What NBA Draft analysts think about Shaedon Sharpe (and his future at Kentucky)
John Calipari seems to think that Shaedon Sharpe will be in a Kentucky basketball uniform next season. Those in the star recruit’s camp are also saying that’s still the plan.
Others outside of the UK basketball orbit aren’t so sure.
In fact, the consensus forming in NBA analyst circles appears to be that Sharpe — formerly the No. 1 recruit in the country — will enter the 2022 draft and leave Lexington without having ever played a college game.
More on that in a moment.
Calipari said Monday that Sharpe will not play for Kentucky this season, ending weeks of speculation following the 6-foot-6 shooting guard’s early enrollment in college at the semester break. On Tuesday night, Calipari acknowledged that Sharpe would have the option of leaving UK after this season for the NBA Draft, but the Kentucky coach made it clear he doesn’t think that will happen.
The announcement that Sharpe wouldn’t play this season — something Calipari had left open as a possibility — followed a conversation the UK coach said he had with the freshman guard and his family. Calipari implied that the result of that talk was that nothing had changed with Sharpe’s plan to come in this season as a practice player only in preparation of a starring role on the 2022-23 roster.
Calipari also said Tuesday night that Sharpe might still test the NBA Draft waters after this season, gather feedback from the league, and go from there. “I don’t see any reason not to,” he said.
That feedback is likely to be glowing, and that’s when things could get tricky.
“I think he’s a top-10 pick, probably closer to top five,” said 247Sports analyst Travis Branham, who operates the NBA Draft board for that website. “I would have him anywhere from that 5-7 range. That’s on my personal board. Feeling around elsewhere, there are going to be some fears, obviously, of him never playing a college basketball game. So there’s a chance maybe he slides toward the end of the lottery. But I don’t foresee him falling out of the lottery.”
Branham mentioned the relatively recent case of Thon Maker, who had a strange recruitment, never played college basketball and went with the No. 10 overall pick in 2016 after wowing the Milwaukee Bucks in the pre-draft process.
Maker played for three different teams over five seasons, made just eight appearances last season, and has spent the entirety of the 2021-22 campaign in the G League.
“People will look back on stuff like that,” Branham said. “But if you followed Shaedon — if you got to see him at Peach Jam last year — and you did your due diligence there, I can’t imagine a world where he falls out of that top 10.”
That 5-10 range seems to be a pretty safe bet for Sharpe if he enters the 2022 draft.
The conversation around the No. 1 overall pick this year has largely focused on Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren, Duke’s Paolo Banchero and Auburn’s Jabari Smith — all freshmen — with Purdue sophomore Jaden Ivey entering that tier in recent weeks.
After that, Sharpe would appear to be in a group that includes Duke freshman A.J. Griffin, Memphis freshman Jalen Duren, and a few others.
ESPN currently projects him as the No. 7 overall prospect in the 2022 draft. Yahoo Sports has him at No. 8. Longtime draft analyst Chad Ford introduced him at No. 5 overall on his big board late last month.
Matt McKay, the founder of the Pro Insight basketball website and someone with scouting experience in two NBA front offices, told the Herald-Leader this week that Sharpe would “very likely” be somewhere between No. 5 and 10 in this year’s draft.
Sam Vecenie, the NBA Draft analyst for The Athletic, also wrote late last month that he would slot Sharpe somewhere around No. 5 and would be surprised if he got out of the top 10, if he enters the 2022 draft.
“To me, when it comes to ultimate talent and upside — even not having played a game — he’s right in that top-5ish range,” Branham told the Herald-Leader this week.
What will Shaedon Sharpe do?
To get into the 2022 draft, Sharpe will still need to apply with the league for early-entry eligibility. There’s been some ambiguity on that subject in recent weeks, related to the timing of his graduation from high school and whether that occurred — as league rules mandate for draft eligibility — before the start of the current NBA season.
There are still questions among some who have followed Sharpe’s case over whether or not he would be considered a high school graduate in time to be eligible for this year’s draft. The NBA won’t make any official ruling until Sharpe actually applies for eligibility, an action that won’t happen until after the season.
Branham, who has covered Sharpe’s situation for months, said this week that he’s done a “ton of digging” into the graduation question specifically, and he doesn’t expect it to be an issue.
“If Shaedon applies, the NBA will not rule him ineligible,” he said. “All of the sources that I’ve talked to — that are very knowledgeable and very, very familiar with this process, dealing with the NBA — nobody believes that they’ll rule him ineligible. They’re not going to pass up on a player like Shaedon Sharpe and a chance to get him in earlier. That’s what the NBA is wanting to do. That’s why they launched the G League initiative — to get their hands on the talented players earlier.
“This is not a random 18-year-old. This is an elite prospect. … I would be absolutely stunned if they turned him away.”
So, assuming he is indeed eligible for this year’s draft, what will Sharpe do?
“I’m sticking with my initial stance and going to continue to trust my sources,” Branham said. “I don’t expect him to be here (at Kentucky) next year. I’ll be surprised if he is.”
That’s also McKay’s assessment.
“Every player’s timeline to maximize earning power is finite, and it’s hard to turn down a guaranteed eight figures over the course of the first 2-3 years of a rookie scale contract, which is what Shaedon would be looking at as a projected lottery pick in June,” he said. “I would think he ends up capitalizing on his current stock and entering the draft.”
Krysten Peek, who operates the Yahoo mock draft and has Sharpe at No. 8 overall, also told the Herald-Leader this week that she would expect the UK freshman to enter this year’s draft.
“NBA scouts were able to see Shaedon at Peach Jam, and he played well and showed enough of what kind of NBA prospect he could be to possibly not have to play a full college season,” Peek said. “I still think he’ll leave and enter the 2022 NBA Draft. After pick No. 5, the draft drops off this year. ...
“I just can’t see someone as talented as him returning for a year to play college basketball when he could be making NBA money and developing his game at the highest level.”
The reasoning is pretty simple. Sharpe would have much more to lose by not keeping his name in the 2022 draft than he would to gain by coming back and playing for Kentucky next season.
The guaranteed, two-year salary for the players selected with the 5-10 picks in this year’s draft range from about $8 million to $12 million, plus a third-year option worth another $4.3 million for the No. 10 pick and $6.5 million for the No. 5 pick. Leaving college after this season would also allow Sharpe to reach his second NBA contract — the one that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars — one year sooner.
“To me, it’s a no-brainer,” Branham said. “But, we’ll see.”
A return to Kentucky?
Calipari acknowledged Tuesday night that some NBA franchise would likely take Sharpe very high in this year’s draft and even said that if a team gave a hard guarantee that it would select him with a top-five pick, the UK coach would need to seriously discuss that option with Sharpe and his family.
But Calipari also said he sees bigger things in the 18-year-old’s future.
“This kid comes back, he’s the No. 1 draft pick. In my mind, he’s the No. 1 draft pick,” Calipari said.
The No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft stands to make nearly $19 million over his first two seasons, with a third-year option worth more than $10 million after that. That’s a good deal more than the No. 5-10 picks this year, but it appears highly unlikely that Sharpe would actually go No. 1 in 2023.
That spot seems destined for French phenom Victor Wembanyama, a 7-2 teenager who NBA front offices are already salivating over. ESPN projects Wembanyama as the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft. Asking around this week, the feedback from draft analysts is that “anything is possible,” but that Sharpe would be hard-pressed to pass up Wembanyama, who scouts are already describing as a generational talent.
G League point guard Scoot Henderson is currently No. 2 on ESPN’s draft board for 2023, and Branham also mentioned Henderson as the No. 2 prospect for next year for the time being, even if Sharpe decided to stay in school. The guaranteed, two-year salary for the No. 3 pick in 2023 is about $15.5 million, not too terribly much more than the No. 5 pick this year will make.
Peek isn’t sure that Sharpe could drastically improve his stock by returning next season. There’s simply not that much room to move up, and players projected in his range rarely even consider a return to college.
Several players have dramatically upped their draft standing over the course of this college season. Ivey, Iowa’s Keegan Murray, and Arizona’s Bennedict Mathurin were all viewed as likely second-round picks, at best, if they had left college for the NBA Draft last year. Now, all three are projected lottery picks.
That’s not the same situation Sharpe will find himself in a few months from now.
“I have him No. 8 in my mock draft for Yahoo Sports right now,” Peek said. “If he does stay and decides to play next year, I could see his draft stock improving a little bit, but not much. It’s not like he’s a fringe second-round pick who could sneak into the lottery next year. He’s a top-10 draft pick whether he’s in the 2022 draft or the 2023 draft.”
Dwayne Washington, who was Sharpe’s grassroots coach and has guided him throughout the recruiting process and his early days at Kentucky, has said repeatedly that he, Sharpe and the player’s parents are not concentrating on the dollar figure attached to that rookie deal. Their focus, Washington says, is putting Sharpe in the best position to be ready to compete when he gets to the NBA and, by extension, give him the best chance at a major deal on his second contract.
Washington says continuing to develop at Kentucky — and actually playing games against elite college competition in the pro-like fishbowl environment of UK basketball — remains part of that plan.
“You come for development. Here’s the thing that people have to understand: everybody is not trying to rush to something that they’re not ready for,” he told the Herald-Leader recently.
As of now, draft analysts aren’t buying that message, though Calipari is, by all public and private indications, expecting to have Sharpe on his roster next season.
Meanwhile, Kentucky fans following it all aren’t quite sure what to believe. And they might have to wait a few more months before there’s a clear answer.
The NBA Draft is scheduled for June 23. In the last normal draft cycle — before the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled the calendar — the post-combine withdrawal deadline for players returning to college was May 29. This year’s combine date has not yet been set, but it’s expected that the withdrawal deadline will once again be right around the end of May.
With the way things have gone so far, there might not be a final answer before then.
“Honestly, I’m kind of expecting this thing to continue to follow the trend it’s been on,” Branham said. “This thing is going to keep dragging out, and we will not have a quick end. I don’t see this being a Band-Aid being ripped off, because it hasn’t been that way this whole time. So I’m betting it continues on this trajectory, and he tests the waters, gets the feedback, and they drag that on to the end. And he ends up staying in (the draft). That’s what I would guess.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 7:31 AM.
