Top basketball recruit DJ Wagner is a Kentucky Wildcat: 10 thoughts on Calipari’s giant class

Camden's DJ Wagner #21 in action against Milton during a high school basketball game at the Hoophall Classic, Monday, January 17, 2022, in Springfield, MA. (AP Photo/Gregory Payan)
By Kyle Tucker
Nov 14, 2022

With DJ Wagner’s long-awaited commitment to Kentucky on Monday, John Calipari has completed an impressive feat: His 15th recruiting class in Lexington is, on paper, every bit as touted as his first. This class, like that one, is now the No. 1 class in the country.

Wagner, a 6-foot-3 combo guard from Camden, N.J., is the top-ranked high school senior, per the 247Sports Composite, giving Kentucky five top-30 prospects in this class: Wagner, No. 2 Justin Edwards (small forward), No. 6 Aaron Bradshaw (center), No. 9 Robert Dillingham (point guard) and No. 29 Reed Sheppard (combo guard). An old-school Calipari superclass is officially locked up.

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Each of his first four classes at Kentucky — and six of his first seven — were ranked No. 1. But just one of his last seven classes was the best in the country, so this represents a return to the top of the recruiting food chain. Getting the top two players, three of the top six and four of the top 10 is fairly ridiculous. So what does Wagner’s commitment and the completion of this epic haul mean for the Wildcats? I have thoughts. Ten of them, in fact.

1. Calipari is not finished. If he can beat Michigan State on Tuesday in the Champions Classic and then Gonzaga in Spokane on Sunday, there’s a chance that a week from now, Calipari has both the No. 1-ranked team and the No. 1-ranked recruiting class simultaneously. Reports of his demise, it seems, have been greatly exaggerated. Or at least premature. The sting of a 9-16 season in 2020-2021 followed by a first-round NCAA Tournament loss to Saint Peter’s last season apparently reignited a fire inside the 63-year-old coach. Whether he makes a seventh Final Four (first since 2015) or wins a second national championship (first since 2012) remains to be seen. But there’s no doubt he’s still chasing that and is still capable of assembling one of the most talented rosters in America year after year after year.

2. Hungry Calipari is still the best closer in the game. CBSSports.com’s Gary Parrish, who covered Calipari at Memphis, tells a hilarious story about the man at the peak of his game (and cockiness). At a recruiting event in 2012, Parrish says, Calipari confronted a rival coach who he’d heard was bad-mouthing him on the recruiting trail. “I want you to understand one thing,” Calipari said, according to Parrish. “I am the type of guy who can come in at the last minute and take any player I want from you. You can spend your whole life recruiting a kid — and at the end of the day, if I want him, I’ll get him.” It is not difficult to imagine Swaggy Cal saying this. But it had been a while since it felt like that was true, right?

That’s what makes this class so notable, because Calipari had that energy back. That air of inevitability. He held off the combined forces of his own former recruiting ace, rival Louisville and a family connection to land Wagner. He held off Louisville, the G League and other heavy hitters who tried to make a late push for Bradshaw. He zoomed past one-time leader Tennessee to land Edwards, a huge shift that happened as soon as Calipari personally took over that recruitment. “When Coach Cal goes all-in on you, that’s a tough thing to turn down, right?” says Edwards’ high school coach, Andre Noble. During that recent stretch where Calipari slipped ever so slightly — but significantly — in recruiting, it was always the nemesis Duke or some surprise team with a connection to a top prospect (think James Wiseman to Memphis and Cade Cunningham to Oklahoma State) swooping in to steal a player the way he used to. This time, Calipari did the swooping.

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3. Wagner to Kentucky was never in doubt. And that’s because Calipari took nothing for granted in that recruitment. It was long assumed that Wagner would play for the same coach his father, Dajuan, played for at Memphis. But when Louisville hired longtime Calipari assistant Kenny Payne as its head coach in March, and Payne then hired Cardinals legend Milt Wagner, Dajuan’s dad and DJ’s grandfather, all of the buzz became about how Calipari was going to get schooled by his protege. That assumption ignored a lot of other crucial factors, including that Dajuan views Calipari like another father figure and that Calipari’s insistence he turn pro after one year at Memphis made him millions before injuries and a major medical condition ended his NBA career at age 23.

Let’s also remember that Calipari hired Milt first — at Memphis more than 20 years ago, because Louisville wouldn’t honor his scholarship after Milt’s pro career was over. So Milt joined the Tigers staff and finished his college degree while enjoying a courtside seat for Dajuan’s one dazzling season there. Oh, and Calipari landed DJ’s former Camden (N.J.) High teammate Lance Ware three years ago, then added DJ’s stepbrother, Kareem Watkins, as a walk-on at Kentucky two years ago. He’s had DJ’s current Camden teammate, Bradshaw, essentially locked up since June. In other words, Calipari made sure Wagner would be surrounded by friends and family in Lexington.

