NBA Player Profile - Kemba Walker

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Name: Kemba Walker

Team: Charlotte Bobcats

Position: Point Guard

NBA Statistics: 11.1 (points), 3.0 (assists), 2.8 (rebounds)

Background: If you were to pick the 2011-2012 NBA draft from college achievements alone, then Kemba Walker would be number one. But in the abbreviated draft of 2011, Walker was drafted as the ninth overall pick by the Michael Jordan-led franchise as Charlotte Bobcats point guard.

Born May 8, 1990, Kemba grew up in the Bronx where he began to develop his basketball talents at the Rice High School. There he also had the privilege of defeating reigning NBA MVP Derrick Rose, who was a senior at Simeon Career Academy at the time.

Kemba then moved on to the University of Connecticut (UConn) where, in a three-year span his foreseeable and success future in basketball really began to take shape.

In his first year at UConn, he helped his team to the number one seed in the NCAA Tournament and despite starting only two games for the season, he averaged an impressive 25.2 minutes coming off the bench. Kemba then went on to play a huge role in UConn's Final Four scalp after scoring 23 points in the quarter-finals against the University of Missouri.

As was expected, his starts and minutes improved in his following two seasons and so did his contributions to the team. In what turned out to be his final season with UConn, Kemba scored record-setting 130 points over a five-game span lead his team to the 2011 Big East Tournament before leading them to the NCAA Division 1 Basketball Championship. In both tournaments he claimed the MVP award.