'You Going to Get Drafted No. 1': Karl-Anthony Towns Recalls a Chat With Devin Booker From Their Kentucky Days

At the start of last season, NBA rosters were populated with 29 former Kentucky Wildcats, the most of any college program. Kentucky has been pumping out pros since John Wall went first overall in 2010, but this isn’t a quantity over quality situation, as some of the best players in the league used to call Rupp Arena home.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won the scoring title, MVP and Finals MVP, becoming just the fourth player in NBA history to pull that off in the same season (he’s in good company with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’N eal). He’s just the tip of the iceberg though, as Anthony Davis, De’Aaron Fox, Bam Adebayo, Jamal Murray and Julius Randle are also former Wildcat stars.

Let’s not forget Karl-Anthony Towns and Devin Booker either; each of whom played on that 2014-15 Kentucky squad that fell just two games short of completing the first perfect men’s college basketball season since Indiana did it way back in 1976.

KAT was an integral piece on the Knicks team that reached the Eastern Conference Finals this past season, and during last month’s Vegas Summer League, he sat down with Carmelo Anthony, another Knicks legend and former freshman phenom, for a live taping of Melo’s 7PM in Brooklyn podcast.

Towns described how he was friends with Booker even before they committed to Kentucky, and how the two of them would share their NBA aspirations.

“I remember we were in college and we used to be sitting there and Book would be like, ‘ Man, you’re about to go to the NBA, you’re gonna get drafted No. 1 and I’m gonna be here in Kentucky for another year or two,” Towns recalled.

That feeling likely stemmed from the fact that Devin Booker did not start in college. That’s right! The two-time All-NBA selection and four-time All-Star who once scored 70 points in an NBA game played 38 collegiate games and didn’t start a single one. It’s unfathomable, as is the fact that an arrest warrant was never issued for John Calipari due to this mind-boggling coaching decision.

To be fair to Coach Cal, that Kentucky roster was beyond loaded, to the point that he used to have basically an A team and a B team that he would platoon. Nobody got huge minutes, but it clearly worked on a team and personal level, as they finished 38-1 and had six players drafted to tie Kentucky’s own record from three years earlier.

Booker and even Towns didn’t get the ball in their hands as much as they would have if they attended a smaller school, but KAT was able to see the bigger picture.

“I was like, ‘Bro, if we handle business on the court and we win and stuff, all our draft stocks go up. It makes no sense to stay if we handle business the way we’re supposed to.'”  Towns was right, because the Timberwolves still saw enough from him to fulfill Booker’s prophecy that he would be taken with the first overall pick and Booker himself went 13th to the Phoenix Suns after following his friend’s advice and declaring for the draft.

That Wildcats team did win big, but they’ll go down in history as one of the best teams not to win a championship, as they were upset by Wisconsin in the Final Four. Towns has come tantalizingly close these past two years to reaching the championship stage, but again his teams have fallen just short. He made the conference finals with the Wolves in 2024, then did it again with the Knicks this year.

Booker doesn’t have to worry about riding the bench anymore, as he’s now the undisputed face of the Suns after Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal were traded away in recent months.