The Cats treat Watkins, a 5-foot-8 guard, like a scholarship player. He has NIL deals of his own. And him being there has meant Wagner and his parents have been around the program a lot the last two years. Wagner’s mother, Syreeta, was with Kentucky’s team all week this summer in the Bahamas, decked out from head to toe in UK gear. There’s a level of trust there, built over decades and solidified since it became clear DJ was the same kind of elite prospect his father once was. Just read how Milt described Calipari to The Athletic before he took the Louisville job:

“He had my son ready to go to the league after one year. We were saying two years, but after that first year, Cal had him playing so well, on top of his game, and it’s because of how Cal pushed him. (After Dajuan’s freshman season) he pretty much said, ‘Hey, man, you need to go.’ My son wanted to come back. But Cal said, ‘Nah, you can’t come back, man. I’m tearing up your scholarship.’ That was a true story. And the thing about it: You look back, and if he hadn’t done that, things would’ve happened while he was still in college and he might not have been drafted highly. We’ll always respect Cal for that. Dajuan loves Cal for that.”

4. NIL is not a problem for UK basketball. While there’s been a lot of chatter lately that athletic director Mitch Barnhart does not support name, image and likeness initiatives that are now vital to success in college athletics — a complaint that’s coming from the football program, which believes a collective is the key — Barnhart doesn’t seem to be slowing down basketball. We know TyTy Washington, Shaedon Sharpe and Oscar Tshiebwe all raked in at least half a million dollars in NIL money last season (Tshiebwe has since done that at least five times over) and you can bet Wagner will have no problem doing the same, if he hasn’t already.

It’s no coincidence that Wagner recently signed a national endorsement deal with Nike, which counts Kentucky among its top college basketball partners. Or that Wagner has already appeared in ads for NOCTA, which is the rapper Drake’s new Nike sub-label. Or that Drake happens to be a longtime Calipari friend and Kentucky fan who has appeared at Big Blue Madness and given the Hall of Fame coach his own “Calipari Pack” of custom sneakers. Or that Calipari recently posted a photo of himself with a new NOCTA basketball, which he said he’d be putting next to those glass-encased kicks. And rumor has it, one might soon be able to purchase a T-shirt with caricatures of Wagner and the rest of Kentucky’s 2023 super class — 1992 Dream Team-style — a percentage of which will go to the players. I have it on good authority that Barnhart, in fact, has no plans to confiscate and hide those shirts like Billy Clyde Gillispie did with the ones commemorating Jodie Meeks’ 54-point game.

Point being, basketball is doing just fine in NIL.

5. From Dajuan to DJ, Calipari comes full circle. Dajuan, who once scored 100 points in a high school game, was the No. 1-ranked recruit in 2001. Now his son, DJ, is the No. 1-ranked recruit in 2023. Dajuan was Calipari’s first one-and-done, the guy who crystalized in Calipari’s mind the idea that it was imperative he encourage top players to leave as soon as they were definitely high draft picks.

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“None of that one-and-done stuff was planned,” Milt Wagner told me two years ago. “It just kind of happened that way, and then he realized, ‘Wow, man, if these kids have a chance to go, I gotta let them go, because what happened to Dajuan could happen to any of them.’ Cal saw our situation, and it just flipped that switch for him about how to handle that in the future.”

That conscious decision launched a new era of college basketball as Calipari leaned into recruiting and relying on one-and-dones long before everyone else and rode that annual influx of elite talent to massive success. Then Coach K and Duke, who’d been staunchly against signing so-called “rental players” for years, were finally forced to join the party after Calipari won a title with them in 2012. Calipari has now coached 35 one-and-done draft picks.

6. So how good is DJ? For a long time, everyone agreed he was the top player in the ’23 class. That’s not the case anymore. Wagner is ranked No. 1 by ESPN, No. 2 by 247Sports and No. 3 by Rivals. That does put him No. 1 still in the 247 Composite, but there’s some debate after an up-and-down summer. After guiding Camden to a state championship (19.3 points, 3.2 steals, 3.1 assists per game), he led the Nike grassroots circuit in scoring this spring (20.3 ppg, 35.3 percent from 3) and was the star of USA Basketball’s training camp. But then he struggled at times during the actual U17 FIBA World Cup — including 4-of-21 from 3-point range — and still looked off upon returning for Nike’s Peach Jam.

That said, he’s still very good, and it’s worth noting he just turned 17 in May. Rick Brunson, a former NBA player and current New York Knicks assistant who coached Wagner at Camden High, once described him to me this way: “Shoots the piss out of it. The demeanor of CJ McCollum (who has averaged 20-plus points for seven straight NBA seasons). Just smooth, just a killer. Definitely the best player in the country in my opinion, but if you asked him, he couldn’t tell you where he’s ranked. He couldn’t give a damn about any of that. He just wants to hoop. He just wants to win. He goes out there every time like a kid who’s not ranked at all.”

And here’s how Milt once described DJ to me: “When he drives, it’s his dad. That attack mode to the basket. But the kid can also really shoot. He shoots it like me. DJ has both those elements in his game, so I see both of us in him. And he’s a gym rat. He’s been in that gym doing workouts — doing NBA drills — since he was 4 or 5 years old. He’s just a different kid. He grew up in it.”

