Kentucky's Freshmen-Led Superteam Welcomes Fab 5 Comparisons

De'Aaron Fox was in no hurry. He could see what he needed. Sure, he was at the McDonald's All-American Game in Chicago. Sure, he was the most heralded member of an incoming Kentucky freshman class that he himself referred to as a "superteam."

But he could see what he needed to do.      

"I'm going to have to put on weight," he told Bleacher Report. "That's the biggest difference between high school and college basketball."

He sounded patient, measured about it. This was going to be a process. Development takes time, after all. It's about staying patient. Taking baby steps. One step after another, making progress one year after...

HA!

Of course it's not. Maybe it was once, but nobody in basketball thinks like that anymore.

Fox's plan for his maturation was to take care of it all in seventeen months, or roughly 510 days. So much for patient. And he's already well into the process. He started well before he enrolled at Kentucky.

He changed his diet in the middle of his senior year in high school. "I don't eat McDonald's anymore. Not anything too greasy," he said (apparently forgetting who was sponsoring the game he was playing in).

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Fox plans to play one season for Kentucky, develop physically into a man and then go straight to the first round of the NBA draft.

"Yeah, if I could be a one-and-done and go as high (in the draft) as I want, I would," he said. "But I'm not thinking about that. If I have to stay an extra year, I will."

This isn't to make judgments, but rather to give a look into the mind and life of today's college basketball players. Their vocabulary, too. An "extra year" might mean "a fifth year" to most college kids; to Fox, it meant a "sophomore year." It's particularly on display this year at Kentucky, where not long ago John Calipari was generally considered dirty for bringing players in with this type of thinking.

Now, Calipari is the role model for the sport. One-and-done is the way of life at Kentucky.

"We've got a heck of a group coming," Calipari said in a press conference following the Wildcats' second-round loss to Indiana this March in the NCAA tournament. "Maybe the best that I've ever had."

That is saying something.

The class in question is Fox, Bam Adebayo, Malik Monk, Wenyen Gabriel and Sacha Killeya-Jones. Fox and Monk were already talked about as one of the best college backcourts in the country before they had actually played an NCAA game. In their first game, against Stephen F. Austin, Fox broke a Kentucky freshman record with 12 assists.

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The first major step, though, is Tuesday night, when Kentucky plays Michigan State.

Fox said when Calipari was recruiting him, the coach was pitching the idea of a superteam. That's likely just Calipari's usual pitch, but it worked on Fox.

"Every time I talked to him, he was saying, 'I want you and Sacha and Bam and Malik [and Gabriel] all together," Fox said. "I've never been able to play with so much talent around me in every practice and every game.

"You usually don't want to go in and be the superstar where you have to score 30 points a game because that's tough on your body.

"Coach Cal has done this multiple times. For him, it's the norm. With us five coming in, it could be like the Fab Five, but we've got good players coming back, too."

The Fab Five. Fox knows his basketball history. This is the 25-year anniversary of the Fab Five—Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson and Jimmy King—enrolling at Michigan. The group went to the national championship game as freshmen and sophomores, losing to Duke then North Carolina in those games.

"I hope ours doesn't end the way theirs did." Fox said. "But if we could get some national championships, I'd like to be just like the Fab Five."

Mark Zerof-USA TODAY Sports

Didn't expect teenage college athletes to know about the past like that?

"Um, yes, I've seen the documentary 100 times," Fox said of the ESPN 30 for 30 installment. "I mean, it comes on a lot, and every time it comes on, you just can't change the channel. You just have to watch it."

"I watched that like 100 times," Adebayo said. "It was how they were all freshmen, all taking in the college stage. They handled it pretty well. They took it in and did what they had to do. We've just got to go out there and prove who we are."

Actually, the Fab Five, as shown in the documentary, meant a lot more than that. What this superteam wouldn't remember was how heavily criticized that Michigan team was. For their black socks. For their long, baggy shorts. For their trash-talking. For their cockiness. Just for getting so much attention as freshmen, before paying dues.

They were beloved at first when they were fresh and new. And then that turned. There were racial elements to the criticism, but also what they were doing was just so unconventional.

They were rock stars. And they have worn well through the years.

So much of what the Fab Five did is still here now, particularly the rock star part. Kevin Graves, Adebayo's coach for his Karolina Diamonds AAU team, describes the scene when Adebayo would visit Lexington as a high school kid who had already committed to playing for Kentucky:

"He walked into a Waffle House and people started saying, 'Are you Bam Adebayo?' Then everybody else just erupts. 'Is that Bam Adebayo?' And everybody wanted him to sign their napkins and T-shirts."

He was a high school kid.

"This 80-year-old lady had a walker and it was sprayed blue with Kentucky stuff," Graves said "She got up and came across the room with that walker, and she had a cane that was blue, too. She asked for an autograph."

Graves also described people running down an escalator and into a bookstore to buy a ball for Adebayo to sign. He said that people in the media were angry with Adebayo when he didn't go to the Nike Hoop Summit and that they were calling all the time, pestering him nonstop for interviews. At some point, he said, Adebayo just needed a little time to finish high school and be normal.

Being a rock star has its plusses and minuses for kids, its dangers and benefits. But for sure, it has led to an entirely different world for youth basketball, too. The Fab Five have filtered down. With camps and national and international All-Star teams for shoe companies and fast-food joints, these kids aren't just meeting in college for the first time.

They are traveling together, living together. They are friends already.

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Back in Chicago, someone told Fox that Arizona freshman Kobi Simmons had said that Arizona's backcourt will be better than Kentucky's. Fox said that at a pre-tournament function "with games and food stuff, Bam and—well, Sacha's pretty quiet—but Bam and Malik and I were talking about who's going to be No. 1.

"We were just walking around saying that we are, and someone else said we'd just be in the top five. We were looking at him, saying like, 'He's crazy.' Everybody is going to trash-talk. Everybody wants to be the best. You should never think any less of yourself."

Duke is No. 1, and Kentucky No. 2. But the point is that the Fab Five made everyone a little less uptight. Fox and the Kentucky superteam are sitting around bragging. Trash-talking is all part of the game now. It doesn't bother anyone.

Fox said in the spring that he had been following Marques Bolden, another McDonald's All-American, and jokingly threatening to break his legs if he didn't go to Kentucky. Bolden chose Duke.

Duke had a superteam recruiting class of its own. After years of criticizing Calipari's one-and-done teams as unethical, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has followed Calipari's lead. Duke recruit Jayson Tatum, another McDonald's All-American, said that Krzyzewski "definitely told me I'm one of those players who should only be in college for one year if I do what I'm supposed to."

From the Fab Five to Calipari and the superteam, it is just the way of college basketball now.

"You've just got to live with the expectations," Adebayo said.

And run like crazy when an 80-year old with a walker is chasing after you for an autograph.

Greg Couch covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @gregcouch.