These days everyone seems to regard the Kentucky Wildcats as college basketball’s NBDL franchise. It’s understandable as Big Blue Nation has a huge presence in the NBA Draft lottery each year. As UK continues to win draft night each June, and people associate the rhyming phenomenon of “1-and-done” with John Calipari, UCLA basketball gets a bit overlooked. Kentucky is in second place when it comes to being a component of the NBA assembly line. UCLA is actually first.
The Bruins are the bluest of all basketball blue bloods when it comes to being a pipeline to the league.
Between 1999 and 2009, 16 players from UCLA were selected in the NBA draft, with 14 of them going on to play more than 300 games, the highest number for any school in Division I, according to Stats LLC.
So it’s not really so much about producing draft picks, as it is about true significant contributors and All-Stars. We’re looking at quality over quantity in this study that was publicized by the Wall Street Journal.:
Besides All-Stars like Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook and Cleveland’s Kevin Love, UCLA alumni that remain key NBA contributors include Jrue Holiday (New Orleans), Matt Barnes (Los Angeles Clippers), Darren Collison (Sacramento) and Trevor Ariza (Houston).
Over this same span, 17 players from Duke were drafted, but only 12 Blue Devils played more than 300 games.
After the Kentucky and UCLA basketball programs, LSU, shockingly, is third. Duke as mentioned above is fourth. Then it goes Texas, Stanford, USC, Florida, UConn and Kansas to round out the top. Very surprising, as there’s a lot of football schools in there. UCLA basketball has bragging rights here, but Kentucky will get their chance to make their statement on December 20th in Chicago. They’ll meet in the CBS Sports Classic at the United Center.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2