John Calipari has another No. 1 recruiting class coming to Lexington. (Jordan Prather / USA Today)

7. Not all No. 1 classes are created equal. That’s important to remember, because the hype will be enormous for a class that includes four top-10 recruits. But the talent level nationally is different from year to year, and the overall 2023 crop in high school basketball is widely considered to be a bit down. So maybe we should be guarded with expectations for this group. The success of the 2023-24 team will depend heavily on how many veterans return from this season’s team and who Calipari adds in the transfer portal. After two years of leaning hard on older players, if Kentucky is suddenly freshmen-driven again next year, it could be a turbulent ride.

Remember the 2013 class? The Cats signed No. 2 Julius Randle, No. 5 Andrew Harrison, No. 6 Aaron Harrison, No. 9 James Young, No. 10 Dakari Johnson and No. 18 Marcus Lee — a record six McDonald’s All-Americans — and entered the season with fans buzzing about going 40-0. That team entered the NCAA Tournament with 10 losses and as a No. 8 seed. On the bright side: All that talent finally clicked in March, and those Cats ran all the way to the national championship game.

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“I think this class will look more like that class than a John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins-type class of instant stars,” says Travis Branham, director of scouting at 247. “Obviously it’s a lot of really good players, but it’s also several players that have some improvements to be made in their game. There’s going to be a big learning curve with some of these kids.”

Of Calipari’s previous top-ranked classes, the 2009 group spent most of the year ranked No.1 and reached the Elite Eight, the 2010 class made a Final Four, the 2011 haul won a national title and 2013 formed the nucleus of two Final Four teams. But the top-ranked classes of 2012, 2015 and 2020 lost in the NIT, the second round of the NCAA Tournament and posted UK’s worst record in almost a century, respectively. So it can go either way here, and that’s important context before cranking up the hype machine.

8. It’s good to have great guards. Whether it was Wall and Bledsoe, Knight and Lamb, Teague and Lamb, the Harrison twins, the twins plus Ulis and Booker, or Fox and Monk, Calipari’s best teams had multiple high-level guards. Next year’s team should have that with Wagner, Dillingham and Sheppard joining a backcourt that could also include shooters CJ Fredrick and Antonio Reeves. It’s unclear whether Dillingham or Wagner will actually be the point guard — or whether they’ll share that duty — but both can run a team and both can get buckets off the ball. They are two of the most gifted scorers in the country, and if at least one of the current team’s pure shooters returns, that could make for an electric backcourt.

9. Wagner might not be Cal’s last No. 1 recruit. When Calipari signed his “lifetime contract” in the summer of 2019, a 10-year, $86 million deal, it included a clause that allows him to step down at any point after the 2023-24 season and become an ambassador for the university making almost a million dollars a year. That timeline was not coincidental. Calipari wanted to last at least long enough to coach Dajuan Wagner’s son at Kentucky. Many have assumed that’s the logical endpoint for him: Get DJ, make one more run at a title, walk away after next season. Not so fast.

“Now I want to know any normal human being that would give up a $9 million job for a $1 million job? Who would do that? I’m not doing it, OK?” Calipari told me this summer. “If something happens with my health or I don’t feel like I’m up to it, that is like an insurance thing for me. That’s all it was.”

Backing that up, Kentucky was an early aggressor in the 2024 class, making more offers and initial contacts with players than usual in June. Calipari is in the mix with all three of the players who have a chance as of right now to end up No. 1 in that class: Tre Johnson, Ian Jackson and Naas Cunningham. The latter is now at Overtime Elite, on a scholarship that preserves his college eligibility. Dillingham just took one of those scholarships and will finish his high school career at OTE, which could represent the beginning of an unofficial partnership between Kentucky and the start-up basketball league that a year ago was recruiting against Calipari. Just another sign that the Hall of Fame coach might have a second wind and some new ideas.

10. Now, go get a transfer-portal power forward. Kentucky signed the No. 1 or No. 2-ranked point guard, combo guard, small forward and center in this 2023 class. Calipari missed out on a positional clean sweep when Ron Holland, No. 3 power forward and top-10 prospect, decided to stay home and picked Texas. But in this transfer era, that’s not a huge miss. For one, Holland (who is terrific) thinks of himself more as an oversized wing than a traditional power forward, and that’s not necessarily what next year’s Cats will need. Assuming Tshiebwe leaves for the NBA, and despite the fact that the center position should be fine with Bradshaw, impressive current freshman Ugonna Onyenso and a senior Lance Ware, Kentucky could use a physically mature bruiser at power forward to make up some of Tshiebwe’s production on the glass and scoring inside. Grab a guy like that in the portal, get a shooter or two back, plus Onyenso and super-intriguing freshman guard (forward?) Adou Thiero, and the Cats are cooking with gas again.

(Top photo: Gregory Payan / AP)

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Kyle Tucker

Kyle Tucker is a staff writer for The Athletic, covering Kentucky college basketball and the Tennessee Titans. Before joining The Athletic, he covered Kentucky for seven years at The (Louisville) Courier-Journal and SEC Country. Previously, he covered Virginia Tech football for seven years at The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot. Follow Kyle on Twitter @KyleTucker_ATH