At some point, the title of the Next Great Basketball Player in the World will be passed.

It is inevitable, and unenviable, for the candidates considered.

After a generation of players — from Kobe Bryant and Grant Hill to Jerry Stackhouse and Harold Miner — were saddled with the label of the “Next Michael Jordan,” Canadian import Andrew Wiggins, Kansas’ 6-foot-8 freshman forward, has taken the torch for a new era, as the best high school prospect since LeBron James.

“He’s stunning athletically,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said of Wiggins. “His talent level absolutely matches the hype. He’s got everything you want in an athlete.

“He’ll make plays from the first game that will be ‘SportsCenter’ Top 10 plays.”

Wiggins reportedly is leaning heavily toward entering the NBA Draft after the season, particularly if he leads Kansas to a national title.

Former St. John’s coach Fran Fraschilla, an ESPN analyst, compares the McDonald’s All-American’s athleticism to perhaps the most freakishly gifted athlete in college basketball history — N.C. State’s David “Skywalker” Thompson. CBS analyst Doug Gottlieb sees Wiggins as a cross between James, Kevin Durant and Tracy McGrady, with Wiggins’ athleticism unlike anything Gottlieb has seen since Kevin Garnett came out of high school in 1995.

Though Kansas assistant coach Norm Roberts said Wiggins has more natural abilities than any coach could ever dream, the 18-year-old isn’t relying on those gifts.

“He’s extremely coachable. He wants to be great and he wants to learn,” said Roberts, whose staff has Wiggins operating on the perimeter more than in high school. “When he does something wrong, you correct him and he says, ‘Yes sir, no sir, got it sir.’ … He’s all about winning. He’s an unselfish kid.”

Yet, with all the praise and all the hype bordering on hyperbole, Fraschilla said he isn’t sure the freshman phenom will be the No. 1 pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, a position he has had locked up in nearly every mock draft over the past two years.

“I think before we automatically crown Andrew Wiggins the No. 1 pick in the draft, we need to take a long, long look at Julius Randle,” Fraschilla said.

Rob Fulford, Wiggins’ coach at Huntington Prep in West Virginia — which had a 58-5 record in Wiggins’ two seasons — scoffs at the comparison to Randle, a 6-foot-9 freshman at Kentucky. Wiggins’ game is overly critiqued because he’s the top prospect, while other highly touted freshmen, such as Randle and Duke’s Jabari Parker, have their positives accentuated, Fulford said.

Fulford believes Wiggins’ defense — his passion to lock down the best player on the opposition — has gone largely unnoticed, and separates him from others.

“He’ll be the best defender in college basketball,” Fulford said. “I’ve seen Jabari literally not get shots off [against him]. He completely dominated Julius Randle in an AAU event, so much that Julius couldn’t get his shot off. [Wiggins] is a lock-down, in-your-face defender. He enjoys the challenges.”

One game in particular stands out to the Huntington Prep coach, following a scathing Sports Illustrated article published on Wiggins that questioned his passion, work ethic and whether he could be the latest Canadian star to flop. He didn’t say much before or after the game about the story, but Wiggins exploded for 57 points in a rout over the Marietta College JV Pioneers last February, making 24 of 28 shots and grabbing 13 rebounds.

“That’s a lot of what he’s going to do over the next few months [when criticized],” predicted (Huntington, W.Va.) Herald-Dispatch sports reporter Grant Traylor, who covered Wiggins at Huntington Prep, spending time with him four days a week.

Off the court, Wiggins couldn’t be more different from James, the player to whom he often is compared, Fulford said. While James hobnobbed with Jay Z in high school and got a tattoo “Chosen1” on his back, the understated Wiggins doesn’t seek the spotlight, even if his magnetic on-court performances have drawn millions of YouTube hits.

His circle is tight, made up of his family and close friends he trusts. When Wiggins picked Kansas, it surprised many who felt Kentucky and Florida State were his leaders.

“He’s sort of a mystery, or an enigma. You never know what he’s thinking,” Traylor said. “He doesn’t like all the hoopla surrounding him. He’s a kid who loves the ball. That’s all he needs.”

He’s a normal, goofy kid who likes to joke around, routinely messing up an assistant coach’s hair at Huntington or untying Fulford’s shoes. In his free time, he played so much Xbox at Huntington Prep that Fulford joked, “he may have a ‘Call of Duty’ endorsement before he gets a shoe deal.”

Whenever the shoe deal comes, it will be big. Recently, there was an erroneous report that Adidas was preparing to offer Wiggins a $180 million contract once he declares for the draft.

Despite the fact the offer was a hoax, it sounded believable. His hype has made it so. Even if much of the nation hasn’t seen him, most have already bought in.

Now, Wiggins will have to prove he’s worthy of all this adulation.