Reed Sheppard is why John Calipari left

When recruiting stops turning into winning

John Calipari tweeted something remarkable June 30. Several of his former Kentucky players, now NBA stars, had just inked lucrative contracts and extensions, and Calipari celebrated with some updated napkin math:

Of course, "remarkable" is in the eye of the beholder. The numbers are staggering but totally plausible. The sheer volume of NBA talent Calipari has produced in the past 15 years is mind-bending but also somehow mundane; it is a stunning thing that basketball fans have long since internalized. We’re used to it. A player will go to Kentucky. That player will be chosen in the NBA draft. That player will go on to be anything from a long-tenured denizen of league rosters to a perennial NBA All-Star. That player will make a ton of money. And then Calipari will make sure everyone knows the latter — helping another family secure generational wealth — was his ultimate priority all along.

Reed Sheppard’s got next. The Rockets’ No. 3 overall pick immediately proved he was way too good for NBA Summer League last weekend, putting up consecutive eye-poppers against the Lakers and Wizards, the highlights of which you can find at those links. It was a thrillingly auspicious beginning to Sheppard’s NBA career. It recaptured some of the same excitement of seeing him first break out in Lexington last fall.

Most of all, it was impossible to watch Sheppard take flight against NBA(-ish) competition and not see yet another insanely talented pro who played for Kentucky without Kentucky itself having all that much to show for it.

It is this frustration — this strange and entirely unique breakdown of the synergy between recruiting elite talent and winning college basketball games and having your fans like you — that ultimately brought Calipari’s Kentucky career to an end.

Sheppard’s lone season on campus was perhaps the most drastic case, but there have been many such cases before him.