Basketball Recruiting: Kentucky Doesn’t Need N’Faly Dante

2020 big man N’Faly Dante is considering reclassification with Kentucky in hot pursuit. But do the Cats actually need him as part of 2019?

N’Faly Dante, a near-seven-foot behemoth center from Wichita, Kansas has long been considered a raw but tremendously gifted recruiting prize, even for Kentucky. Five stars without any real polish to his game. The true hallmark of many gargantuan ballerinas before him. The Willie Cauley-Stein‘s, Moses Brown’s, Wenyen Gabriel’s. Jawdropping athletes who impressed solely because of their bodies and ability to move them–which is far more graceful than you’d expect at their respective sizes. We’ve seen N’Faly Dante before.  Size enables domination of the high school level but the adjustment period in college is long-drawn and severe. Predicting Dante’s effectiveness at the next level is a fool’s errand, especially if he reclassifies and joins the college ranks a year early. If Dante does jump to 2019 and come into play for the upcoming season, should John Calipari pursue him? Yes, obviously. Let’s accumulate as many five star recruits as possible. However, I have another question. Does Kentucky need him?

My answer: NO.

The 2019 Kentucky Basketball team is already considered a top-five college basketball team heading into next season. Plus, there are 10 scholarship bodies suiting up:

• Ashton Hagans
• Immanuel Quickley
• Tyrese Maxey
• Johnny Juzang
• Kahlil Whitney
• Keion Brooks
• Dontaie Allen
• Nate Sestina
• EJ Montgomery
• Nick Richards

They can win a title. Yeah, that phrase is annually redundant regarding Kentucky Basketball but it’s true. And if you can win the title with what you already have, adding an extra piece isn’t a necessity (hence, the title of the article). But my reasoning is more complex than that.

As we saw last year with the Quade Green situation, talent gluttony exists. You can have too many players. Adding one player’s talent or production often hampers the development and situational satisfaction of his peers, the guys he’s dueling with during practice for minutes on the basketball court–which John Calipari hands out as conservatively as Christmas bonuses for Calrk Griswald‘s company.

Dante has the talent and sheer physicality to impact games this coming season. But if his production is easily replicable by our current frontcourt musketeers–Sestina, Montgomery & Richards–why agonize over adding Dante immediately? Other than injury fallback, I think the risk of adding him outweighs the reward.

Seven-footers in high school all dominate like Wilt Chamberlain. Weeding out the ones who echo Chamberlain’s skill is the difficult part. Dante is a hulking glob of rim-breaking basketball dynamism rounding into the mold of an elite two-way big man in college and, hopefully, the NBA. He’s not there yet. Let’s give him another year to improve on the court and mature mentally.

Merely for his sake, jump-starting his college career may prove unwise. Experienced forwards Richards, Montgomery, and Sestina are better options as of now. Dante would likely arrive as a 4th option and close resemblance of freshman Nick Richards. However, given an extra year in high school and playing on the AAU circuit, Dante can improve and headline Kentucky’s frontcourt in 2021 rather than watching it from the bench in 2020.

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