Kentucky University has always been a basketball powerhouse, an iconic institution, surrounded by enormous expectations and often unrealistic pressure. Since, John Calipari took the job as head coach, everything was even more extreme. Calipari’s philosophy is to recruit the best players available; experience and maturity be damned. Since 2013, when Alex Poythress stepped on the Lexington campus to play for him, Kentucky has produced 24 first-round picks, most of them played for the Wildcats one or maybe two seasons, at best. Poythress stayed four seasons, not a rare feat, something more appropriately unheard of. On the 2015 team, that won 38 games out of 39, losing only the Final Four semifinal game vs Wisconsin, there were four first round picks, among them Karl-Anthony Towns and Devin Booker, and two second-round picks. Poythress was supposed to be one of the leaders, a potential go-to guy on that team. Not coincidentally, he was selected by Sports Illustrated for the college basketball preview annual issue. Unfortunately, that season Poythress appeared only in eight games before a terrible knee injury that ended his season very soon. He was a junior and without a full season to build on, he was forced to go back to Kentucky for a fourth and final year, getting his degree among the best students, just like he did earlier in Tennessee, as a high schooler.
There are several reasons to assume that playing for Kentucky prepared Poythress for the best. He arrived at Lexington after the Wildcats had just won the NCAA championship led by Anthony Davis, the future Lakers star who was selected number 1 in the NBA draft. The Wildcats were the defending champions, but the championship team was not there anymore. Some of the best players were rookies: Poythress was one, Nerlens Noel, another center who eventually made the NBA, was another, and so Willie Cauley-Stein, a sixth overall NBA pick who is going to play for Varese now. Kentucky lost 12 games during that season. Poythress played at a reasonably high level (he averaged 11.2 points and 6.0 rebounds per game, he shot 60.7 percent on twos), but the “Big Blue Nation”, the immense Kentucky fams community, forgot about the NCAA championship in one minute. Criticisms were all over the place.
At the time, in truth, Alex was dealing with more and more serious issues. Towards the end of his high school career in Tennessee, his mom, Regina, was diagnosed with a kidney disease that eventually hooked her for nine hours every day to a Dialysis machine, waiting and praying for a kidney transplant that normally take up to five years to be possible. When the diagnosis was made, Alex was 17 and he decided to keep it for himself and his family, his mom, his twin sister Alexis and the younger one, Alysia. When Poythress moved to Kentucky, his twin followed him and attend the same school. So, Regina was left in the younger sister hands. After two transplants were canceled at the last minute, Alex took the matter herself and since she was a compatible donor, despite her young age, in 2018 she gave her kidney to her mom, ending a long terrible period. By then, Alex was playing in Atlanta, in the NBA. It is not clear how much his college career was affected by his mom health and how much by his catastrophic junior year injury. As a fact, he played 112 games for Kentucky, including a championship game in 2014, he was a member of another Final Four team (although he was unavailable for most of the season) and left after the 2015/16 season with a business degree and a very good senior season (he averaged 10.2 points and 6.0 rebounds per game, and shot 64.0 percent from two-point range). However, he was undrafted.
It would have been very hard to believe in 2012 that Alex Poythress, one of the biggest prospects in high school basketball, was going to be undrafted. Born in Savannah, Georgia, but raised in Clarksville, Tennessee, he was named state player of the year in 2012 after scoring more than 2,000 points in his career (he averaged 30.1 points per game in his senior year along 11.1 rebounds and 4.3 blocks) at the Northeast HS of Clarksville. He also had 21-double-double that season. The home university, Vanderbilt, had followed him for years, as well as Memphis and Florida. But when John Calipari came up on behalf of the “Big Blue Nation” of Kentucky, everything changed. When announcing his choice, Poythress was very candid. “During the recruiting process you get to know a lot of people, you create personal relationships, you build friendships, then you choose just one school and with the others it’s like a break-up.” “When he’s at his best, because of his size and his athleticism, when his motor is running, Alex is good as anyone,” Calipari said as he introduced him. Meanwhile, he also had 3.95 academic rating, a very high score. As a student, he actually never had any problems: in elementary school he won a competition as the kid who had read the most books.
