One of Kentucky’s best ever? Reed Sheppard is ready for next step in basketball journey

This time a year ago, no one could have realistically believed that what’s about to happen might actually happen.

Back then, Reed Sheppard was coming off a Mr. Basketball season at North Laurel High School, capping one of the most celebrated runs in Kentucky hoops history and — to the delight of many in the commonwealth — settling into his new home on UK’s campus.

He made the move from London to Lexington amid plenty of fanfare, sure, but even the most optimistic of expectations couldn’t have foreseen what came next. By all accounts, Sheppard was the fifth-rated prospect in another No. 1-ranked recruiting class from John Calipari, a locally famous name coming to town with, seemingly, much brighter stars around him.

Sheppard was a promising player, without a doubt. Possibly a long-term NBA draft prospect. But the conventional wisdom going into the 2023-24 season said the Kentucky native would do well to simply carve out a meaningful role as a freshman, with greater things to follow in the years ahead.

When Sheppard burst onto the UK basketball scene during the team’s offseason trip to Canada, those expectations were realigned. Though just a bit. Sheppard returned to the United States having proved himself among his peers and alongside some legitimate competition, but that was still only a few days in July, against opponents not nearly as talented as the likes he’d see when the real games began.

And when those games did begin a few months later, Sheppard did more than prove he belonged.

He scored 12 points in his college basketball debut. That those points came in a 40-point victory over a rebuilding New Mexico State team was enough not to get people too carried away. Eight days later, Sheppard was one of UK’s best players in a near-victory over then-No. 1 Kansas.

That raised some eyebrows.

Three days later, Sheppard hit his first five shots — all of them 3-pointers — and ended up with 25 points and seven assists while going 9-for-10 from the field in a win against Stonehill College that had the Rupp Arena fans on the edge of their seats every time he touched the ball.

By that point, the quality of the opponent didn’t matter. His talent was getting difficult to ignore.

In the weeks that followed, Sheppard continued to pile up the highlights. There was the star turn against Miami in front of a raucous Rupp crowd. There were big plays in crunch time. Free throws with the game on the line. A surprisingly effective defensive approach that drew praise from his teammates — as well as his Hall of Fame head coach — and an overall unselfishness that had opponents singing his praises.

Before Southeastern Conference play even began, he was popping up on NBA draft boards and getting mentions — outside the state — as one of the best players in all of college basketball.

“It’s not what I was expecting,” Sheppard said recently, reflecting on his brief career with a Kentucky Wildcats program that he’d grown up always hoping to one day represent.

It wasn’t what anyone was expecting, but it’s exactly what happened.

By the end of the 2023-24 season — one that ended in heartbreak, a first-round exit from the NCAA Tournament — Sheppard had earned multiple national freshman of the year awards and cemented himself as one of the best prospects in the sport.

Four weeks after playing his final game for the Wildcats, the 19-year-old Kentuckian announced that he was moving on.

“Kentucky is home,” he said in a message to UK fans. “Kentucky will always be home. However, there is another part of my dream. To play basketball in the NBA.”

Reed Sheppard in the NBA draft

There’s still plenty of mystery over where exactly Sheppard will begin his NBA career, but it’s viewed as a certainty at this point that he won’t be waiting long to find out Wednesday night (June 26).

That’s when the first day of the 2024 NBA draft will take place — two days after Sheppard turns 20 years old, in fact — and he’s widely expected to be one of the first players selected.

The most recent mock drafts from lead analysts at ESPN, The Athletic and pretty much every other national outlet has Sheppard as a top-five pick, and — unless those projections are all way off — he won’t make it out of the top 10.

If Sheppard is indeed a top-10 selection, he would be just the fifth player in the past 50 years — and the first in more than three decades — to graduate from high school in Kentucky and go in that range of the NBA draft.

The last such player to do it was Felton Spencer, who starred at Eastern High School in Louisville before playing for his hometown Cardinals and being selected with the No. 6 overall pick in the 1990 draft.

