring about basketball as much,” Wiggins said. “You got your life to worry about. You’ve got certain things going on in your life that are your priority. Basketball is kind of in the shadows. You try to figure out a good balance.”

Mitchell Wiggins died in September at the age of 64, devastating a close-knit family. Mitchell and his wife, Marita Payne-Wiggins, were both stellar athletes in their younger days, and they helped their children navigate the cutthroat world of professional sports while not losing sight of the most important things in life.

Three months later, the fog has lifted enough for his soul to breathe. The hurt has settled. After wading through months on top of months of pending grief, bereavement has subsided. Life continues for Wiggins, even with the dad-sized hole in his heart.

Where Wiggins once felt lost and helpless while watching his father suffer through various treatments, he has managed to rediscover his spirit and find reconnection in the wake of his death.

It has been an up-and-down start to this season for the Warriors as they search for the help Curry needs to make another run in the Western Conference. One of the most encouraging signs for them to this point is the reappearance of Wiggins’ smile and the return to the souped-up role player who was so integral to the Warriors’ 2022 title.

After two years of missed games, uneven performances and trade rumors, Wiggins is showing signs of emerging from the fog. His father’s death in September, and the long health struggles that preceded it, shook him and his family to the bone. The mourning will never abate, but Wiggins looks like a man at peace with his surroundings.

“My mind is definitely in a better place,” he said.

It has been a long road to get here. One game before the All-Star break in 2023, Wiggins left the Warriors. He missed the final 25 games of the regular season for what the team called personal reasons. No more specifics were given at the time, and he returned for the playoffs, where the Warriors were bounced in the second round by the Los Angeles Lakers.

Wiggins was a more regular presence last season, playing in 71 games. But for a large portion of the season, he wasn’t really there. He averaged just 13.2 points per game, almost four points lower than his previous career low, as a rookie with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2014-15. He shot 35.8 percent from 3-point range, took only 2.7 free throws per game and floated on defense to the point that Kerr chose to take Wiggins out of the starting lineup for the first time in his career. The Warriors knew Wiggins was carrying a heavy burden while his father was in and out of the hospital.

This season, his numbers are back where they belong — 17.3 points, 4.1 rebounds and 42.6 percent from 3-point range, all numbers at or better than his lone All-Star season in 2021-22. There are still uneven nights, like a 1-for-7 shooting performance from 3 in a loss Monday to the Indiana Pacers. But there are also real glimpses of the difference-maker Wiggins can be, including in a game last weekend against his former team.

As the Warriors started to pull away from the Timberwolves in the fourth quarter on Saturday, burly forward Julius Randle grabbed the ball and took Wiggins to the paint. If this was last season, Wiggins might have given in as Randle backed him down. He might not have been able to summon the strength and the give-a-damn to bow his back, absorb the first hit and respond with force.

Wiggins was giving up a few inches and more than 50 pounds, but he clenched his jaw and got into the fight. He took the first collision, and then a second as Randle backed him down and elevated for a turnaround jumper. Wiggins held his ground, kept his base strong and went right up with Randle, shoving the shot right down the Wolves forward’s throat to preserve a seven-point lead with three minutes to play.

The defensive stand set up a Curry 3, and then another to balloon the lead to double digits. Then came the hammer, an alley-oop dunk from Wiggins and a finger-roll layup in the last two minutes to ice the victory against his former team.

“Just really grinding and just getting back to myself and being with my family and friends,” he said earlier this month. “Just remembering that I’ve been doing this for a long time at a high level. This is what I can do. At the end of the day, just going out there, defending, playing two-way basketball.”

Just like dad back in the day.

Mitchell Wiggins was a dawg on the court. He was an All-American at Florida State and a first-round draft choice of the Indiana Pacers in 1983. But he made a name for himself as a defensive specialist and rugged, rebounding guard for the great Houston Rockets teams of the mid-1980s.

“He was a warrior,” said Timberwolves television analyst Jim Petersen, who played with Mitchell on those Rockets teams. “He was so competitive. He was an amazing offensive rebounder for a guard, and that tells you something about his toughness. And then also he was a lockdown defender as well. He was our defensive stopper.”

While at Florida State, Mitchell met his future wife, Marita Payne, a sprinter who went on to win two silver medals for Canada in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. They were star athletes, but family was at the center of everything. Andrew has two older brothers and three younger sisters, and the children learned about love, connection and trust by watching their parents.

When Andrew was traded to the Timberwolves before his rookie season in a deal that sent Kevin Love to Cleveland to team up with LeBron James, Mitchell, Marita and their three daughters moved from Toronto to Minnesota to be closer to him. Wiggins’ sisters were fixtures at Target Center during his time there, and the importance of family was a constant theme of his six seasons with the organization.

“You can see the tight-knit group that they were. I mean, it’s pretty evident that family is the most important thing to Andrew,” Petersen said. “And that’s the thing. Your heart was breaking for Andrew when you knew Mitchell was going through his health problems because it was affecting Andrew so much on the court. You could see how connected they are as a group.”

The bond between father and son was no joke. After Wiggins was the second-best player during the Warriors’ run to the championship in 2022, Mitchell Wiggins beamed, but maybe not for the reason you would expect.

The basketball was great, of course. For the first seven seasons of his career, Wiggins had been assailed as a disappointment, a No. 1 overall pick with all the physical talent in the world but without the motor to make a difference. He was a worthy wingman to Curry’s brilliance. Mitchell reveled in the redemption, but he couldn’t stop talking about the father Andrew was to his two daughters, about the brother he was to his siblings, about the son he was to him and Marita.

“Everybody realized the talent he had early on, the athletic talent,” Mitchell told The Athletic in the champagne-soaked postgame celebration. “But the biggest thing that me and his mom are proud of is the man and the son that he became. He’s a father that adores his kids, like I adore my kids. When I see him with his girls, his eyes light up. As a father, that’s when I’m most proud.”