Now a college graduate, UK’s Antonio Reeves is out to prove that he belongs in the NBA

Back in the building where he had so many memorable moments on the basketball court, Antonio Reeves — wearing a blue cap and gown this time around — walked across the stage with a smile on his face, pumping his fist as he was announced as a graduate of the University of Kentucky.

“When I got on stage and they announced my name, it was just crazy, because all the fans were there — all the families — so they were all cheering for me when I walked across the stage,” Reeves said. “Definitely proud that I made it this far. I never imagined it.”

Over the past two years, Reeves emerged as a star player for the Wildcats, arriving on campus as a quiet transfer from Illinois State and leaving as a still-unassuming-but-confident young man ready to take on the challenges that will come with professional basketball.

But a couple of weekends ago in Rupp Arena, basketball took a backseat. And those who gathered there — a couple, in particular — came to cheer him on for different reasons.

Reeves reflected on that day — and his time at UK, in general — at the NBA Combine in his hometown of Chicago, beaming as he talked about how his parents were in attendance for his graduation ceremony. For his mom, Dawn Coulter, it was an emotional experience.

“She cried,” Reeves said. “She always told me she was going to cry when I graduated, when I walked across the stage. She’s definitely proud of me. And me graduating and being here, she was just like, ‘A lot of moms don’t see that from their sons. Graduating, and doing what you’re supposed to do.’ So she was definitely appreciative.”

Did the sight of mom crying lead Reeves to do the same?

“Man, I almost did,” the 23-year-old said with a smile. “I almost shed a tear. I definitely almost did.”

This past week has been a special experience, too. Reeves has spent it back home in Chicago, where he starred at local powerhouse Simeon High School before going on to Illinois State and then Kentucky, blossoming into one of the best players in college basketball and a possible NBA draft pick along the way.

The location of the league’s annual Combine allowed him to be in town for Mother’s Day — so he was able to take his mom out to dinner that night — but then it was all business.

Despite his college accolades, Reeves isn’t projected as a lottery pick or even a first-rounder in next month’s draft, where youth and upside often reign supreme with the earliest selections. But his hard work — over the past two seasons, especially — has put his name in the conversation

And he’s obviously not about to let up now.

“This process has been phenomenal,” Reeves said.

Antonio Reeves and the NBA draft

Those who watched Reeves at Kentucky — during the 2023-24 season, particularly — might be confused when they look over the various NBA mock drafts and have to keep scrolling to find his name. If they can find it at all.

The Athletic has him as the No. 44 pick. Bleacher Report projects Reeves at No. 55 overall. The latest mock drafts from ESPN, The Ringer and Yahoo Sports don’t mention his name anywhere among the 58 selections that will take place at the June 26-27 draft.

This is a guy who averaged 20.2 points per game — the most by any player in John Calipari’s star-laden 15 years at Kentucky — and did so efficiently, hitting 55.7% of his 2-point attempts, making 84 3-pointers at a 44.7% clip and shooting 86.3% from the free-throw line.

Reeves, believe it or not, will go down as the highest-scoring player during Calipari’s tenure with the Wildcats, tallying 1,155 points across his 67 games with the program. (He was also the only UK player to appear in every game over the past two seasons.)

The 6-foot-6 guard went through the NBA draft process last year, too, getting feedback from league decision-makers who wanted to see him do more than just bomb 3-pointers offensively, while looking for improvement on the defensive end.

Check, and check.

Reeves was the catalyst for UK’s electric offense this past season, not only hitting 3s at a higher rate than the year before but showing off an array of dribble moves and scoring at all three levels night after night. He made noticeable improvements to his defensive game, often drawing Calipari’s praise as the most consistent perimeter defender on a team that struggled across the board on that end of the floor. He doubled his rebounding numbers — going from 2.1 boards per game to 4.2 in one season — while upping his assists and cutting down on turnovers.

So, what’s not to like?

Reeves got some variation on this question multiple times during his media session at the Combine, deflecting on each occasion with a grin that said he wasn’t there to argue with the mock drafts. Same as his time at Kentucky, he would let his game speak for itself and hope that was enough to make people take heed.

That doesn’t mean the slights have gone unnoticed. He uses it as more fuel for the competitive fire.

“Oh, for sure,” Reeves said. “Definitely motivating me to the top. Just come in here, play with grit and try to be a dog out there. Every day. That’s my mentality going into everything.”

The former UK standout scored a game-high 17 points — and dished out four assists — in his first Combine scrimmage Tuesday afternoon. He scored only nine points in the second and final scrimmage Wednesday, but his team went 2-0, and there’s a much-larger, 33-game sample that NBA decision-makers can use to form their opinions.

His age — Reeves will turn 24 a few weeks into the 2024-25 season — is a clear detriment to his draft stock. It goes without saying that many of the other prospects in this year’s pool have a higher ceiling due to their youth. But many of those players — likely most of them — will never fulfill that potential. Reeves has already shown he can perform, consistently, at a high level.

His game also suits the current style of the NBA to a tee. The Chicago native grew up rooting for the Bulls, of course, but he also paid close attention to the Splash Brothers out in California, watching as Steph Curry and Klay Thompson helped usher in this new direction for the league with their focus on outside shooting. That’s always been the way Reeves has tried to play.

He might not have that sky-high ceiling, but surely there’s a place for him at the next level, no matter what those mock drafts say.

“A lot of people tell me I have an NBA game,” Reeves said. “Just reading the defense and the ball-handling skills that I have. But I just leave that to them. I always just go out there and play my game, as much as possible. And let them tell it, at the end of the day. I don’t worry about mock drafts and stuff. I just try to make sure I grind, and do what I have to do.”

