Inside Kemba Walker’s Road To UConn And The National Championship That Shaped Who He Is Today

Kemba Walker was cemented in college basketball lore when he led UConn on an improbable run to the 2011 National Championship, but if it weren’t for a phone call from Brandon Jennings’ mother in the spring of 2007, Walker likely never would have been a Husky.

Let’s begin with the 2007 Arizona Cactus Classic, the second annual AAU tournament held at the University of Arizona consisting of 32 of the country’s best programs.

Walker and the New York Gauchos were among the clubs on hand from May 18-20, but he wasn’t even close to being the highest-rated prospect. Future NBA players Jrue Holiday, DeMar DeRozan and Jennings headlined the field, while Walker was listed in the tournament program as the 119th ranked player in the class.

Jennings was the country’s top-rated high school basketball prospect, according to ESPN and 247 Sports. After backing out of a commitment to USC, the Los Angeles native had narrowed his choices down to Connecticut and Arizona. Former UConn assistant coach Andre LaFleur said the Huskies staff felt they were a lock to land the Oak Hill Academy point guard.

“We had put a lot into Brandon Jennings because of his relationship with (former UConn guard) Marcus Williams,” LaFleur said. “We had recruited him since he was in the ninth grade at Dominguez High School, way before he went to Oak Hill. So we kind of felt that he was already in the fold. We had a really good relationship with his family. We thought it was a done deal, so we didn’t go hard on a lot of other guards.”

The signs were all there. UConn head coach Jim Calhoun had gotten a verbal commitment from Jennings on his unofficial visit to Storrs, and he was seen donning Husky gear in California shortly thereafter. On top of that, his close friend had just been drafted after a successful three-year career under Calhoun. How could he go elsewhere, right?

Jennings was very good at the Arizona Cactus Classic, putting up 44 points in one playoff game, amid a string of ridiculous offensive showings. He was good, but Walker was great. Led by the 119th-ranked junior, the New York Gauchos tore through the event, going 6-0 as the future UConn star outplayed high-profile prospects like Jennings, Holiday and DeRozan in the semifinal and championship games. Walker used it as an opportunity to prove he belonged with the nation’s best.

“That tournament was Kemba’s coming out party,” former Gauchos head coach Emmanuel “Book” Richardson said. “They had an opportunity to play Brandon Jennings, Larry Drew, Jrue Holiday and DeMar DeRozan. As humbly as I can say this, they punished those guys. Our average margin of victory was about 20.”

Walker wanted to go to UConn, but it was Jennings who remained the Huskies’ top target. As long as Jennings was in the fold, Walker would be forced to go elsewhere. Richardson says that played a major role in his Arizona Cactus Classic performance.

“Huge chip on his shoulder,” Richardson said. “That was Kemba’s dream school. The conversations that we would have with Kemba were, ‘We don’t think you’re good enough yet. So you have to continue to prove it.’ What better way to prove it than destroying the guy that they want? It was personal, and I say that with all due respect.”

After the Gauchos’ dominating performance, Walker, Richardson, Calhoun and LaFleur all were still under that impression that Jennings was going to UConn. Arizona even felt the same way — so much so that they called to inquire about Walker’s interest in their program that Sunday night, just hours after the championship game as the Gauchos waited for their red-eye flight home.

On Monday, May 21, one day after Walker and the Gauchos had taken home the Arizona Cactus Classic title, Calhoun, LaFleur and the rest of the UConn coaching staff were sitting in an office they liked to call, “The Bunker.” While going over recruiting plans, LaFleur’s phone began to ring.

“We’re sitting in a room called ‘The Bunker’ the morning after the tournament,” LaFleur recalls. “All of a sudden I get a call, and it’s from Brandon’s mother. I say, ‘Wow, this is odd.’ It was one of those calls where you think, ‘Uh oh, something’s not right.’”

So LaFleur, anxious to hear what’s on the other end, stands up and quickly leaves The Bunker to take the call.

