Tuesday night was the culmination of years of hard work for Darryn Peterson as he finally heard his name called second overall in the 2026 NBA Draft. The one-and-done Kansas basketball star now joins a Utah Jazz squad that won just 22 games last season, but adds Peterson as the face of the franchise with building blocks around him to offer support both on and off the court.
Among those to be Peterson's new teammates is former four-year sharpshooting Jayhawk, Svi Mykhailiuk. Sports often have an odd way of bringing together the past and present better than any other form of entertainment, and this is just another example of that, as two of the better recent Kansas Jayhawks to wear the jersey are now playing on the same NBA team at the highest level of basketball in the world.
Peterson had long assumed and expected he would go No. 1 overall to the Washington Wizards, and he bet his draft process on it, talking only to that front office before the draft. However, BYU's AJ Dybantsa was just as deserving and ended up being the first name called by commissioner Adam Silver. While he may have wanted to forever call himself the premier pick in an NBA draft, Darryn Peterson's landing spot in Utah is without a doubt the best basketball fit for the scoring-heavy guard.
No. 2 overall pick Darryn Peterson joins longtime KU basketball sharpshooter Svi Mykhailiuk on the Jazz
To reminisce on Svi Mykhailiuk's KU journey is one of the better memories I have as a Jayhawks basketball fan. Mykhailiuk, born and raised in Cherkasy, Ukraine, took a world-round trip and entered into Bill Self's program fresh out of high school. He was not a highly touted prospect, but rather a scrawny 6'8" kid with some shooting prowess and wanted for competition. In his first two seasons at Kansas in 2015-16, Mykhailiuk played very little, but grew his basketball IQ and beefed up to where he could be a meaningful asset on defense and improved his already quality shooting.
In his junior season, Mykhailiuk saw a boost to 27 minutes per game and nearly 10 points per game on 40% shooting from three. Self clearly valued Mykhailiuk for his tenacity and ended up making him a full-time starter in his senior year, scoring 15 PPG with four rebounds and an impressive 44.4% from beyond the arc.
That season alone boosted him up the pre-draft rankings, and he ended up being the 47th overall pick by the LA Lakers in 2018. Since then, he's bounced around a few teams, most notably being a part of the Boston Celtics 2024 NBA championship, and has seemed to finally find his niche on the Jazz, playing roughly 20 minutes per game and scoring just under double-digits.
Peterson now joins the former Jayhawk sharpshooter on a Jazz team with lots of young talent and a good coach in Will Hardy. While Peterson already possesses an innate calmness and maturity at just 19 years old, bonding and learning from Mykhailiuk may help the young stud ground himself in a new place with a team and a new fanbase better than a lot of premier draft picks. Either way, it'll be fun to see two Kansas basketball stars, past and present, playing alongside one another in the big league.
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