A respectful suggestion to Oscar Tshiebwe: Come back to Kentucky

If you read Oscar Tshiebwe’s comments to the Herald-Leader’s Ben Roberts at the NBA Combine last week, it seems apparent that the Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball star’s preferred career plan is to turn pro now.

“I’m praying that a (NBA) team can get me,” Tshiebwe said. Later, in the same interview, the UK star added “My dream is to play in the NBA.”

It is a perfectly logical aspiration. A player who plays with the competitive pride that Tshiebwe exhibits must burn for the challenge of proving one’s self at basketball’s highest level.

Set to turn 24 on Nov. 27, Tshiebwe can hardly be blamed if he’s reached the point that he’s ready to move on from college.

Whatever Tshiebwe decides, it’s his life and he has every right to live it as he sees fit.

However, on balance, it looks from here that Tshiebwe would be best served by returning to Kentucky next year.

As the NBA Draft process rolls on, there’s scant evidence Tshiebwe will hear his name called. This remains true even after Tshiebwe turned in a more-than-solid showing in two games at the Draft Combine in Chicago, averaging 13 points and 12.5 rebounds.

ESPN.com’s mock draft does not have Tshiebwe listed as going in either of the two rounds. NBADraft.net has Tshiebwe as the 66th-best prospect for what will be a 58-player draft (Chicago and Philadelphia have forfeited second-round choices in the 2023 NBA Draft).

As the cliche goes, it only takes one team to like you, but if Tshiebwe finds himself on May 31 — the deadline to pull one’s name out of the draft and maintain one’s college eligibility — without the assurance of a guaranteed contract from an NBA franchise, he should exit.

Playing one more season at Kentucky should be more rewarding on every level than the uncertain life of an NBA end-of-the-bencher or playing in the obscurity of the G League.

It used to be, finances dictated that even players unlikely to make an NBA roster needed to turn pro so they could start making money for their hoops skills somewhere.

In the name, image and likeness era, there will probably be far more money available for playing in college next year for a star the magnitude of Tshiebwe than will be accessible to him as a first-year pro. The Herald-Leader’s Roberts has reported that Tshiebwe made $4 million this past season from NIL opportunities.

There has been speculation about just how high a price Tshiebwe could command if he used his status as a college graduate to open bidding among colleges (or, more accurately, among their collectives) for his services in 2023-24 as a grad transfer. However, the UK star said last week that is not something he will consider.

“That is not an option,” Tshiebwe said. “I will never transfer. Kentucky’s my home. If there’s a chance to go professional, I’ll go pro. If there’s a chance to not go professional, I will go back to Kentucky.”

Though the conventional wisdom is that it is all but impossible for veteran players to alter NBA perceptions of them late in their college careers, there is a chance Tshiebwe could be an exception.

His performance in 2022-23 was hampered after Tshiebwe underwent a surgical procedure on a knee before the season began that cost him weeks of preseason preparation. It was late in the UK campaign before Tshiebwe appeared to have regained the level of physical conditioning and “lift” he had displayed during his national player of the year campaign in 2021-22.

A fully healthy Tshiebwe in 2023-24 would have a chance to show that some of his on-court issues this past season, especially his struggles in pick-and-roll defense, resulted at least in part from the lingering impact of his knee surgery.

By returning to UK, Tshiebwe (1,117 career points at Kentucky, 952 career rebounds) would almost certainly become the Wildcats’ all-time leading rebounder and would have a chance to become a top 10 all-time scorer.

He would get one more chance to be a part of winning something meaningful with the Cats. In Tshiebwe’s two prior seasons, Kentucky has not won an SEC regular-season or tournament title. With Oscar as its anchor, maybe the 2023-24 Wildcats roster, which will feature a five-man recruiting class considered the best in the country, can change that.

Even though Tshiebwe has averaged 21 points and 19.7 rebounds in the three NCAA Tournament contests he has played for UK, the Cats are 1-2 in those games.

Tshiebwe’s already strong bond with the Big Blue Nation would be turbocharged if he returned to Lexington and led John Calipari’s Wildcats out of the first weekend of the NCAA tourney for the first time since 2019 or — dare to dream — to UK’s first Final Four since 2015.

If, as Tshiebwe has stated, his ultimate aim is to live in the commonwealth once his basketball-playing days are over, the goodwill engendered if he leads the team that returns UK to some level of NCAA Tournament glory could prove of immense future value.

So while the decision of whether to stay in or exit the 2023 NBA Draft is Tshiebwe’s alone to make, it says here that coming back to Kentucky would be the best move.

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