Kansas Jayhawks: Lottery Leaders Since 2000

The Kansas Jayhawks don’t churn out a starting five of NBA Draft picks like Kentucky, but since 2000 they have produced the highest numbers of lottery selections, according to Business Insider Australia.

It reported the story on its website Wednesday that the Jayhawks’ 13 selections are three more than any other school — and they didn’t even have one until 2002.

It’s exciting for Jayhawk fans, and as Gary Bedore of The Lawrence Journal-World noted, it also provides great recruiting ammo for head coach Bill Self.

Now he can reiterate that his goal is to win the title and produce quality NBA players, unlike Kentucky head coach John Calapari who recently said he was only concerned with the latter part of that strategy.

Self can use the stats from the table below, and even add one to the total when Kelly Oubre, Jr. is drafted next month.

[table id=16 /]

Of course, Self is not the only one who can take credit for this. Former head coach Roy Williams was at the helm during the first three years, and coached three of the 13 players.

However, as Sean Keller from Fox Sports pointed out, Self is holding is own in the players getting drafted department.

From the article:

"In Self’s 12th season in Lawrence, five different Jayhawks to play under him — that’s a new bar — averaged 10 points or more in the NBA in 2014-15: (Andrew) Wiggins, Markieff Morris (15.3), McLemore, Marcus Morris (10.4) and Mario Chalmers (10.2). The previous high-water mark for former Self KU players to average double digits in a campaign was two, set last year when Markieff Morris poured in 13.8 points per game for Phoenix and Xavier Henry averaged 10.0 for the Los Angeles Lakers."

Everyone except Chalmers were lottery selections, but considering he was the starting point guard on two NBA Championship teams we’ll go ahead and say he’s had a pretty solid career at worst.

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