It’s also possible that, in a way, Reeves’ experience can be an advantage moving forward. He’s acknowledged that he wasn’t the most confident guy when he made the move from Illinois State to Kentucky — a huge jump in competition — and it took some time to find his footing while playing in front of a rabid fan base and a “legendary coach” that first season in Lexington.

But he eventually found his way. And this past season — one of only two upperclassmen on a team with 12 scholarship players, eight of them freshmen — Reeves had to move out of his comfort zone and become a leader.

Sure, he wanted to show NBA scouts that he was more than what they thought he could be. He did that. A year ago, Reeves wasn’t on any of the draft boards. Another objective this past season? “Being a brother to the younger guys that came in.”

Reeves did that, too.

An example for the freshmen

Rob Dillingham — a projected top-10 pick in next month’s draft — thought he was putting in the work when he arrived at Kentucky as an 18-year-old freshman last summer.

“I was shooting every day,” he said. “But when I first got there, I could not shoot with Tone.”

Dillingham spoke at the NBA Combine about hitting the gym on his own time, putting up as many shots as he could, trying to hone his craft and work toward a lifelong goal that is now only about a month away from becoming a reality.

He has all that hard work to thank for getting to this point, of course. He also credited former UK assistant coach John Welch with putting him in a position to be an NBA lottery pick. But there was another constant in that practice gym. Seemingly every time Dillingham was there, so was Reeves, putting up shots at an even more impressive rate.

“He would outshoot me every day,” Dillingham said, awe still in his voice. “Then toward the end, it would get a little closer. We would go shot for shot — 20 makes in a row. It was just like NBA shooting. So he really helped me. Because it was like, ‘He’s hitting shots. Now I gotta hit shots.’ At first, I wasn’t hitting shots. But now he’s pushing me to hit shots.

“So Antonio Reeves was a big help to me, for sure.”

For Reeves, stories like this bring out more joy than retellings of his own accomplishments.

Though he was only at UK for two seasons, he’ll leave a legacy behind as a 1,000-point scorer and one of the best 3-point shooters to ever come through the program. But perhaps — more than those 20.2 points per game in Calipari’s final season — Reeves’ most-lasting legacy will be the way he led by example, and the talented players who took notice and chose to follow.

The longest response that Reeves gave during his Combine interview in Chicago was to a question not about himself, but one regarding Dillingham and those early shooting sessions outside of practice.

“He told me one time that he was just watching me shoot,” Reeves said. “And I guess he had a little hitch at first, with his shot. So he saw me just smoothly releasing at a certain point of time, and he said, ‘Man, that’s what I’m gonna start doing now.’ And he said it helped him grow. He said it helped him make shots even more.

“And him being in the gym with me after practice — he saw that I would be in there before, after and come back late at night. So when he saw me do that, he started doing the same thing. … It helped him grow overall, just making sure he was doing what he was supposed to do at the end of the day.”

Dillingham said the Noah tracking system that counts each player’s shots over the course of the season had Reeves with 49,000 by the end of the Wildcats’ 2023-24 campaign. The freshman proudly said that he was second with 43,000 shots. Reed Sheppard was next with 39,000.

Forty-nine thousand shots, on his own, in one season?

“I think it was 57,000,” Reeves said, interrupting a question on the topic to correct the number. “Coach Cal told me at the end.”

Well, we all know how Cal tends to exaggerate.

“Yeah, he might have,” Reeves responded with a laugh.

Whatever the number, Reeves lived in the gym. And when some of the younger guys took notice of that, they were right there with him, even if they couldn’t get those shots up at quite the same rate.

Asked if that was a change from his first season at Kentucky — if going through the draft process last year, knowing this was going to be his final opportunity to make an impression, made him work harder on that aspect of his game — Reeves paused, clearly looking for a polite way to form his reply. That wasn’t the case, he said.

“I was always in the gym late.”

Fair enough. Perhaps the biggest change, then, was that this time there were more young guys on the team looking for an example to follow. Some found that in Reeves.

The unlikely leader showed uncharacteristic pride when the comments of his former teammates were relayed to him. He laughed at Justin Edwards “talking crap” to him during their Combine scrimmage earlier that day, the two former Cats on opposing sides this time. Edwards talked that afternoon about the respect he had for Reeves, just as Sheppard and other Wildcats had said as this past season drew to an end.

“I’m proud of him,” Reeves said of Edwards. “Being here with me, and the amount of work we put in every day.”

Dillingham shook his head a couple of times while recounting all that extra time Reeves spent in the gym to get to this point. The “big brother” of UK basketball isn’t a lottery pick like he and Sheppard will be. Reeves might be drafted later than Edwards, if he’s drafted at all. But he showed all of those players — and the rest of the young Cats who were watching — a work ethic that surely helped them become better players, one that should translate to their professional careers.

Dillingham tried to keep up with him, and he apparently came the closest.

“But Tone’s in there day, night. Before the game, Tone’s in there,” he said. “There really ain’t no competing with Tone sometimes.”

There was one bright spot in Kentucky’s latest unthinkable loss. And he went uncelebrated.

Kentucky’s ‘silent assassin’ gets one more chance. And this time, he’s a different player.

Rob Dillingham talks about his shortcomings. And why he thinks he’ll be better in the NBA.

Reed Sheppard reflects on his decision to leave Kentucky. ‘It’s not what I was expecting.’

After a year of ‘adversity’ with UK basketball, Justin Edwards feels more prepared for NBA

Will Jaxson Robinson end up following Mark Pope to Kentucky? He talks about his process.

UK basketball’s SEC schedule for 2024-25 season will include John Calipari’s return to Rupp

Nate Oats took a subtle dig at Kentucky basketball during Final Four week. He isn’t wrong

He’s the most intriguing UK basketball newcomer. ‘We could be seeing a big-time player.’