LEXINGTON, Ky. — The one-time centerpiece of Kentucky’s basketball recruiting class for next season has entered the NBA draft.
Shaedon Sharpe — a 6-foot-6 shooting guard from Ontario — announced that he is putting his name in this year’s draft. Sharpe turns 19 years old in May and, according to those in his camp, graduated from high school before the start of the current NBA season. That combination of factors would allow him to be eligible for the 2022 NBA draft without ever playing a game of college basketball.
Sharpe was an under-the-radar recruit at the time that Kentucky extended a scholarship offer in December 2020, and he quickly emerged as a five-star national prospect while playing for Dream City Christian in Arizona. By the end of last summer, Sharpe had emerged as the consensus No. 1 overall recruit in the 2022 class.
He committed to the Wildcats in September and officially signed with the program two months later. The recruiting match was helped along by Dwayne Washington, who was Sharpe’s AAU coach and basketball mentor, playing a similar role in the early development of former UK guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who blossomed into a lottery pick after one season at Kentucky.
Washington initiated Kentucky’s recruiting process with Sharpe based on those previous ties to coach John Calipari, who quickly made him a priority in the 2022 class.
Sharpe enrolled in classes at UK in January, with the previously stated plan of sitting out this past season as a practice player — while also building up his strength and conditioning — in preparation for a starring role on the 2022-23 squad.
There were immediate fears from UK fans — and warnings from some analysts — that Sharpe would use the semester at Kentucky as a brief stop on his way to the 2022 draft. Washington, however, has repeatedly said that was not the plan, and that he would be back at UK next season.
“He will not be going to the NBA draft,” Washington emphatically told the Herald-Leader in late October. “That’s not even something to talk about. That’s like saying, ‘Are you going to go to Mars tomorrow?’ ”
Washington said the same three months later, following a report by ESPN that Sharpe, who had enrolled at UK by that point, was expected to be eligible for this year’s draft. He said then that the only scenario that would derail that plan would be if Calipari played Sharpe during the 2021-22 season and he proved himself ready to move on to the pros.
“But if he doesn’t, they got him for next year,” Washington told the Herald-Leader. “He’s not going to sit the bench and then go to the NBA.”
Calipari announced several days later that Sharpe would not play for UK during the 2021-22 season, and he stuck with that decision.
“I think that was what was best for him is how we did it,” Calipari said when asked about it following Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament loss to Saint Peter’s. “Would he have been a good player this year? Yeah, he’d been pretty good. He’d have been pretty good. But he joined us midseason. Trying to get him up to all the stuff that we were doing was hard.”
Washington declined to comment on Sharpe’s status and the apparent change of plans from his previous statements when reached by the Herald-Leader late last month.
What’s next for Sharpe?
Sharpe’s announcement left the door open for a possible return to Kentucky after he goes through with the NBA draft process.
The withdrawal date for players planning to return to college will be June 1, so Sharpe — and others in his position — will have until then to make a final decision.
Recruiting analysts and NBA draft experts that the Herald-Leader has spoken to over the past few days and weeks are expecting Sharpe to keep his name in the NBA draft and leave Kentucky without ever playing a game of college basketball.
Most mock drafts have Sharpe positioned in the 5-10 range of this year’s draft, safely into lottery pick territory. He is No. 6 overall on ESPN’s latest board of the best available NBA prospects for 2022, and it’s incredibly rare that a player in that position would pull his name out of the draft.
So, Kentucky shouldn’t count on Sharpe sticking around this offseason, and the Herald-Leader has been told for the past few weeks that UK does indeed expect Sharpe to ultimately keep his name in the draft.
That departure would leave yet another hole in the 2022-23 backcourt. The Cats will lose Kellan Grady and Davion Mintz , who will both be out of college eligibility, and freshman guard TyTy Washington is also projected as a lottery pick and plans to stay in the draft. Little-used guard Dontaie Allen has already announced that he’s transferring to Western Kentucky, while there has been no public announcement yet on the status of starting point guard Sahvir Wheeler, who tested the NBA draft waters last year before transferring to Kentucky.
UK will have five-star combo guard Cason Wallace, who projects as an immediate starter in the Wildcats’ backcourt. Also expected on the roster will be guard CJ Fredrick, who was a two-year starter at Iowa — and a 46.6% 3-point shooter — before transferring to Kentucky last offseason. He missed the entire 2021-22 campaign with an injury, but he started participating in pregame warm-ups toward the end of the season and is expected to be fully healthy moving forward.
It’s clear that Calipari will need to go the transfer route to add some more perimeter players to his 2022-23 roster. UK has already been linked to several potential guard targets in the portal, and that process will continue to play out in the coming weeks.
“You can’t ever really replace the talent of a guy like Shaedon Sharpe,” 247Sports analyst Travis Branham told the Herald-Leader. “We’re talking about an elite, elite talent that is a potential top-five pick in this upcoming draft. Can you get that with anyone out of the portal? I don’t see that happening. But from a college perspective, they can be really, really productive and really, really good players.
“But replacing a top-five pick is no easy task.”
