In just a couple of days, Rob Dillingham will begin his professional basketball career. The SEC’s Sixth Man of the Year is a projected lottery pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, which begins on Wednesday.
But before Commissioner Adam Silver calls Dillingham’s name and the former Kentucky guard walks across that stage wearing the hat of his new franchise, he sat down with The Athletic’s Shams Charania to discuss his time at Kentucky, how he thinks he’ll fit in at the next level, buying his mom and sister a new house, and more.
The most interesting topic of the five-minute conversation happened when talking about his lone season in Lexington. Dillingham was asked about coming off the bench at Kentucky and if there were any frustrations about not playing in the starting lineup despite clearly being talented enough to do so. He admitted it wasn’t always easy, but acknowledged that was how minutes would come his way.
“At first, it was a little difficult but over time, you just gotta grow into it and play with a chip on your shoulder and play basketball and understand that when you get in the game you gotta perform and if you don’t, you won’t get no more time,” he told Charania. “That’s how I look at it. And I just try to go in a game and do what the coach want me to do in the time he wants me to do. So I never looked at it as ‘I’m not as good’, I just looked at it as motivation to go out there and I get to watch the players play before I get to go in. So they be a little tired when I go in. That’s how I looked at it and I tried to keep that same mindset the whole year.”
Dillingham was still Kentucky’s second-leading scorer (15.2 PPG) this past season despite playing the fifth-most minutes (23.3 MPG) on the team. His microwave scoring ability mixed with unorthodox dribble moves made him prone to score 8-10 points in a matter of minutes. Fans held their collective breaths when the shifty guard went on a heater. He did it on high efficiency, too — 47.5 percent shooting from the field and 44.4 percent from deep.
Most mock draft projections have him landing anywhere between the 8-14 pick range. The HoopsHype Aggregate 2024 NBA Mock Draft (which is comprised of 11 updated mocks from major publications), has Dillingham going No. 12 to the Oklahoma City Thunder, where he’d team up in the backcourt with a pair of fellow Kentucky alums: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Cason Wallace.
But Dillingham isn’t focused on the actual destination — he just wants to go to a franchise where the front office and the coaching staff believe in him.
“I just want to be in position to play basketball somewhere a coach is gonna trust me and he actually believes in me to play,” he said. “When I’m comfortable and I trust and I know I have trust being built into me, I feel like I can give you my all. So I feel like any situation that trusts me and invests in me to help their team, I feel like I can do anything they need me to do.”
On a lighter note, Dillingham apparently bought his mom and sister (and her kids) a new house. He highlighted how his family has played a significant part in helping him reach this point in his life.
“It’s played the biggest role because without family, without struggles, you don’t really have no motivation and that be the problem with a lot of dudes,” Dillingham said. “And I feel like, with my family, we’ve been through so much, it just pushes me to keep wanting to go and provide for them and help for our family so they’ve been one of the biggest helps.”
That first NBA contract will sure go a long way in helping his family even more. The first round of the 2024 NBA Draft begins on Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. EST on ABC and ESPN.
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