“Hey, Andre. This has been a long recruiting process and Brandon is exhausted,” Jennings’ mother, Alice Knox, began. “We’re in Arizona and he went by for an unofficial visit and he committed to Arizona.”

LaFleur was caught off guard.

“HUH? He committed to Arizona?”

Knox went on to explain how Jennings was very tired of the recruiting process but felt Arizona was the best place for him. Calhoun, LaFleur and Knox had been in contact for almost four years, so she wanted to give UConn a heads up before the news got out. Before they hung up, LaFleur had to ask her for a favor.

“So I said, ‘Wow. Well, I appreciate the call, but can you just do me a favor? Before you let that news out, could you just give us a few hours?’”

She obliged, telling LaFleur that they would wait a couple of hours before going public with the news of his commitment. That was good news, but LaFleur knew the bad news. He now had to go back into the office and tell Calhoun that Jennings was going to Arizona, leaving UConn with no other top-ranked guards on their board.

“Coach, I just got a call from Alice, and Brandon just committed to Arizona,” he told Calhoun nervously.

The legendary head coach paused, folded his arms, and replied with a simple, ‘OK.’

LaFleur knew the urgency of the situation, however, well aware that recruiting would become increasingly difficult for the Huskies once the public knew their top target was heading elsewhere. Luckily, Walker’s performance at the Arizona Cactus Classic over the prior 48 hours had caught LaFleur’s eye, and he knew they needed to jump.

“But there is a guard down in New York City that we have to go see right now,” he told Calhoun. “Kemba is on a tear and he just got the best of Brandon at the Arizona Cactus Classic. We have to go right now because we have about three hours until the news gets out.”

LaFleur and Calhoun jumped in the car, got on I-84, and raced to Rice High School in New York City. From the road, LaFleur called Rice head coach Maurice Hicks to let him know they were on their way. Upon arrival, it didn’t take long for the pair to realize it would be a successful trip.

“I got there and once I met him — he breaks you down with his smile, his sincerity and more,” Calhoun said. “I started giving Kemba my pitch and he stopped me and said, ‘Coach, you’re my dream school.’”

Walker came to UConn on an unofficial visit the following weekend and committed to Calhoun and the Huskies shortly thereafter. Jennings never played a game for the Arizona Wildcats, opting to play overseas in Italy instead.

“It was the greatest thing to ever happen,” LaFleur said. “He was probably the greatest player to ever play for UConn.”

UConn finished the 2009-2010 season with a disappointing 18-16 record. Walker started all 34 games, averaging 14.6 points and 5.1 assists, but the team struggled to find their identity. Freshman center Alex Oriakhi knows that season caused Walker to enter his junior year with a different approach.

“That 2009-10 team, we were talented, but everybody was all over the place,” Oriakhi said. “It was a mess. It was a s—t-show, let me call it what it was. So Kemba coming back, he knew he had to do some things differently. He would cook food and have guys over all the time. He was the leader of the group without a doubt and we all knew it. The best thing was there were no egos. We knew Kemba was our leader. We were all going to play our role and he was going to take us to the promised land.”

As early as he could, Walker embraced being the leader during his junior season. From having players over for taco nights to messing around and talking trash hours after practice had ended, he made sure that team camaraderie and playing together remained at the forefront of their minds.

That sort of atmosphere and leadership from Walker allowed incoming freshmen, like current NBA guards Jeremy Lamb and Shabazz Napier, to ease into their college careers.

“Honestly, it was amazing,” Lamb said. “I get to college and I don’t know what to expect, and then I meet a great player, but also a great person off the court. I just leaned on him for advice, I watched the way he worked, just everything. Coming into college, not knowing what to expect, and then being able to have a great leader, person and friend on the team — it was just a great experience for me. To this day, we still talk. That’s my guy, not just for what he does on the court, but for what he does off the court.”

The off-court effort from Walker did not go unnoticed from Calhoun’s perspective, either.

