Kentucky Basketball: 2019 NBA Draft profile of Wildcat forward PJ Washington

PJ Washington, following a much-improved sophomore campaign with Kentucky basketball, will likely hear his named called in the NBA Draft’s first round.

For a portion of the 2018-19 campaign, a logical argument could get made that PJ Washington, then a sophomore with the Kentucky Basketball squad, proved the second-best collegiate hoops player in the nation, save for Duke sensation Zion Williamson. Washington, after electing to return for a second stanza after snubbing the 2018 NBA Draft, appeared electric at various instances in the most-recent term, and his sophomore statistics jumped in a positive manner virtually across the board. I have to give him props for that.

The dilemma with Washington, according to a bevy of articles that I’ve read from industry analysts about the 6-foot-8 power forward, is that he would also perform at a discouragingly inconsistent level. Some pundits postulate that his off-ball defense is a question mark (more on that later).

Regardless, one has to admire how Washington fared in 2018-19 as compared to his freshman stint. Despite his run increasing by just two minutes, Washington, as a sophomore, averaged 15.2 points an encounter, versus 10.8 points the prior season.

Rebounds rose to 7.5 in 2018-19, from 5.7 as a freshman. Assists and blocks ticked slightly up. While his field-goal percentage, as a whole, of 52.2 didn’t gain a lot over 2017-18, Washington witnessed his shooting from beyond the arc soar to 42.3 percent, from 23.8 percent as a freshman. At the charity stripe, he connected on 66.3 percent as a sophomore, which isn’t stellar, but it did progress from 60.6 percent the year before.

Considering that, in recent campaigns, the bulk of Wildcats’ draft prospects are of the one-and-done persuasion, for Washington to come back to Kentucky as a sophomore and create those types of numbers is undeniably praiseworthy. He clearly has boosted his stock, to a standing where it’s feasible that Washington could get chosen in the lottery, and assuredly in the first round of the NBA Draft. Let’s take a deeper dive into his skill-set.