This week, future Kentucky basketball players Tyrese Maxey and Kahlil Whitney will be joined by 22 of their peers in the 2019 recruiting class for another McDonald’s All-American Game.
Many of the prospects in this year’s event will end up as one-and-done college players before heading off to the NBA Draft next year. Getting to the NBA is the dream of every recruit in attendance this week, but the McDonald’s Game from four years ago shows it’s no sure thing.
Of the 24 competitors in that 2015 game — those who would be college seniors if they had stayed in school — only seven were selected in the first round of an NBA Draft, and several have yet to play a single game at the NBA level.