What are Chris Livingston’s expectations for his first season as a Kentucky Wildcat?
For the majority of his high school career, Chris Livingston was considered to be one of the top five basketball recruits in his class. He has earned state player of the year honors in both Ohio and Virginia. He came to Kentucky this summer as a McDonald’s All-American, and he’s already projected to leave Lexington next spring as a one-and-done, first-round NBA Draft pick.
Despite all of that, Livingston seems to be somewhat of an overlooked player going into his freshman season at UK. To a point, that’s understandable.
In most years over the John Calipari era, any five-star recruit would attract a good portion of the spotlight at this point of the preseason. This time around, however, the Cats return national player of the year Oscar Tshiebwe and starting point guard Sahvir Wheeler. Big things are expected of Jacob Toppin, and hopes remain realistically high for Daimion Collins. Two intriguing transfers — CJ Fredrick and Antonio Reeves — will play their first games for Kentucky, and they’re expected to be the two best outside shooters on the team.
Plus, Livingston isn’t even the highest-rated recruit in UK’s 2022 class. Nor is he the team’s top projected NBA pick for 2023. Cason Wallace checks both of those boxes.
Another reason for the relatively undersized expectations around Livingston this season: his drop in the recruiting rankings over the past year.
The 6-foot-7 power wing debuted at No. 3 in the 247Sports composite rankings for the 2022 class back in 2019. He was at No. 5 on that list last November, heading into his senior season of high school. From there, he fell, fairly considerably. He finished the cycle at No. 12 in the composite rankings and No. 16 in 247Sports’ in-house rankings. On3.com ranked him as the No. 26 player in the class, not even a five-star recruit.
So, why the drop?
For one, a narrative started to form around Livingston as his high school career progressed. When he played with maximum effort — as he often did — no one on the court played harder. But, at times, he would disappear, a confounding issue for a player who possessed elite athleticism, strength and size for his position, as well as one who often showed high levels of energy.
It was a perplexing thing to witness, with no consensus from those who watched most closely.
Livingston said he’d heard the narrative, and he didn’t exactly dispute its truth. The 18-year-old acknowledged that he definitely felt like he started some games slowly, but he also believes that effort is a driving force behind his basketball identity.
“I feel like my motor is an advantage to my game,” Livingston told the Herald-Leader. “So I’m just trying to key in on that and keeping that same energy and the same tempo from the jump. Every game. I don’t want to slack in that aspect.”
Steve Smith, the legendary coach at Oak Hill Academy, welcomed Livingston into his program for his final year of high school. He had also heard the doesn’t-play-hard-all-the-time narrative, but he couldn’t recall seeing much of it last season.
“I’ve seen him defer to other guys,” Smith said. “But I don’t think it was because he didn’t like how things were going or because he didn’t think he was playing well or he was selfish. It wasn’t any of those reasons. He just tried to play team basketball. And sometimes it would look like he wasn’t engaged or he wasn’t going 100 percent.
“He would get mad at himself, I think, more than anything. So I would lean toward that more than anything else. I never saw him get mad at teammates. I never saw him think someone was looking him off or taking more shots than they should take. He wasn’t like that at all.”
Smith did acknowledge that Livingston would sometimes “disappear” for a possession or two, and he would need to get in his ear to get the teenager refocused.
UK associate coach Orlando Antigua saw plenty of Livingston on the recruiting trail, both in high school and on the Adidas circuit, the setting where the negative narrative likely originated.
Antigua has watched closely — first as a recruiter, now as a coach — and he has his own theory.
“A lot of that had to do with the amount of work that he was doing before the games,” he said. “He’s so driven, and he’s going to spend time in that gym. You’ve got to give your body time to recuperate, so that it can respond when you need it to respond. And so people might think he was aloof or he might not have been playing with effort. He was exhausted! He couldn’t get it out of his body, because he had expelled so much in practice, in working out, in getting into the gym and getting shots up.”
Working on your own to perfect your craft is an admirable attribute — “a lot of greats have had that trait,” Antigua said — but there’s apparently such a thing as too much hard work.
Antigua said he and Calipari had another player like that when they coached at Memphis. That would be Derrick Rose, the top-five recruit who led the Tigers to the national title game before being selected with the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft, winning rookie of the year honors, and becoming the youngest MVP in league history.
“We had to tell him, ‘You gotta get out the gym. You’re spending too much time in the gym.’ Because then your body starts breaking down and you start getting injuries,” Antigua said.
And the UK coaches told Livingston the same thing, not long after he got to campus and they got an up-close look at his routine. Dedicated and driven, this wasn’t what the college freshman was expecting to hear.
“I’m trying to do the best I can,” he said. “Be the best version of me. So I’m trying to put in as much work as possible. But it’s their job to keep us healthy. So they’re doing right when they tell us to chill out. They know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing this for years.”
Akron to Oak Hill
A decision Livingston made two summers ago should be enough to sum up his outlook.
As a junior at Buchtel High in Akron, Ohio, he averaged 31.1 points, 15.8 rebounds, 6.1 assists, 4.7 steals and 4.0 blocked shots per game, earning state player of the year honors.
It would have been easy for Livingston to remain in his hometown, put up another year’s worth of video-game numbers, and go on to college — or some professional venture like the G League or Overtime Elite — from there.
Instead, he decided to make the move to Oak Hill Academy, which has been the nation’s dominant basketball prep school for much of the past four decades. There, he would live and breathe basketball, continue to learn the game from a coach who had helped put countless players in the NBA, and, most importantly, surround himself with other like-minded and similarly talented prospects.
