Former longtime Gainesville Sun sportswriter Pat Dooley contributes on a weekly basis to Gators Wire with “Pat Dooley’s Book of Lists,” chronicling his thoughts on the past, present and future of Gators sports. Look for more frequent contributions during football season.
The NBA draft is coming up Thursday and it has been very, very good to the Gators over the last two decades. Not Kentucky good, but when you consider that 21 players were drafted before Billy Donovan walked through that door and 19 players recruited by Donovan (that includes transfers) were drafted, well, you see why a massive picture of Billy D still towers over the lobby of the practice facility.
Unfortunately for Mike White, Florida is now on a seven-year run of getting shut out in the draft. That will almost certainly end this year with Tre Mann being touted as a high first-round pick (probably late in the first) and Scottie Lewis with an outside shot at being a second-round pick.
The draft is a lot more fickle than it was BB (Before Billy) with only two rounds and so many more foreign players in the mix. Back in 1968, David Miller was selected in the 12th round.
That sounds like a long day of drafting practice players.
Certainly, there have been plenty of Gator players who went on to have excellent careers (not to mention lucrative careers overseas).
Here are the 10 best Gator NBA players: