11 Kentucky Wildcats make The Ringer's top 100 NBA players

The Ringer recently released their top 100 NBA players and 11 of them played their college ball at the University of Kentucky. The next closest school is Duke with six. Great, right? But we’ve heard statistics before. John Calipari is the best at recruiting talented guys to come to play for Big Blue Nation. Also, death, taxes, and Willie Cauley-Stein played football in high school. We get it.

But let’s break it down another way.

Kentucky has 26 players on active NBA rosters currently (also the most amongst any other school) and nearly half of them (42%) are in the top 25th percentile of talent in the league, at least according to Bill Simmons and his band of cronies. By comparison, Duke has a similar amount of players in the league (25), but only 24% of them crack the top 100.

It’s easy to take the run Calipari has had for granted and recency bias will make everyone roll their eyes at these compliments, but the quantity of NBA-caliber talent funneling through one school may never be seen again in the history of the sport, especially if the NBA ends the one-and-done rule.

Here are where the former ‘Cats landed:

#8: Anthony Davis
#11: Devin Booker
#12: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
#25: Karl-Anthony Towns
#28: De’Aaron Fox
#32: Bam Adebayo
#47: Jamal Murray
#54: Tyrese Maxey
#65: Tyler Herro
#70: Keldon Johnson
#91: Julius Randle

Who is too high, too low?

The biggest surprise to me is to see Tyler Herro rank so high. Sure, he is in the top 100, but is he 26 spots better than Julius Randle? I’d probably drop Herro a bit and bump up Randle on my top 100 list.

I’d also rank Jamal Murray a little higher than #47, but of course, he is coming back from knee surgery and isn’t quite himself yet. I could also make an argument that Karl-Anthony Towns should be higher, but there is a lot of competition at the top.

In that crowded top 15, Kentucky’s best shot at winning Most Improved Player this season, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, ranked at #12. The way he has evolved his game is something to behold and if he were on a better team than the Oklahoma City Thunder he might be getting some looks at MVP.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, Kevin Durrant, Jayson Tatum, and Joel Embiid are the seven players ranked higher than Anthony Davis, who came in one spot above teammate and legend, LeBron James. Ja Morant is the next player before we get to Devin Booker, who finally seems to be getting the respect he deserves.

Overall, despite the nuances of who should land exactly where, this list serves as a great visual of the incredible talent that has flowed through Kentucky. Generations from now, we might look back at this decade-plus run and not see an NBA factory like Kentucky in the Cal era ever again.

Yes, this wealth of talent should have resulted in more national titles and understandably that is where fans will focus, but at some point, you have to just sit back and say, “Damn, that’s impressive.”