Grading Every Kentucky Player's Decision to Declare for the 2015 NBA Draft
"If you've decided to put your name in the NBA draft, stand up."
Those were the words of Kentucky head coach John Calipari at the school's press conference Thursday afternoon before all seven players rose from their seats.
Despite coming up short of the 40-0 goal, Karl-Anthony Towns, Willie Cauley-Stein, Trey Lyles, Devin Booker, Dakari Johnson, Andrew Harrison and Aaron Harrison are all moving on to the next stage of their careers.
Some of those decisions were no-brainers. Others appear to have been made without the proper amount of thought.
We've graded the draft decision of all seven now-former Wildcats and have listed them on the following slides in order of projected draft pick.
Grading is based on whether we feel each player made the right choice for his basketball career.
An "A" means the player absolutely made the right decision—he had nothing left to gain or prove in college. A "C" means the player almost certainly could have improved his draft stock with another year in college, but we can't really blame him for striking while the iron is out. And an "F" means we're scratching our heads over why he decided to leave.
Karl-Anthony Towns, PF/C, Freshman
1 of 7
The Grade: A+
The Reason
No sense in waxing poetic over this one. It would have been pretty dumb for Towns to come back for another year, given his status as a stone-cold lock for a top-four pick and potentially the No. 1 overall selection this June.
The best part about Towns is that he still hasn't reached his full potential. Heck, he isn't even close to his ceiling. He improved by leaps and bounds throughout the season and was still getting better as the NCAA tournament progressed.
And yet, this is a guy who was hanging with NBA big men at the age of 16 as a member of the Dominican Republic national team.
He has nothing left to prove against college kids. He's going to instantly be a star in the NBA.
Willie Cauley-Stein, C, Junior
2 of 7
The Grade: A+
The Reason
Regardless of where you turn for mock drafts or prospect rankings, Cauley-Stein is a top-10 guy—if he isn't, it's time to find a more reliable mock drafter—and if a player is all but guaranteed to be a lottery pick, he might as well go and get that paper.
After three years at Kentucky, he still isn't anything close to offensively polished. Before the Final Four game against Wisconsin, many suggested Sam Dekker should guard Cauley-Stein because he was less likely to hurt the Badgers than Towns or Lyles. Needless to say, Cauley-Stein shouldn't be expected to lead his professional team in scoring any time soon.
But he's still a surefire lottery pick because he's great on defense and ridiculously athletic. NBADraft.net has Chris Andersen and Samuel Dalembert listed as his NBA comparison, but those seem pretty pessimistic for his potential. Give Cauley-Stein a year or two at the next level and he could blossom just like Serge Ibaka has.
Trey Lyles, PF, Freshman
3 of 7
The Grade: C+
The Reason
Lyles will be a stud sooner than later, but he didn't really start embracing his height and his strength until late February.
For most of the season, Lyles was defending and defended by small forwards, even though he will inevitably be a power forward or center at the next level. It wasn't a big deal when Jabari Parker did things in the opposite direction last season—an NBA small forward facing power forwards and centers in college—but can Lyles excel against 6'10", 250-pound men?
That he's projected to miss the lottery by a few spots seems to suggest the answer to the question is "Probably, but we're not wasting a top 15 pick on probably."
Plenty of bad things could happen if he comes back for another year. The obvious fear is injury, but a secondary concern is that he struggles against big men and his 2016 draft stock drops considerably.
However, the upside is almost limitless. With Towns in his way, Lyles never got much of a chance to show just how much he can do in the paint.
There's no doubt that Trey Lyles will be a first-round draft pick, so we can't blame him for taking the money and running. But he potentially could have played his way up to the No. 1 overall pick in 2016, hence the average grade.
Devin Booker, SG, Freshman
4 of 7
The Grade: B-
The Reason
Of the seven Wildcats who declared for the NBA, this was the toughest decision to grade.
On one hand, Booker is probably the best shooting guard in this year's draft class. He shot 41.1 percent from three-point range and arguably would have been even better if ever given the chance to stay in the game long enough to get into a groove.
