Fact or Fiction: Kentucky Stars Always Slip in the Draft
- Cole Niles
- Jul 15, 2022
- 6 min read
Updated: Feb 15, 2023
Do Wildcats really tumble down draft boards?
Every year it seems to happen. Some big-time recruit commits to Kentucky, and once he’s finally there, talent evaluators get picky. You always see flashes, but for one reason or another the guy always seems to fall from his expected position in the draft. Fast forward about six months into their rookie year, and the flashes are still there, but in higher volume. In fact, that guy who fell in the draft seems to have put it all together in the league. At the very least he’s contributing… and he might be doing even more. Think Devin Booker.
It's an odd trend, truthfully, and one I really didn’t want to give the time of day. When I first heard people bringing it up it felt, well, uninformed. Are you really telling me that the entire NBA has some sort of unconscious agenda going on with their evaluations of players from one school? The whole conspiracy reeked of tin-foil-hat postulation, or at least retrospective draft criticism that doesn’t actually get us anywhere. Of course there’s not some inherent bias when it comes to Kentucky players – If anything there’s a blue-blood bias that works in their favor. Right?
But then I started thinking about how I myself thought of some of these guys. I thought Booker was good, but not a franchise guy. I never thought Jamal Murray could be lighting up teams in the playoffs like he was in 2020. Did anyone expect Keldon Johnson to be averaging 17 points and shooting 40% from three during his third year in the league? I’m a Spurs fan, and to be honest, I was more excited about Luka Samanic.
So maybe it was worth looking at. I decided to look into the question of why these great Wildcats fall in the draft. Here’s what I found.
Step 1: Is this a real phenomenon?
Firstly I wanted to see if this was just something that we imagine in the draft world, or whether there is actual data supporting the claim. I went ahead and compiled a list of guys over the last ten years who have already been All-Stars or can maybe become one at some point based on their early output. I put down Keldon Johnson and Tyrese Maxey fitting that bill because of the jumps we saw during the 21-22 season. From there I looked at their spot on the pre-draft consensus boards, and where they actually ended up going. I even threw in Jonathan Wasserman’s preseason draft ranking of them too, for fun.
Now, I can already hear what’s going on in your head: “You’re just picking and choosing the best guys and ignoring the busts!” Let me be clear about my goals here. I am not trying to say that players from Kentucky don’t bust; I’m looking at whether or not Kentucky players that go on to become All-Stars slip in the draft slip on draft night. This does not mean every Kentucky player that slips will become an All Star… and it doesn’t mean Kentucky never has any busts. We’re just testing the hypothesis that star players from Kentucky really do tumble on draft night.
These are all of the Kentucky All-Stars from the last decade, not just the ones that slipped in the draft. Maybe you’ll see some trends.
2014
Julius Randle
Preseason B/R rank: 2
Postseason Consensus Draft Rank: 6
Actual Draft position: 7
2015
Karl Anthony Towns
Preseason B/R rank: 3
Postseason Consensus Draft Rank: 1
Actual Draft position: 1
Devin Booker
Preseason B/R rank: Not Ranked in 1st Round
Postseason Consensus Draft Rank: 10
Actual Draft position: 13
2016
Jamal Murray
Preseason B/R rank: 6
Postseason Consensus Draft Rank: 4
Actual Draft position: 7
2017
DeAaron Fox
Preseason B/R rank: 10
Postseason Consensus Draft Rank: 5
Actual Draft position: 5
Bam Adebayo
Preseason B/R rank: 15
Postseason Consensus Draft Rank: 21
Actual Draft position: 14
2018
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Preseason B/R rank: Not Ranked
Postseason Consensus Draft Rank: 10
Actual Draft position: 11
2019
Keldon Johnson
Preseason B/R rank: 10
Postseason Consensus Draft Rank: 21
Actual Draft position: 29
Tyler Herro
Preseason B/R rank: 28
Postseason Consensus Draft Rank: 18
Actual Draft position: 13
2020
Tyrese Maxey
Preseason B/R rank: 11
Postseason Consensus Draft Rank: 12
Actual Draft position: 21
Step 2: Evaluating the Data
Okay, so we can see here, that out of the 10 guys drafted from 2014-2021, six(!) of them were drafted after their consensus ranking. Over half of the Kentucky stars in the league from this period were under-drafted, at least according to the consensus board. In fact, only two of the players were actually drafted above their consensus ranking – Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo. They both jumped from the mid-first round range to the back end of the lottery. The other two, Karl Anthony Towns and DeAaron Fox, simply matched their consensus ranking when they were drafted (#1 and #5 respectively). For those counting at home, that’s only 2 out of ten that were drafted before when everyone thought that they’d go.
