NEW YORK — There was a time, not so long ago, when Cliff Alexander was a projected lottery pick in the NBA Draft.
As late as last July, the 6-foot-8 power forward was ranked by DraftExpress.com as the No. 2 pick in this draft behind only Duke’s Jahlil Okafor.
By November, he had fallen to No. 10.
By February, he was at No. 17.
In March, after he stopped playing during his freshman year at Kansas as the NCAA investigated his mother’s ties to a financial firm specializing in pre-draft loans for athletes, he fell to No. 31.
After the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago, Alexander was sitting at No. 41.
But when the draft came and went Thursday night, Alexander’s name was never called.
“That’s hard for anybody to understand from an ego standpoint,” Kansas coach Bill Self told KansasCity.com. “But he gets to pick the 30 teams to go to now, as opposed to being locked in on one team. You get drafted 55, you’re locked in on that one team. And that one team cuts you late, you could potentially be out of work totally.”
It remains to be seen if Alexander will hook on as a free agent and get a look in summer league, but at the Chicago combine he told me he wasn’t surprised by his declining stock.
“I kind of expected it,” Alexander told SNY.tv at the combine. “My stock was going to go down, how my season was going but it don’t matter where you get picked at. It all depends on how long you stay in the NBA.”
Alexander, who measured at 6-8 1/2 with a wingspan of 7-3 1/2 in Chicago, did not play 5-on-5 or participate in drills during the combine in his hometown, but he did meet with a slew of NBA teams.
Alexander was averaging 7.1 points and 5.3 rebounds when he stopped playing for Kansas, and ended up missing the postseason as the Jayhawks lost to in-state rival Wichita State in the third round of the NCAA Tournament.
As KansasCity.com mentioned, Alexander repeatedly referred to getting dealt “a bad deck of cards” in the run-up to the draft, and Jay Bilas said on air during the draft that those comments may have hurt his draft stock.
“He did get dealt a bad hand,” Self told the paper. “That’s exactly what I told Cliff all along. Cliff always said what I told him: He got dealt a bad hand with the NCAA. He got dealt a bad hand.
“That’s what I told him, when it all went down with the NCAA, I said, ‘Cliff, you haven’t done anything wrong, you’ve been dealt a bad hand. You just got to hang in there and deal with whatever.”
Two scouts told SNY.tv they just didn’t think Alexander was a good enough prospect.
“His draft stock has slipped because of his limited upside as an undersized center,” one NBA scout told SNY.tv. “It is a shame that the NCAA ruled him ineligible at the end of his freshman year because he really needed at least one more year of college. He is D-League guy no matter where he gets drafted.”
“Very limited skill set and understanding of how to play,” a second NBA scout said.
Alexander seems to know he still has a lot to prove.
“Most definitely,” he said in Chicago, “I need to redeem myself.”
