After a year of ‘adversity’ with UK basketball, Justin Edwards feels more prepared for NBA
Looking back at the expectations coming in, things obviously didn’t go as planned during Justin Edwards’ first and only season as a basketball player for the University of Kentucky.
Edwards — a 6-foot-8 wing from Philadelphia billed as a prospect brimming with versatility and unselfishness — appeared to be a perfect fit for a UK team stacked with talent. He had a history of winning titles as a high schooler, a background that included playing alongside other star players — both in a leading role and a complementary one — and his reputation as a guy who didn’t mind filling in the gaps seemed ideal for John Calipari’s latest superstar roster.
The college freshman started out OK — scoring in double figures in six of his first eight games as a Wildcat — but even those results were underwhelming relative to the oversized expectations, and it only got worse from there.
Those preconceptions that accompanied Edwards to Lexington included a projection that he could be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NBA draft following his first season at Kentucky.
That’s not going to happen.
As Edwards arrived at the NBA Combine in Chicago over the weekend, the major mock drafts varied on where he might end up, but all of them said his stock had dropped considerably during his time spent at UK, and most pegged him as a second-round selection.
That hasn’t fazed the former Wildcat.
“I’m here to show everybody that I’m still that guy that I was out of high school,” Edwards said. “I just had a lot of mental stuff going on when I first got to college. But I feel like I’m back to myself now, so I’m here to show everybody that I’m still that same person that everybody loved at the beginning of the season.”
ESPN is the only major mock draft that still has Edwards as a first-rounder, projecting him as the No. 26 overall pick to the Washington Wizards. Mock drafts from Bleacher Report (No. 45 pick), The Athletic (No. 47), Yahoo Sports (No. 48) and The Ringer (No. 53) all have Edwards as a mid- to late-second-round pick in the draft, which will feature 58 total selections this year.
Edwards doesn’t look at such lists — “Because that’s just another distraction,” he said — but he’s not in the dark about his current status on those draft boards. He knows his stock has fallen considerably over the past several months. He knows time has run out to work his way back into the lottery conversation.
But Edwards was also the picture of positivity in an interview with the Herald-Leader and his hometown Philadelphia Inquirer during the Combine media session this week. As 95% of the reporters covering the event were off in a corner surrounding Bronny James — the son of NBA superstar LeBron James — the once-projected No. 1 pick in this draft was relatively alone on the other side of the room, opening up about his past few months and what comes next.
Justin Edwards’ NBA draft hopes
While Edwards called attending the Combine “a dream come true” and talked excitedly about playing in the scrimmages with other draft hopefuls in Chicago over the course of the week, he seemed especially eager to sit down with the decision-makers from NBA teams who will be weighing his potential as they lock in on their top priorities between now and the draft, which will be held over two days (June 26 and 27) this year.
He knows there will be questions about what went “wrong” at Kentucky and the mental struggles that he faced during his only season of college basketball. He’s ready for those, and he’s looking forward to selling NBA teams on why they should take a chance on, in his words: “a guy that’s willing to work hard, and a guy that’s willing to fill in any role that I have to, just to be able to get on the court. I’ve always been one of those guys that works hard and is willing to learn.”
His coaches at Kentucky said the same throughout the season, something that was often lost amid the burden of those expectations that followed Edwards to Lexington.
Despite the on-court struggles, Calipari kept him in the UK starting lineup, even as fellow freshmen Rob Dillingham and Reed Sheppard emerged as star players and projected NBA lottery picks.
There were times throughout the season when Edwards struggled so mightily — and his resulting body language was so bad — that Calipari had no choice but to take him off the floor. But, the next game, he was right back in the starting lineup, both player and coach hoping for that breakthrough moment.
It finally came with just two weeks to go in the regular season, when Edwards went 10-for-10 from the field and scored 28 points in a 117-95 rout of Final Four-bound Alabama as the Rupp Arena crowd cheered his every move.
After that performance, he opened up about his mental health struggles amid his disappointing freshman season and the strength he found — with the help of his coaches and teammates — to approach the game with a more positive outlook.