“He knew the importance of people doing something together,” Calhoun said. “He knew the importance of sacrifice. He was a guy who was simply willing to do anything to make us better. He’s never said that, but that’s exactly what he did. What did Kemba do? He was Kemba.”

Expectations surrounding the program were low heading into the loaded 2010 Maui Invitational field. UConn was 2-0 after wins over Stony Brook and Vermont, but the unranked Huskies were staring at matchups against Wichita State, No. 2 ranked Michigan State and No. 8 ranked Kentucky.

“I remember going into the Maui Invitational, when we got on the plane it was basically all doom and gloom from the media and from UConn supporters,” LaFleur said. “We were going into a really strong field and I remember overhearing some of the people that were coming with us. They thought we were going to get killed.”

Arriving in Hawaii with a chip on their shoulder, the Huskies went on to sweep the tournament, taking home the Maui Invitational title behind 31-, 30- and 29-point efforts from Walker on the national stage. They rode that momentum through the remainder of their non-conference schedule, entering Big East play as the nation’s No. 4 team with a 10-0 record.

Of course, the Big East was no joke. The conference ultimately sent 11 teams to the NCAA Tournament later that season, so UConn certainly wasn’t going to stroll into March. They opened with No. 6 ranked Pittsburgh, who gave the Huskies a wake-up call with a 15-point road loss, their first of the season. After a loss to Notre Dame dropped their conference record to 1-2, UConn peeled off six consecutive wins, but that’s where the trouble began.

The Huskies lost seven of their last 11 regular-season games, giving them a 9-9 conference record entering tournament play. Calhoun wasn’t necessarily surprised considering how young his group was. UConn had four freshmen start double-digit games over the team’s 41-game slate.

“We hit a little skid at the end with a couple of injuries,” Calhoun said. “It’s a long season and that’s when they say freshmen go back to being freshmen. It’s the most important part of the year because that’s what you’re judged on. When they say, ‘How’re you doing, Coach,’ they mean, ‘What are you doing at the end of the season?’ They don’t really care how you feel.”

UConn was entering the Big East Tournament with its back against the wall. If they wanted to be crowned at Madison Square Garden, they’d have to win five games in five days, something no team had ever done. It sounded like a long-shot, but Walker held a players-only meeting 24 hours before their first-round game, expressing the importance of sacrificing and playing for one another. To say the message hit would be an understatement.

Walker came out firing in rounds one and two, dropping 26 and 28 points in convincing wins over DePaul and Georgetown, respectively.

“Kemba started getting even better,” Calhoun said. “It’s funny, after we won two at MSG, I turned to my wife and I said, ‘Honey, I think we can win three more. I think we can win this whole thing,’ talking about the Big East Tournament. And at that time, it looked insurmountable. We were a .500 team in the league, but it just started to come naturally in the third game. We got better every moment, and suddenly we didn’t think we could lose.”

The aforementioned third game was a showdown with Pittsburgh, the No. 3 team in the country and the top seed in the Big East. It was a classic back-and-forth Big East battle, but with the clock winding down and the game tied at 74, “Cardiac Kemba” was born.

“When it went in, it was like a movie, man,” Oriakhi said. “The guy was literally playing possessed. The dude was possessed. He was not losing. When you see somebody going all out like that, it’s contagious. This dude is willing to die out here, so I have to raise my level of play.”

Walker led UConn to wins over No. 11 Syracuse and No. 14 Louisville to cap off the improbable five-day stretch, giving the Huskies their seventh Big East Tournament title in program history. His on-court performance stole the show, but Walker’s efforts off the court with his teammates were a major force behind UConn’s momentum.

“We would go to dinner together, go to each other’s rooms, pick each other’s brains, just hang out. It really was like a brotherhood,” Lamb said. “We went through ups and downs that made us stronger, but once we hit our stride, everybody knew their roles and everybody knew what to do on the court. We were unstoppable. A lot of that was because of what we did off the court. A lot of teams are great but they don’t get over the hump because of their relationships with each other. We had it all. We had great talent, but we also had great relationships with each other.”