As a 6'6" shooting guard with one of the prettiest strokes in the country, it's not hard to compare him to last year's No. 8 overall draft pick, Nik Stauskas.
But there are a lot of unknowns about his game.
Booker has gotten a reputation as an above-average defender, but it's hard to see why. Despite playing on a roster with more than enough shot-blockers to allow him to be overly aggressive on defense, he had a steal rate of just 1.3 percent and had by far the worst defensive box plus/minus among Wildcats who played at least 12 minutes.
And does he have the stamina to play regular minutes at the next level? Booker only played more than 27 minutes once in his final 24 games, and he shot 5-of-16 in that one.
They aren't massive concerns, but they're the type of concerns that could cost him a couple million dollars and ones that he could have eradicated by coming back for another season.
Dakari Johnson, C, Sophomore
5 of 7
The Grade: C-
The Reason
If one of the seven players was going to surprise us by coming back for another year, we would have bet on Dakari Johnson.
Because, really, has a sophomore ever declared for the NBA after a more forgettable final five weeks of the season?
After a solid showing on Feb. 21 against Auburn, Johnson averaged 12.6 minutes, 3.8 points and 2.4 rebounds per game the rest of the way. In the final two games against Notre Dame and Wisconsin, he had a combined line of 16 minutes, three blocks, two rebounds and zero points.
At best, he's a late first-round pick, and that's only if enough underclassmen currently ranked ahead of him decide to come back for another year. More likely, he'll be a mid-second round pick, either wasting away on the bench for an NBA team or (preferably) honing his craft in the D-League.
However, we couldn't rationalize giving Johnson a failing grade or even a D, because with Skal Labissiere already committed to Kentucky, Johnson's best-case scenario for another season in Lexington was probably ending up on the wrong side of a platoon for a third straight year.
We would have liked to see more out of Johnson, but we never got much of a chance and it wasn't looking like we weren't going to next year, either.
Andrew Harrison, PG, Sophomore
6 of 7
The Grade: D
The Reason
The decision to leave now is substantially better than it would have been a year ago, but that certainly doesn't make it a good one.
Andrew Harrison drastically improved his ball-handling, decision-making and defense as a sophomore. However, he's still a pretty terrible shooter (37.6 percent on two-point attempts in 2014-15) and isn't yet remotely a good enough passer to become a Rajon Rondo or Jose Calderon type of NBA point guard.
He'll probably get drafted, but it likely won't be in the first round, and he definitely won't be a lottery pick. As Chris Mannix wrote for Sports Illustrated before the national semifinals, "a spectacular Final Four might not be enough to earn Harrison a spot in the first round, but it's the only thing that can."
Maybe he'll develop quickly in the D-League, but Harrison is neither a pure point guard nor a pure shooting guard—and that's not because he's so skilled at both that it's tough to lock him into one position.
Harrison's best course of action arguably would have been to follow in the footsteps of Duke's Quinn Cook: come back for another season and fully embrace the role of shooting guard. It wasn't an option this past season, but with Booker and Aaron Harrison both out of the picture, he could have really improved his stock in 2016 by showcasing more of a scoring ability.
Aaron Harrison, SG, Sophomore
7 of 7
The Grade: F
The Reason
Does anyone other than Aaron Harrison actually think Aaron Harrison will get drafted?
ESPN's Chad Ford has him rated as the 13th best shooting guard and the 80th best overall prospect. Draft Express has Harrison at No. 73 on its list of the top 100 players. As a reminder, there are 60 picks in the NBA Draft.
He shot just 31.6 percent from three-point range this season, which is pretty woeful for someone whose primary contribution is three-point shooting. Quite the fall from grace compared to 12 months ago when he was a cold-blooded assassin who made clutch three-pointers on command.
That isn't to say that he couldn't eventually be a solid contributor in the NBA. Rather, it just seems like a terrible time for him to try to make the jump.
If he came back for one more year at Kentucky and shot 40 percent from three-point range, he could be a fringe first-round pick. If he came back and shot worse than 33 percent again, well, then he's in the exact same position that he's in now anyway, so what's the risk?
Advanced statistics are courtesy of Sports-Reference.com.
Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.
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