“I’ve learned a lot,” Edwards said. “Just going through all of the adversity that I went through, I feel like that helped me become a better person. Just going through everything that I went through and finishing out the season strong — I feel like not a lot of people would have been able to do what I did, and be able to get back on the strong side with my mental health.
“So just being able to bounce back from that shows a lot.”
Edwards is eager to share that story with NBA teams. He now sees it as a plus as he begins his professional career, and battling that adversity, Edwards says, has given him more confidence in himself as he goes into events like the Combine and the challenges that await him in the NBA.
“I know how to look at things differently,” he said. “I missed a lot of shots today. I missed a couple of wide-open shots. Early in the year, I would have been down on myself. So just knowing how to bounce back and be able to knock down the next shot or not let it bother me — that’s one of the things.”
Aside from his more positive mental approach to the game, Edwards is here to remind NBA teams that he’s still that talented guy that caught their attention as a high school recruit. He noted that he and Sheppard were the only players to shoot 50% or better from 3-point range in SEC play.
Over the final six games of the regular season, he was 14-for-21 from deep, hitting all four of his 3-point attempts in that dream game against Alabama and going 4-for-7 from long range to help the Wildcats beat Tennessee in Knoxville in what turned out to be Calipari’s final victory in 15 seasons as the team’s head coach.
“My shooting really took it up another notch,” Edwards said proudly, noting that he’s been working especially hard on his shot-making ability in the leadup to the NBA draft, as well as his versatility as a defender who can guard just about every position on the court.
Most of all, he wants to bring confidence to whatever comes next and highlight that positivity he found toward the end of the season.
“Having those negative thoughts really brought me down,” Edwards said.
Edwards reflects on Kentucky
As Edwards and Sheppard sat together awaiting the results of the NBA draft lottery Sunday night in Chicago, a familiar face walked up behind the former teammates and bent down to give Edwards a hug.
He smiled as he spoke to Stacey Reed Sheppard — Reed’s mom — in a scene reminiscent of the one at Thompson-Boling Arena following UK’s upset of No. 4 Tennessee in the regular-season finale. After that game, Sheppard’s mother busted through a crowd of reporters to hug Edwards and let him know how proud she was of his effort against the Volunteers, leaving the long-struggling Kentucky player with a wide smile on his face.
“That bond that I have with her, I feel like is just off of how much she believed in me,” he said this week. “Reed’s family — they all really believed in me, and they helped me get over that hump that I was going through.”
Edwards talked after that Alabama game about how Sheppard was the one who had introduced him to a mental health coach during the season and supported his teammate through difficult times.
At his Combine interview in Chicago, he said last season’s UK team was one of the closest he’d ever been a part of, adding that the former Wildcats — all of them will play elsewhere next season — still talk regularly in their players-only group text.
Edwards also took joy in the fact that — even though they’ll probably be on different teams moving forward — he’ll be going through the opening stages of this NBA journey at the same time as some of those UK teammates, who he anticipates trading notes and encouraging words with along the way.
He’ll also have plenty of support, wherever he ends up.
Edwards has talked at length in the past about how close he is with his mother, Ebony Twiggs, a former Philadelphia basketball standout herself, before raising Edwards and his two siblings — a younger brother and sister — as a single parent working two jobs to support the family.
When Edwards moved to Lexington last year, his family left Philly along with him. That helped when the times got tougher than Edwards knew they would.
“When I was going through all that stuff, I would always go over to my mom’s house and have talks with her,” he said. “There were certain talks that we had where I came to tears. Just knowing that she’s there for me and always will be there for me, whether I’m playing good or I’m playing bad. And just how close I am with her. … Our bond is really, really close.
“Having her around, having my siblings around — when I’m around them, I’m myself. I’m not seen as a basketball player. My mom says all the time, ‘People need to know Justin as a person and not Justin as a basketball player. That’s two different people.’”
They’re all going to follow Edwards to his next stop, too, wherever that might be.
He said Twiggs told him they would move to the city of the team that drafts him next month. He added that his mom said if he gets traded, she would probably stay put. They couldn’t move again. Edwards smiled as he relayed that part of the deal.
“But I’m a mama’s boy,” he said. “So I’m going to have to talk her out of that. I’m going to have to get her to go wherever I go.”
