Devin Carter, son of Anthony Carter and Doral grad, goes 13th to Sacramento Kings

Devin Carter was born in Florida when his father was playing for the Miami Heat, blossomed into a star at Doral Academy while his dad was working as a player development coach for the Heat in Miami and now is following in his father’s footsteps as an NBA player.

Carter, the son of former Heat point guard Anthony Carter, is headed to the Sacramento Kings with the No. 13 pick in the first round of the 2024 NBA Draft. The 6-foot-2, 192-pound guard is the fifth player from South Florida to be picked in the first round of the last two NBA drafts and on Wednesday became the first first-round pick from Miami-Dade County since Tim Hardaway Jr. in 2013.

Although Carter has NBA pedigree, his trajectory to the lottery was still somewhat unusual. Carter, 22, was a two-time first-team all-Miami-Dade selection by the Miami Herald, then spent a post-graduate year at Brewster Academy in Wolfsboro, New Hampshire, where he developed into a four-star prospect, according to the 247Sports composite rankings for the Class of 2021. Carter then spent one year with South Carolina in a reserve role and then transferred to Providence, where he turned into one of the best players in the country. Carter jumped from 9.0 points per game as a freshman at South Carolina to 13.0 points per game as a sophomore with the Friars, then 19.7 points per game last season as the Big East Conference Player of the Year.

The scoring was only a small part of what made Carter great. With his 6-9 wingspan, Carter also averaged 8.7 rebounds per game and shot 37.7 percent from three-point range — a nearly 10 percent jump from the year before. If the three-point improvement is real, Carter has a chance to be one of the best players to come out of the 2024 Draft.

“The NBA team that drafts Devin,” said UMass coach Frank Martin, who coached Carter as a freshman with the Gamecocks, “is getting a rotation player from Day 1.”