Justin Edwards isn’t going to have the glamorous NBA Draft evening he as soon as imagined. In reality, he may need to attend for the second day of the draft — a brand new wrinkle this yr, separating the 2 rounds — to listen to his identify referred to as. However that hardly issues anymore. After a tumultuous freshman season at Kentucky, Edwards is aware of the victory is in attending to this second along with his skilled dream and self-confidence nonetheless intact. Or a minimum of on the mend.
“That is most likely the primary piece of actual adversity I’ve gone by,” Edwards mentioned. “Getting by it, as I take the subsequent steps in my basketball profession, goes to assist me in the long term.”
His mom, Ebony Twiggs, was a hooper herself again within the day, MVP of the Philadelphia Public League championship recreation 23 years earlier than Edwards took residence that very same honor. She performed in faculty and had a professional profession abroad. She is aware of in addition to any father or mother that the sport at its highest ranges isn’t for the faint of coronary heart. So all through most of her son’s struggles at Kentucky, she tried to remain out of the way in which, hold quiet, let him sink or swim on his personal. Even when it wasn’t going nice for her not-so-little boy, a 6-foot-8 ahead who got here in with five-star hype and the heavy burden of expectation hooked up to that.
“I don’t discuss to coaches,” Twiggs mentioned. “I allow them to coach. No matter dialog I must have, I’ll have it with my son, so I by no means had a dialog with coach Cal.”
Former UK coach John Calipari, having handled numerous helicopter mother and father and meddlesome inside circles, was absolutely relieved.
“Originally of the season, I used to be saying, ‘Why is he taking Justin out?’” Twiggs mentioned. “However then it was like, ‘No, Justin, the frequent denominator is you. You need to repair this.’ I all the time informed him if a coach isn’t onerous on you, you don’t need to be coached by that man. And even when he was struggling, coach Cal noticed one thing in him that possibly different folks couldn’t, so I simply needed Justin to maintain preventing.”
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Justin Edwards needed to modify to some robust love from Kentucky coach John Calipari. (Jordan Prather / USA Right this moment)
However there did come some extent when Twiggs realized her son wanted an intervention. He arrived in Lexington as a consensus top-three total recruit within the Class of 2023 and most early projections for the 2024 NBA Draft had him going within the lottery, a minimum of. Some predicted a top-five choice and some, together with The Athletic, pegged him because the potential No. 1 choose.
So when he averaged simply 7.7 factors, 3.8 rebounds, shot 44.2 % from the sector and 28.6 % from 3-point vary by his first 20 video games at Kentucky, a sputtering begin through which he hardly even appeared like a draft choose in any respect, Edwards spiraled. By late February, he admitted, “I’ve been struggling mentally for … mainly the entire season.”
His mother may inform, and he or she couldn’t keep on the sideline any longer.
“There’s no handbook for this,” she mentioned. “It was onerous for me to simply sit there, however I felt like I wanted to let him work by it. I can’t play for him. And I might say, ‘You selected to return right here, so it’s a must to determine it out.’ However once I knew that he was struggling mentally, I needed to sit him down and simply inform him, ‘Each unfavorable factor that you simply presumably have in your thoughts proper now, put it in a bag and throw it within the trash.’ We needed to have a chat. I didn’t need to, however I mentioned, ‘It’s time for me to step in.’”
Because it turned out, all Edwards actually wanted was to listen to that it was OK to fail. That it didn’t matter if he ever performed a minute within the NBA. That his household can be simply tremendous, it doesn’t matter what occurred along with his basketball profession. These reassurances lifted an infinite weight off Edwards that he didn’t even understand he was carrying.
“I used to be so tense,” Edwards mentioned. “Making an attempt to make it, mainly. I might say I used to be nervous concerning the NBA an excessive amount of. My little brother appears to be like as much as me, and I used to say I needed to make it for him. My mother informed me to cease saying that, to simply be myself, do it for myself, and that helped me out lots. Simply figuring out that my mother is all the time going to be in my nook. Listening to that from her, actually helped.”
