Bam Adebayo arrives in Lexington as the next man up in the line of talented big men to play at the University of Kentucky.
But he isn’t trying to be DeMarcus Cousins, Anthony Davis, Nerlens Noel or Karl Anthony-Towns. He just wants to be Bam.
“The pressure I feel, it’s not because of them,” Adebayo said at UK Media Day Thursday. “It’s because of me wanting to be the best player I can be.”
A McDonald’s All-American rated the fifth-best player in the Class of 2016 according to ESPN.com, Adebayo is now projected as a Top 10 pick in the 2017 NBA Draft by DraftExpress.com. The 6-foot-10 Newark, N.J., native runs the floor with the best of them, giving the Wildcats an up-tempo dimension to their offense.
“He flies up and down the court, flies,” head coach John Calipari said. “Literally, we can go boom, bing, lob, dunk, and it’s him. He may have rebounded the ball, [and you’re] like what? He’s fast.”
Fellow five-star freshman Sacha Killeya-Jones sees the high flying potential in Adebayo, too.
“We’re going to maul the ball on defense, get up and down the court in transition, Bam (Adebayo) is going to dunk a lot,” he said. “It’s going to be a fun team to watch.”
ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla, who was recently at Kentucky, is also impressed by Adebayo.
“Bam Adebayo looks the part of an NBA power forward,” Fraschilla told ZAGSBLOG. “He’s got great size, huge shoulders and he’s a very good athlete. At this stage of his career he’s going to be an energy big. He’s going to rebound, he’s going to block some shots and he’s going to roll to the rim with force. He’s not a complete player but in the NBA there are very few complete players. He’s got a chance to be a terrific inside role player.”
As the Wildcats enter the season with the potential to struggle with outside shooting, running an offense through the nimble big-man could be Kentucky’s main source of scoring income. Adebayo, seeing the opportunity to be a focal point of the offense, is trying to elevate his game heading into the season.
“I’m working on my whole arsenal,” he said. “I don’t want to be one-dimensional.”
Even with the rave reviews on Adebayo being thrown around, Calipari was sure to remind those in attendance that the blue-chip recruits development is going to be a “process.”
“Just like it was for any of our big guys that bought it,” Calipari said. “Karl, and you saw guys, and as the season went on, they just got better and better and better.”
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