Kentucky began the season ranked at number 3 nationally, the result of Calipari’s reputation, the talent level and the championship won just a few months earlier but with another group of players. Poythress started in his first Kentucky game and scored 20 points and grabbed 12 rebounds against Duke in his second career game. In the third, an easier game vs Lafayette, he scored 22 points on 9-for-10 from the field. Poythress’ season was more than good considering his age, and even ignoring or not considering the family issues he was dealing with, but Kentucky lost Noel to and injury and, at the end of the season, didn’t even make the NCAA field of 64. He could have opted out of college after just one year and would have been mathematically a first-round pick. Instead, he decided to stay, improve, keep advancing academically. In the summer, Julius Randle, who is now an NBA All-Star for the New York Knicks, arrived in Lexington. A great addition that however moved Poythress into a sixth man role. Randle is a 4, Cauley-Stein played at the 5, Poythress – more adaptable – was used both positions. The season was very different from the previous one. Poythress was instrumental in the NCAA Tournament especially against the in-state archrival of Louisville, coached by former great Kentucky coach Rick Pitino. Poythress led the comeback in the second half: a thunderous dunk, then a three-point play against Montrezl Harrell to push the Wildcats ahead and on their way to the won. Kentucky won the next game, against Michigan, and then finished off Wisconsin in the Final Four. The most famous play of Poythress’ career dates to that game, a monstrous, viral, dunk on Sam Dekker. Kentucky however lost the championship game to Connecticut. And Alex decided to stay again.
When a hot prospect postpones the leap to the NBA, there is always the chance that something happens and gets in the way. Alex said the NBA was his dream, but he wanted to be ready, feel that his body was ready. Also, earning the degree was important and really close and he didn’t want to give it up. It was huge news among the college basketball community. That’s why Sports Illustrated chose him for the cover of its preseason issue. They chose to put him up front to represent and incredibly talented team, that had just recruited Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker, Trey Lyles, all future NBA players, the first two big stars. That team won 38 straight games before losing the NCAA Tournament semifinal game to Wisconsin, a rematch of the one that took place during the previous season, but this time with no Poythress. The knee injury not only kept Poythress from finishing the season, not only prevented him from going to the NBA as a high draft pick, more than anything else the injury robbed him of a serious chance to win the NCAA title on a potentially unbeaten team. After that game, Kentucky sent four first-round and two more second-round picks to the NBA. So, the team had to be built around Poythress again, and he was essentially forced to return for a fourth season.
Individually, it was his best season. And Kentucky finished the year ranked No. 10 after winning the conference tournament, no small feat. Along him, there was Jamal Murray, now a superstar guard for the Denver Nuggets, and also Derek Willis, the power forward who used to play in Brindisi and Venice and is now at Efes Istanbul. But after four years, probably he had missed the right time to move up, Poythress approached the NBA draft knowing that he was not predicted to go anywhere close he was predicted to go earlier. However, he was also one of the rare Kentucky players to experience a “Senior Night,” the night of the last home game when the player is honored, cheered, and serenaded. For a Wildcats player, that means getting a standing ovation from 23,000 rabid fans. Unforgettable.
For three years, Poythress has attempted to find his niche in the NBA. The first team to give him a chance was Indiana, but he couldn’t overcome the veterans camp, so he spent his first season as a pro in Fort Wayne in the G-League where he was included in the all-league first and rookie teams (he averaged 18.5 points and 7.1 rebounds per game). Late in the season, he got the call up from the Philadelphia 76ers. To his credit, he played well enough to finish his first NBA season with six appearances but 10.7 points per game. Despite the promising stint, the Sixers did not keep him, and he returned to Indiana where during the 2017/18 season, he played 25 more games, first with a two-way contract that gave him new G-League mileage and then with a regular contract. In 2018 he signed a second two-way with Atlanta that earned him 21 more appearances. Around that time, Regina’s came out of her nightmare by receiving Alexis’ kidney. Maybe for this reason, after playing for the Hawks, Poythress decided to rebuild his career abroad. First in China, then at Galatasaray (13.6 points and 7.1 rebounds per game in the Eurocup) and finally in the EuroLeague. He spent two years at Zenit: the first season’s team was the one that took Barcelona to the fifth game of the playoffs (with Kevin Pangos at the point), the second was the one in which the Russian teams were ousted three quarters into the season (he was shooting 64.0 percent from the field, up from 62.3 percent the previous season). Poythress stayed on to finish the VTB league, helping Zenit to win the title by overcoming CSKA Moscow in Game 7 of the championship series (Billy Baron was among his teammates too). Last season, at Maccabi, he was limited to 11 regular season games due to a wrist injury. Returning for the playoffs, he averaged 7.0 points over 14 minutes of action on 68.4 percent shooting in a five-game series loss to AS Monaco. But later he helped Maccabi win the Israeli title. Which John Calipari himself celebrated on Twitter.
So, the player coming to Milan is one who spent four high-pressured seasons at Kentucky, who spent three seasons in the EuroLeague, the last one in another high-pressure environment as Tel Aviv is, a player who is coming off two consecutive national championships won and ten EuroLeague playoffs’ games played. A player naturally ready.
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