Kentucky's NBA crew doesn't need MBAs

Devin Booker leads the Wildcat takeover of the NBA playoffs.

Devin Booker isn’t afraid to shoot 2-pointers. He will actually participate in a game when he has an ache or a pain. He came into the NBA with clear deficiencies and has now made them strengths. He has been the best player in the week-old postseason, and his Phoenix Suns have a 3-1 series lead over the Shorthanded Los Angeles Clippers, who might begin peddling street clothes in their merchandise catalog.

But Booker wasn’t a starter during his apprenticeship season at the University of Kentucky, and if the alumni gathered for a weekend and played pickup, he wouldn’t necessarily be the first player picked.

If you owned an NBA team, you would be wise to tell your general manager not to draft or acquire a player unless he has exhausted all Kentucky possibilities first. The impact of John Calipari’s crash-course program gets more staggering by the week.

There are 16 Kentucky alumni in these playoffs.

Thirteen were first-round picks.

Two were first-overall picks (Anthony Davis in 2012, Karl-Anthony Towns in 2015).

Ten averaged more than 20 points in the 2022-23 regular season.

Four averaged more than eight rebounds and Davis and Julius Randle averaged a double-double.

More important, when it comes to Kentucky recruiting, seven made over $30 million this season.

The Big Blue Nation would be a killer NBA franchise all by itself and, providentially, could afford all the salary cap thresholds that it would demolish.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

Here’s the depth chart of the Wildcat playoff participants alone:

BIGS

Towns: 20.8 points, 7.1 rebounds, $33.8 million.

Davis: (25.9 points, 12.5 rebounds,$37.9 million.

Bam Adebayo: 20.4 points, 9.2 rebounds, $30.35 million.

Jarred Vanderbilt: 7.9 points, 7.5 rebounds, $4.3 million.

WINGS

Randle: 25.1 points, 10 rebounds, $23.7 million.

Trey Lyles: 7.6 points, 4.1 rebounds, $2.6 million.

Wenyen Gabriel: 5.5 points, $1.87 million.

Brandon Boston: 6.5 points, $1.56 million.

GUARDS

Booker: 27.8 points, 4.5 rebounds, $33.8 million.

De’Aaron Fox: 25 points, 4.2 rebounds, $30.3 million.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 31.4 points, 4.8 rebounds,$30.9 million.

Jamal Murray: 20.0 points, 4.0 rebounds, $31.6 million.

Tyeese Maxey: 20.3 points, 2.9 rebounds, $2.73 million.

Tyler Herro: 20.1 points, 5.4 rebounds, $5.7 million.

Immanuel Quickley: 14.9 points, 4.2 rebounds, $2.3  million.

Malik Monk: 13.5 points, 2.6 rebounds, $9.4 million.

If you’re looking for help on the wing, you could pluck a couple of candidates from also-ran teams. Keldon Johnson averaged 20 points for San Antonio, and P.J. Washington 15 for Charlotte.

You also might be wondering why Calipari has so often parlayed all these gushers of basketball talent into sludge at NCAA tournament time. His first year might have been the most egregious. That 2010 team had John Wall, Demarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and five others who made NBA rosters. It lost to West Virginia in a regional final at Syracuse, a game made memorable by a sign in the Carrier Dome: “We love our Cousins in Kentucky.”

But the 2011 team made the Final Four and the 2012 Wildcats won the NCAA championship, with Davis and six others who showed up on NBA rosters but had little impact.

In a six year period the Wildcats had four Final Four appearances and made the title game twice, losing in 2014 to Shabazz Napier and Connecticut. The 2020 team was 25-6 and was sharpening its game for a tournament that was canceled by Covid-19. True, the 2022 Wildcats lost to St. Peter’s in the first round, and the latest edition was derailed by Kansas State in the second. But as we’ve seen, the NCAA tournament frowns upon fuzzy cheeks. It’s difficult for 18 year olds to bridge the gap with 22 year olds, no matter how many All-America teams or AAU trophies they earn.

Calipari doesn’t run his one-year immersion class because it’s easy to whip up a basketball powerhouse from scratch every season. He does it because he feels it’s the best pathway to the NBA. Obviously NBA decision-makers agree. Isn’t that the point of college, to prepare its entrants for what lies beyond?

Booker’s 2015 class included Towns and Lyles. Willie Cauley-Stein, Dakari Johnson and twins Aaron and Anthony Harrison. That’s untold numbers of pickup games and practices with pro-bound teammates. That’s daily competition, and Booker had to settle for SEC Sixth Man of the Year honors. Phoenix saw enough to make Booker the 13th pick in that draft, one pick after Utah took Lyles, who is now a key reserve for Sacramento. In fact, Booker was the fourth Wildcat who went in the first round.

Earlier in that draft, Philadelphia took Jahlil Okafor at 3, Orlando took Mario Hezonja at 5, Denver took Emmanuel Mudiay at 7, Detroit took Stanley Johnson at 8 and Charlotte took Frank Kaminsky at 9.

Fox, who has been monumental for the Kings, was Adebayo’s Kentucky teammate in 2017. Gilgeous-Alexander, whom the Clippers sent to Oklahoma City to get Paul George as a stipulation for signing Kawhi Leonard, played with Vanderbilt on the 2018 Wildcats, along with Gabriel, Washington and first-round pick Kevin Knox. Even if the Kentucky kids don’t always get through March, they know how to share the basketball, and how to deal with reduced minutes and unfamiliar roles.

Booker is averaging 34.8 points and five and a half assists in the Clipper series. In Saturday’s win he had nine rebounds and seven assists. In the opening loss, he blocked three shots. He is one of an increasing number of stars who carries NBA genes. Father Melvin was a conference player of the year at Missouri and spent four years in the league before he played overseas.

Devin grew up in Michigan with his mother but joined Melvin for most of his high school career in Moss Point, Miss., a tough everyday environment with lots of hungry players. Daily workouts with his dad also honed him, and qualified him for admission to Calipari’s basketball honors program.

The NBA championship that some predicted for Phoenix, when it traded for Kevin Durant, is a live possibility. Coach Monty Williams has moved Chris Paul off the ball and channeled the offense through Durant. Both incipient Hall of Famers, armed with strong and sometimes recalcitrant personalities, have signed up. Although Paul played 38 minutes Saturday in Game 4, he looked fresh at the end and wound up with 19 points. Durant has scored at least 25 in each game and has 27 assists in four games.. Inactive for much of the season, he’s fresh enough to play more than 44 minutes in three of the games.

To get Durant, the Suns dealt Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, two solid underpinnings of the 2021 Western Conference champs. Some, including me, doubted that the Suns would survive with a dissipated bench. Somehow we forgot the power of the great NBA player, that when you meld Durant, Booker and Paul with a first-overall pick like center Deandre Ayton, it means that the “others” have far less to do and can serve up the gravy. Torrey Craig has been allowed to shoot uncontested 3-pointers and has hit 10 of 18 so far. Bismack Biyombo has little to do but block shots and be a rim presence defensively as he backs up Ayton, and that’s what he’s done.

The Suns are playing fast and fluidly, and with a Game 5 win they’ll lock up the first series and let all those accumulated minutes drain through their system. But even if Booker wins a championship, he’ll still be just a board member of the Big Blue Nation, which leads the sport in NBA assets, as well as GDP.

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