Derek Anderson has won championships at every level, but for him, nothing compares to cutting down the nets with Kentucky in 1996. Ask him about his NBA title with the Miami Heat, and he’ll tell you it was a dream come true. But ask him about that NCAA championship run, and you’ll see his face light up with a different kind of pride.
“It was great, man. It was, I still think to this day, it was better than the NBA because it was like kind of a short time that you only had to win and for us, it was like, we had fun, man,” Anderson recalled.
The legendary 86-point half and other feats from a historic season
That Kentucky team was loaded with future NBA talent and coached by Rick Pitino. But it wasn’t just the talent that made them special but the bond they shared.
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“We had a wrestling group, one was pushed back, the other one was big, like we were just wrestling. We were having fun,” Anderson said. “Nobody cared how much money you had. Nobody was tripping on anything. And man, we just had a good time as teammates, bro. So to me, we had a journey of fun.”
On the floor, the Wildcats were unstoppable. Anderson still marvels at their legendary first half against LSU.
“Like, I don’t know if y’all remember, but we scored 86 points of halftime against LSU at LSU. I want y’all to Google it. We scored 86 points in 20 minutes at LSU. If you Google it, you’d be like, how the hell y’all do that? Because we didn’t care about who got the shot. Like everybody was paying,” he explained.
The secret to Kentucky’s dominance: Total buy-in and selflessness
That unselfishness was the team’s secret weapon.
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“We did it all together. Like even the coach now, Mark Pope was the head coach. He’s doing that for the program now. He’s like, man, you got to play as a team. Everybody going to eat once you win,” Anderson said.
The buy-in was total. Anderson remembers how every player sacrificed for the greater good, no matter their pedigree.
“Most guys would do what we did. You know, Ron was all American, like top player. I mean, high school, Ron was crazy. So he come and he had to come off the bench. And he played his role. He bought in. He had like 20, I think, on the championship game. And he came off the bench. How many people come off the bench in a championship game and get 20? So, yeah, we was loaded, man,” Anderson recalled Ron Mercer.
According to Antoine Walker, that Kentucky group was crazy loaded with talent. That draft class was one of the best ever, and even the head coach was a top in his business. Antoine Walker once admitted that he would be nowhere without Rick Pitino and that he was crazy, but that instilled the hunger in them and set them up for successful professional careers.
It was Pitino’s first title at the time, and while he could have had a longer tenure at Kentucky, he decided to follow his former players into the NBA but regretted it in the end. Still, to this day, the Kentucky team is one of the best ever, both in college and in their careers that came after their college days.