Only one such player in the past 50 years has gone in the top five of the draft: former Male star Darrell Griffith, the No. 2 overall selection after leading U of L to the national title in 1980.

No former Kentucky high school player who played for the Wildcats has been selected with a top-10 pick in the NBA draft since Rex Chapman went No. 8 overall in 1988.

Going into Wednesday night, Frank Ramsey (the No. 5 pick in 1953) is the highest-drafted ex-UK player from the state in NBA history. Sheppard could become the new holder of that title, which Ramsey has held for 71 years.

In the past 50 years, only seven former Kentucky high schoolers have ended up being what are now classified as NBA lottery picks (players drafted among the top 14 selections):

▪ Griffith, who went No. 2 to the Utah Jazz in 1980.

▪ Bryan Station’s Melvin Turpin, who starred at Kentucky and was selected sixth overall by the Washington Bullets (and traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers on draft night) in 1984.

▪ Spencer, who went No. 6 to the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1990.

▪ Apollo’s Chapman, who went No. 8 to the Charlotte Hornets in 1988.

▪ Ballard’s Allan Houston, who starred at Tennessee and was selected 11th overall by the Detroit Pistons in the 1993 draft.

▪ Doss standout Derek Anderson, who began his college career at Ohio State before transferring to Kentucky and being selected by Cleveland with the No. 13 pick in the 1997 draft.

▪ And Ohio State star D’Angelo Russell is a partial qualifier for this distinction. A Louisville native, Russell began his prep career at Central High School before transferring to Montverde (Florida) Academy following his freshman year of high school. He was the No. 2 overall pick in 2015.

Five of those seven players were from Louisville (Anderson, Griffith, Houston, Russell and Spencer), with Turpin hailing from Lexington and Chapman coming from Owensboro.

Sheppard would be the first lottery pick in modern NBA history from the eastern part of Kentucky, though Corbin High School star Frank Selvy — who played for Furman University — was the No. 1 overall pick in the 1954 draft.

Best NBA players from Kentucky

During his brief UK career — and even going back to his high school days — Sheppard was known for his humble approach. That continued throughout the predraft process.

“I’m good with whatever,” he said at last month’s NBA combine when asked about his positional role at the next level. “It doesn’t matter what I have to do, as long as we’re winning. As long as everyone’s having fun. I said it going in to Kentucky. I don’t care if I have to pass the ball. I don’t care if I have to shoot the ball. I don’t care if I have to get some water for the guys. Whatever it takes for the team to win, I’ll do.

“And it won’t matter at all, as long as I’m there and having fun and the team’s winning — it’ll all be a blast.”

By all accounts, Sheppard was that kind of teammate this past season at Kentucky, but he’s also known as a hard worker off the court who won’t be content with anything less than his best on game days. And he understands as well as anyone the outside pressure that will come with being selected as highly as he’s going to be in this NBA draft.

Sheppard — the son of former UK basketball stars Jeff Sheppard and Stacey Reed Sheppard — is already one of the most celebrated players in the state’s history. With the start of his professional career now just months away, what will he have to do over the years that follow to cement himself as one of the best ever from Kentucky?

The discussion of who’s on that list begins with two players from the now-distant past.

When the NBA released its “50 greatest players” list in 1996, two Kentuckians were on it: Dave Cowens and Wes Unseld, and they’ll always remain among the greatest from the commonwealth to ever play the sport.

Unseld, who starred at Seneca High and U of L before becoming the No. 2 overall pick in the 1968 draft, is still the NBA’s all-time leading Kentuckian in games played (984) and total rebounds (13,769), as well as being sixth on the NBA scoring list among such players. A center who was known as a tremendous outlet passer, Unseld is also second among Kentuckians on the NBA’s all-time assists list.

Cowens, a Newport Central Catholic star before playing college ball at Florida State and going to the Boston Celtics with the No. 4 pick in the 1970 draft, is second in NBA scoring, rebounding and blocked shots — and fourth in assists — among native Kentuckians.

