Is Devin Booker on the verge of a feat no ex-UK basketball player has ever achieved?
Fast-break points from Wiz Khalifa’s tour bus:
21. Devin Booker. The Phoenix Suns star famously never started a game during his one season (2014-15) playing for John Calipari at Kentucky.
20. The second guess. Now that the 6-foot-5, 206-pound Booker has emerged as one of the NBA’s elite players (averaged 25.6 points, 4.2 rebounds, 4.3 assists in 2020-21), people question why UK did not start him.
19. A logical reason. In 2014-15, Kentucky returned seven of its top nine players from the team that lost in the 2014 NCAA championship game — including its starting backcourt of Andrew and Aaron Harrison.
18. Platoon system. With four high-level freshmen joining his team’s veteran nucleus, Calipari initiated a legitimate two-platoon system. Booker logged regular minutes with his platoon without starting — and Kentucky won its first 38 games.
17. The sweet 16th? With Phoenix up 1-0 on Milwaukee in the NBA Finals entering Thursday’s Game 2, Booker was three wins from becoming the 16th former Kentucky player to win an NBA championship.
16. An unprecedented feat? Would Booker become the first ex-Cat to win an NBA title without ever starting a game during his UK career?
Well ...
15. Paul Noel. In 1950-51, Noel, an ex-Kentucky forward, became the first former Cat to win an NBA championship while playing for the Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings).
14. Also a one-and-done. Like Booker, Noel, a 6-4 product of Midway, played only one year at UK (1942-43). Rather than exit to immediately join the NBA, Noel left school after one season to help out his family after his father, a tenant farmer, died.
13. Noel’s role? In his book “Kentucky Basketball’s Big Blue Machine,” the late UK sports historian, Russell Rice, lists Noel among the “main reserves” for the 1942-43 Wildcats. I could not turn up “games started” statistics for that UK season.
12. Can Booker make history? So the answer to whether Booker would be the first ex-Cat to win an NBA title after never starting a game at UK hinges on whether Noel, who died in 2005, made even one start for Adolph Rupp in 1942-43.
11. Cats with NBA titles. The 14 ex-Wildcats besides Noel with at least one NBA title — Frank Ramsey, Lou Tsioropoulos, Cliff Hagan, Pat Riley, Larry Steele, Kevin Grevey, Rick Robey, Nazr Mohammed, Derek Anderson, Antoine Walker, Tayshaun Prince, Rajon Rondo, Jodie Meeks and Anthony Davis — were all starters at UK.
10. NBA titles broken down by UK coaches. Of the 15 former Kentucky players to win NBA crowns, six were recruited to Lexington by Adolph Rupp, three each by Rick Pitino and Tubby Smith, two by Joe B. Hall and one by John Calipari.
9. The Directors’ Cup. Kentucky’s finish of 12th in the final Learfield/IMG College Directors’ Cup standings for 2020-21 was the third-best in school history — UK was 10th in 2016-17 and 11th in 2013-14.
8. A letdown. In a school year in which UK won two team national championships (rifle and women’s volleyball), not cracking the top 10 in the Directors’ Cup standings — a measurement of overall performance of athletics departments — stung.
7. The men’s basketball factor. The competitive collapse in 2020-21 by UK’s signature program, men’s hoops (9-16), cost Kentucky. Had the Wildcats’ men’s hoops team just made the NCAA Tournament round of 16 — which it has done 27 times since 1975 — UK would have finished seventh in the Directors’ Cup.
6. The Capital One Cup. In a different measure of all-around athletics strength for 2020-21, Kentucky’s women’s teams finished fourth in the nation in the Capital One Cup, while UK’s men’s programs finished tied for 49th.
5. EKU’s OVC exit fee. The presidents of the Ohio Valley Conference schools voted — unanimously, league officials say — in 2017 that schools leaving the OVC and giving less than two full years notice before departing would pay a $1 million exit fee. As of July 1, both Eastern Kentucky and Jacksonville State have left the OVC under those conditions.
4. No plans to pay. OVC Commissioner Beth DeBauche said last Friday that both EKU and Jacksonville State notified the league office of their intentions not to pay the $1 million exit fee.
3. A firm line. DeBauche says the presidents of the OVC’s 10 remaining schools “expect payment of those fees. ... It will be very important to this conference that their obligations be honored.”
2. What’s next? Does the OVC have a means to compel payment of the exit fees? “We will take time with this. We hope there is the ability for some level of resolution,” DeBauche said.
1. Kentucky schools vs. a Kentucky school? If the disagreement enters the legal system, you would essentially have the OVC, whose membership still includes two Kentucky universities in Morehead State and Murray State, litigating against a third commonwealth school, EKU.
As dynamics go, that would be equal parts regrettable and fascinating.