“I just wanted to get better preparation for college,” Livingston said. “Playing better competition and playing with better players around me. At the next level — like at Kentucky — everybody was ‘the guy’ in high school. So playing against better competition, playing with better guys and understanding how to be great within who you are — around other good players — is something I needed to learn.”
Even by the demanding Oak Hill standards, Livingston impressed.
“He was always in the gym. Always wanting to get in the gym,” Smith said. “He never took a day off in practice. He’s relentless. He plays just as hard in practice as he plays in games.”
Smith, who retired at the end of last season with nine national titles, said superstars like Livingston would often struggle when they arrived at Oak Hill. It’s difficult to make the adjustment from “the guy” to one part of a superteam, and Livingston was integrating into a roster that featured Duke recruits Caleb Foster and Christian Reeves, Syracuse recruit Judah Mintz, and Louisville recruit Devin Ree, among others.
Oak Hill lost some games early — while playing one of the toughest schedules in the country — but they ended up as one of the best teams in high school basketball yet again. Livingston led the way.
“He does a lot of things on the floor, besides being a scorer,” Smith said. “He’s a great rebounder for his size. I always told my players that rebounding is effort, and that’s why he was so good. He’s athletic, 6-7, wants to get the ball, and he goes and gets it on both ends of the floor. Most players as good as he is don’t do that. They’ll leak out and try to get dunks and things of that nature. He’ll take charges. He’ll rebound. He’ll defend. He should have taken more shots for us, to be honest. But he doesn’t force bad shots.”
Smith estimated that Livingston took 10-12 shots per game. “Which, for a guy of his ability — in high school — is odd,” he said. “But if somebody else was hot, he’d give them the ball. … He would try to get everybody involved in the offense.”
Still, he led the team in scoring and rebounding — 18.1 points and 9.1 boards per game — and played hard on the defensive end. He also learned how to play with other stars, and his takeaway from that was to strive for an unselfish brand of basketball.
“Being at Akron, it was on my shoulders a lot of times to score,” he said. “So making the right play while still being yourself and still being aggressive, and not being a shell of yourself — learn how to make your teammates better. That’s something that I’ve learned a lot.”
Expectations at Kentucky
Asked who he was being matched up with over the first practices of the preseason, Livingston started ticking off the names of teammates. In the order he mentioned them: Antonio Reeves, Cason Wallace, Jacob Toppin, Adou Thiero and CJ Fredrick.
That list is heavy on perimeter players but spans the positional spectrum. Wallace will undoubtedly play some point guard this season. Toppin could be effective at the “5” spot, if needed.
“I feel like that’s a testimony to how I play my game,” Livingston said after reflecting on that list of assignments. “Being versatile and being able to be put anywhere on the floor defensively or offensively. I feel like that’s a good thing. And we have a lot of guys that are like that.”
For sure, the interchangeable nature of Kentucky’s roster makes it difficult to predict some players’ roles at this early stage. Livingston’s might be the most difficult to project. At Oak Hill, he played pretty much exclusively on the perimeter on offense. Some analysts who have followed his career closely think he might be best suited as a small-ball “4” in college. Where he plays and how exactly he’s deployed are surely unsettled issues at this point.
“I don’t know if he’s starting, not starting. But he’s gonna play,” Smith said. “Because you can’t keep him off the floor. He plays too hard. I mean, he’s non-stop. You could play him five minutes, he’ll go full bore. Then sit him out a little while, put him back in, and he’ll do it again.”
Asked about his own expectations this season — to look six months into the future and figure out what he wants to accomplish over that time — Livingston didn’t mention anything about roles or stats or NBA Draft status.
“Just being exponentially better than when I came here,” he said. “And being able to contribute to my team winning a national championship. That’s my ultimate goal. As a teammate, as an individual — those are my goals. And I feel like that’s realistic. Whatever my role entails, whatever I have to do to help — I’m willing to do it. That’s what my mind’s set on.”
Obviously, he’d like to be an NBA Draft pick next summer. ESPN currently projects him at No. 27 overall for 2023, and there’s reason to believe he could go much higher if things break his way. For that to happen, he’ll need to play team basketball, and his team will have to play winning basketball. At 18 years old, he clearly understands that.
“When your team is winning anyway, that stuff will come,” Livingston said. “If you have a rough year, that looks bad on you and your teammates. And I think we have a good amount of pros that could be getting drafted in this draft. If we just take care of each other, lock in and play for the team, I feel like that will take care of itself. And a lot of people will benefit from that.”
It wouldn’t be a stretch to predict Livingston finishes with the sixth- or seventh-most shot attempts this season. He’s far from a lock to be in the starting five. But he’s capable of doing so much — driving to the basket, hitting open threes, setting up teammates, rebounding the ball, playing perimeter defense, and blocking shots — that NBA scouts likely won’t be paying much attention to his stats several months from now.
“Nobody is drafting somebody so they can score 30 points a game off the rip,” he said. “It’s how you can help their team. I recognize that. And I feel like my teammates recognize that. That’s why we have a good group. Because we’re unselfish.
“I understand where I’m trying to be. And what I’ve got to learn to do. And especially the track record of the players that have been at Kentucky. Even when they had to scale back, be a team, play a role — I guess you could say be a role player — look where they’re at. So this is just part of the learning process.”
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