More recently, Rajon Rondo has been the state’s top player at the highest level.

Rondo, a Louisville native, played at Eastern High School before finishing his prep career at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia and spending two seasons at Kentucky, where he left in 2006 as the No. 21 overall pick in the draft.

He’s the state’s all-time NBA leader in assists (7,584) and steals (1,518) by wide margins. Rondo also ranks 15th in NBA history in total assists, averaging 7.9 per game over his 16-year career as a point guard in the league. (Rondo holds the UK record for most steals in a season with 87, and Sheppard is second on that list with 82 during his freshman year.)

The state’s all-time leading scorer at the NBA level is former Ballard star Allan Houston, who left Louisville to play college basketball at Tennessee — under his father, Wade Houston, a former U of L assistant — and ultimately scored 14,551 points over his 12-year pro career. Houston was also the NBA’s leading 3-point shooter from the state (1,305 total makes) before D’Angelo Russell surpassed him during the 2023-24 season.

Cowens (13,516 points) is the state’s second-best in NBA scoring behind Houston, and former UK and Owensboro High star Cliff Hagan (13,447) is next. (Hagan, a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame member, is actually first among all Kentuckians in pro scoring if you include his points from the three seasons he spent in the ABA at the end of his career.)

Lafayette High’s Jeff Mullins — who was born in New York and played at Duke — is next in scoring with 13,017 NBA points. He was the No. 6 pick in the 1964 draft.

Darrell Griffith (12,391 points), Unseld (10,624) and Russell (10,136) are the others who played at Kentucky high schools and scored more than 10,000 points in the NBA. Rex Chapman (9,731 points) and Rondo (9,337) are next on that list.

Who will draft Reed Sheppard?

So, where will Reed Sheppard end up on NBA draft night?

That’s not yet clear.

The Atlanta Hawks have the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft, though French prospects Zaccharie Risacher and Alex Sarr are viewed as the two most likely selections there. Some mock drafts have Sheppard going as high as No. 2 overall to the Washington Wizards, but recent projections from both ESPN’s Jonathan Givony and The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie sent the Kentucky star to the Houston Rockets, who currently hold the No. 3 overall selection in the draft.

The Rockets, already stacked with several talented young players, could also trade the No. 3 pick to another team, which would shake up the top of the draft board, and, obviously, have an impact on the projections of who goes where.

The San Antonio Spurs — home of Victor Wembanyama, the NBA’s next megastar — have the No. 4 pick, with the Detroit Pistons sitting at No. 5 and the Charlotte Hornets at No. 6. Sheppard is not widely projected to fall out of the top five, and — if he is chosen that early — it would mean a hefty guaranteed payday.

How much money is Sheppard expected to make in his first season?

According to the NBA’s rookie salary scale, the player that is picked No. 5 in this year’s draft would receive more than $8.2 million during the 2024-25 season and a total of about $26 million over his first three years in the league. (The stated salary numbers are actually lower than that, but teams are allowed to sign draft picks for as much as 120% of the rookie scale, and that’s the standard practice for the very top picks.)

If Sheppard were to go No. 3 in the draft — as some of those current projections say — his rookie salary would be a little more than $10 million, with about $32 million in estimated earnings over his first three seasons.

In that late April message announcing his departure after just one season, Sheppard addressed UK fans directly and said that they’d been with him from “day one” of his basketball life, which, to this point, has all been spent in the state of Kentucky.

On Wednesday night, Sheppard will find out where the game will take him next.

“I am asking you to go with me on this journey,” he told UK fans. “I am looking forward to taking you with me. I’ll represent you with all the characteristics that make us Kentuckians: passion, humility, perseverance, sacrifice and joy.

“And one day, I’ll return. To family, to friends, to Kentucky. My home.”

NBA draft

First round: 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 26 (ABC-36, ESPN)

Second round: 4 p.m. Thursday, June 27 (ESPN)

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