John Calipari has made no secret one of his main purposes as head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats basketball team. That is to help his players realize their dreams of playing in the NBA and over his six seasons at Kentucky, we have seen 24 players declare for the NBA Draft before graduation. For seven of those, we do not know their fate yet as they have yet to be drafted, but we do have enough information to look at the 17 players that have been drafted. Over this week, I will look at the NBA career of all the early draftees and assign a grade.
Keep in mind that this is just the early entry draftees, so players like Josh Harrellson (#45 in 2011) and Darius Miller (#46 in 2012) are not included since they did not make the decision to leave school early. Granted, you can look at a player like Harrellson and say that any NBA career for him would be a positive grade as no one gave him a chance to be drafted before his senior year and even his being picked was a bit of a shock. Just the fact that he was a John Calipari player opened doors for him and got him drafted.
We are focusing on the guys that left early and I am trying to be as honest and as subjective as possible. Let’s start with the 2010 class and a player where there should be no debate at all on the grade.
Next: John Wall