Five wins in five days at Madison Square Garden gave the Huskies a resurgence of confidence and a three-seed in the NCAA Tournament. Calhoun knew his team wasn’t done, and that started with Walker’s leadership.

“Once we did that, winning five games in five days, I knew we weren’t going to play four top-20 teams in a row in the tournament,” Calhoun said. “I started to become very confident. One thing led to another — we just felt good. We left New York feeling good. When your leader is happy if we’re doing well, then everything else takes care of itself.”

That feel-good mentality continued as Walker led UConn to six more wins and a National Championship victory over now-Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens and the Butler Bulldogs. He was indeed a man possessed, but more so a leader on a mission.

“It was an amazing time. We were a close-knit group,” Lamb said. “Nobody expected us to do anything, but that forced us to come together even more. Just trusting each other and trusting our leader, Kemba. He carried us the whole year. He was such a great leader. He encouraged everyone and did whatever he had to do to make the team great. That was definitely one of the best teams I’ve been on in my career.”

After losing seven of 11 games to end the regular season, Walker sparked an unthinkable 11-game winning streak. He managed to do it with mind-boggling performances on the court, and kindness off of it, something Calhoun admires to this day.

“It was magical. It was one of the great runs in the history of basketball,” Calhoun said. “I don’t know many other runs like it. Winning five games in five days at Madison Square Garden, no one had ever done it before and it’s going to be hard to do again. A pretty good way to end your season. I’ll forever be embedded to my team and the way they came together. You couldn’t have a better leader than Kemba Walker. Kemba was the answer.”

When you hear people speak about Kemba Walker, you often hear about Kemba the man, before Kemba the player. That says a lot about him, considering he’s one of the best basketball players on the globe.

Not many people can find that killer instinct on the court while maintaining a level head elsewhere, but Walker has done just that his entire life. Despite taking home MVP honors at the Final Four, meeting President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and rising to national stardom, Walker didn’t change. He still pulled down his Yankee hat on campus to try and maintain a low, humble profile.

“There’s something about Kemba,” Calhoun said. “Kemba could do it with a feather, and then take the sword out and slice your neck to beat you. I truly mean that because he honestly believes that you can treat people right. Whether it’s opponents — not during games — or teammates, he had a magic to him. It was who he was as opposed to who he was trying to be, and that’s a really unique thing.

“He had that gentleness, yet a competitive fire where he didn’t have to blow the torch for you to see it,” Calhoun added. “It was there and it was very lethal. He gets you with the feather, but be careful, because he’s going to beat you in the end.”

It started with a chip on his shoulder at the Arizona Cactus Classic, which turned into a chip on his shoulder at the Maui Invitational. After all the ups and downs, the story ended on a makeshift stage at Houston’s Reliant Stadium with confetti streaming down from the basketball heavens. He didn’t realize it at that moment in front of 70,000 people, but the previous six months were going to help shape him for the remainder of his career.

“He was at the highest level,” Lamb said. “All the fame, all the attention — he experienced that early and he knew how to deal with it. Once he got to the league, he’s an all-star and it’s nothing new to him. He’s been there. No matter how great he’s playing on the court, no matter what his team is doing, he’s going to work regardless. I think winning the National Championship and being at the highest level helped him decide, ‘I’m never going to settle. I want to be an all-star. I want to be the best player I can be.’”

Now in his ninth NBA season, Walker is preparing for his first playoff run in a Celtics uniform. Whether in Charlotte, Boston or Storrs, Walker’s humility remains the same, which has a tremendous impact on those around him.

“When I look at the special players I’ve had in my 48-year coaching run, Kemba Walker is right there with anybody I’ve ever had,” Calhoun said. “Reggie Lewis, Emeka Okafor, Ray Allen — Kemba is right there. Each special guy has a special thing about them, and sometimes it’s so nebulous you can’t describe it, but you know it’s there and you feel it every day in practice. Everybody tries to be the best they can be, but Kemba did it without looking like he was looking out for himself. He is a special, special guy.”