Twiggs remembers her son listening quietly as she unburdened him of all that expectation, after which he started to cry.
“He mentioned, ‘I actually wanted that, Mother,’” she mentioned. “I informed him no person else will get to dictate your future, and no matter you determine to do and be, it’s going to be OK. Typically that’s all of your children want to listen to from you. I informed him, ‘Your future is in your fingers.’”
Edwards additionally received an help from Kentucky teammate Reed Sheppard, who was experiencing the other phenomenon: He’d are available in with modest expectations and nearly non-existent NBA Draft inventory solely to develop into an in a single day sensation, the nationwide freshman of the yr and sure top-five choose. Sheppard had been working with a psychological well being coach since highschool, and when he noticed Edwards struggling, he put them in contact.
“He all the time notices,” Edwards mentioned. “If I used to be having a foul day, Reed would inform me, ‘You gotta smile.’ Having a man like that in my nook helps lots. And getting a psychological coach actually modified issues for me.”
Sheppard, the son of two former Kentucky stars, is aware of higher than anybody the pressures that include placing on that uniform.
“Everybody struggles mentally,” he mentioned. “Some folks simply wrestle a bit of extra and a few folks don’t say something about it. Should you need assistance, you must get assist. It’s no enjoyable if you’re not good mentally, and it’s large at Kentucky. The followers are the very best followers on the planet, however they’re loopy. The coaches are the very best coaches on the planet, however they’re going to push you onerous, so that you’ve positively received to be sturdy mentally.”
When Edwards wasn’t dwelling as much as his highschool hype, the noise from followers — particularly on-line, the place anonymity solely provides to the animus — was deafening. He needed to study to actually and figuratively mute that negativity.
“The best way they discuss gamers, I really feel like they don’t keep in mind that we’re human,” mentioned Edwards, whose psychological coach finally taught him the significance of relentlessly optimistic self-talk. “Coming in, everyone anticipated me to be the highest man that individuals mentioned I used to be — and I nonetheless consider I’m — they usually had been indignant once I wasn’t. However me going by that early a part of the season helped me be the individual I’m in the present day.”
A humorous factor occurred when Edwards stopped fixating on what different folks needed him to be: He began to look much more like that man, in spite of everything.
On Feb. 6, he scored 17 factors in a win at Vanderbilt. On Feb. 24, he shot 10-of-10 from the sector, together with 4 made 3s, and dropped 28 factors in a rout of Alabama. On March 9, he had 16 factors, six boards, three assists and hit 4 extra 3s in a win at Tennessee. Within the remaining 10 video games of the common season, through which Kentucky went 8-2, Edwards averaged 11.6 factors, shot 61.5 % from the sector, 55.2 % from 3 and 83.3 % on the free-throw line.
“I couldn’t be extra happy with any participant I’ve ever coached,” Calipari mentioned in March. “To know the place he was, to know the expectations that had been on his shoulders, to know all of the stuff he was listening to. I mentioned, ‘Justin, I simply need you to know, I consider in you.’ And he mentioned, ‘Coach, I would like you to know I consider in you and I’m sticking with this.’”
Edwards gained’t be the No. 1 choose. He gained’t be a lottery choose. He most likely isn’t a first-rounder. The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie has him projected 56th total to the Denver Nuggets whereas a number of different main mock drafts have him slotted anyplace from late-30s to mid-40s. It’s not completely out of the realm of risk {that a} title contender with none main quick wants would possibly take a flier on the 20-year-old former McDonald’s All-American late within the first spherical.
Nevertheless the draft unfolds for Edwards, he’ll assault his targets with the identical renewed confidence.
“I do know,” he mentioned, “I can nonetheless be that man.”
(Prime photograph: Petre Thomas / USA Right this moment)