As much as it pains me to say, the Kentucky star slippage seems to be a real thing (at least a little bit).
Some more notes.
A lot of this slippage is not much – only a draft position or two. But we have to remember that the consensus board tells us the media’s average opinion on a guy. 50% of the time, theoretically, he should go earlier, but it only happened 20% of the time with these guys. That’s significant.
A few draft positions at the top of the draft are not the same as the end of the first round. Jamal Murray falling to 7th, for instance, is a pretty massive fall. For comparison, Jaden Ivey was 2022’s consensus #4 player, and when he fell to #5 the whole world lost their minds. Imagine if Ivey had fallen all the way to Portland at #7 – that’s a long way. That’s basically what happened with Jamal Murray!
Guards and Bigs tell a different story. Julius Randle was slightly undervalued (falling one spot behind consensus), whereas KAT and Bam either tied or went earlier than expected. This star slippage is mostly a phenomenon with perimeter guys, it would seem, as the list's Bigs only had one spot of slippage between the three of them.
There were guys from Kentucky that went ahead of a bunch of these guys that didn’t make it nearly as far, but looked pretty similar on paper. Just worth pointing out.
Step 3: Why?
So it happens. The question remains of why exactly this happens. There are some pretty good guesses to make.
The most obvious one is the surrounding talent. John Calipari recruits a lot of top tier guys at Kentucky. Many teams look at the position these recruits are put in and see a lot of supporting talent. Theoretically, you should be getting easier shots with that much talent around you. It’s a fair critique, to be sure, but there’s flaws.
For one, it may be that playing with a bunch of other prospects might actually make it harder to play as a team in Lexington. Every top tier prospects wants to make it to the league – and Kentucky is the premier destination to do just that. With only one ball and a lot of mouths to feed, the team quality of the basketball can drop significantly.
Likewise, with so many eyes on your teammates, oftentimes guys can get overlooked because they have good teammates, whereas players with poor supporting casts are given the benefit of the doubt far more often. Imagine, for example, a player like Tyrese Maxey choosing to play for his hometown SMU Mustangs instead of Kentucky. We might look past some inefficiencies a bit more than we would at Kentucky, a la Johnny Davis at Wisconsin, if this was the case.
Another reason for Kentucky player slippage could be a lack of sample size. Devin Booker, for example, came off the bench for every game he played at Kentucky. He only averaged 21 minutes a game, only scored in double digits 20 of his 38 games in college. Sure, his splits were fantastic (47% from the field, 41% from three) but the sample size was so tiny that many NBA teams wondered how translatable it was with volume.
This also goes back to the issue of teammates. Booker played on a 38-1 Kentucky team, and there were five guys drafted in 2015 not named Devin Booker. Can we give teams a pass for missing on him? Maybe. But when do the passes run out?
I don’t know why all the good Kentucky guys slip. I don’t even really know if I still believe it’s a thing. It may just a statistical anomaly with no actual reason, but it’s there, and if anyone else wants to reckon with it, they may. I’m sure there is good work to be done to look at all of Kentucky’s players and whether or not they rise or fall from the consensus. Likewise I think it could be useful to look at what the data says for role players. Either way, it’s a fun thing to look out for.
If I have learned one thing from this exercise, it’s that I can feel at least a bit justified in holding on to my TyTy Washington stock after he fell to 29th in the draft. He has no choice but to set the league on fire, and I’m expecting All-NBA nods by 2024. No one can tell me otherwise.
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