The 2025 NBA draft will not include Amari Williams.
On Thursday night, the Orlando Magic selected Williams in the second round of the 2025 NBA draft with the No. 46 overall choice.
Williams had a five-year collegiate basketball career, during which he played for mid-major Drexel and Kentucky.
Prior to the selection, he was allegedly dealt to the Boston Celtics.
Englishman Williams becomes the second member of the 2024–25 Kentucky Wildcats basketball team to be selected in the 2025 NBA draft; the other being 3-point shooting wing Koby Brea, who was traded to the Phoenix Suns for the 41st overall pick.
Mark Pope, head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats, has made history with his first two NBA draft picks, Brea and Williams.
During Pope’s nine years as head coach at Utah Valley and BYU, neither school produced an NBA draft pick.
The 7-foot Williams played in 22.8 minutes per game while playing for Lexington one season and had an average of 10.9 points, 8.5 rebounds, 3.2 assists, and 1.2 blocks.
Last season, Williams (left-handed) started every one of Kentucky’s thirty-six games.
Williams shot 56.1% from the field last season, which was a career-best. All of Kentucky’s players were ranked first in shooting percentage.
“I just learnt I always have to be confident,” Williams said earlier this year on his lone season of basketball in the UK.
It seems like I was acting timidly in the beginning of the year.
It wasn’t only when I was playing; I was nervous about everything I did.
In most situations, I don’t put my best foot forward. However, I have a great deal of faith in my coaching staff. I have a lot of faith from my teammates.
Going out there and believing in myself was something I was kind of responsible for right from the start. Something like that has been really helpful to me.
Furthermore, I simply want to emphasise the significance of being a team, particularly this year.
It seems like our love for each other has been there from the beginning, and that’s something we’ll never forget.
There will always be a place in UK basketball history for Williams as well.
While playing on the road against Ole Miss in February, he scored 12 points, grabbed 11 rebounds, and had 10 assists, making him just the fourth Wildcats player in program history to post a triple-double.
After Isaiah Briscoe accomplished the feat in December 2016, Williams became the first player from Kentucky to achieve a triple-double.
Particularly in relation to the ongoing maturation of aspiring junior centre Brandon Garrison, his influence on the Kentucky program will be noticed in subsequent seasons.
Williams did not receive an invitation to the NBA Combine in Chicago in May, despite having a solid senior year of college basketball.
The NBA G League Elite Camp was held in Chicago just days before the draft combine, and he was a participant there.
Williams committed to play for Pope’s Kentucky Wildcats basketball team last summer, making him the program’s first transfer portal player.
Williams won conference honours for defensive performance three times while at Drexel before he joined UK. Williams appeared in 105 games for the Dragons over his career, each game averaging 10.3 points, 7.0 rebounds, 1.8 blocks, and 1.6 assists. Williams joins 22 other players from outside the United States who have ever played for Kentucky.
Along with Morakinyo Williams (2007–08), he is one of just two players in this group who were born in England.
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