WALTER CLAYTON JR. DIDN’T LIKE FOOTBALL, SO WHY NOT STAR IN THE FINAL FOUR?
He rejected big offers and might have been a first-round pick in the NFL draft, but he didn’t like to hit and would prefer to swish three-pointers — which is why Florida is one win from the title game
If he genuinely delighted in thumping a wide receiver, or vice versa, Walter Clayton Jr. might be a top 10 choice in this month’s NFL draft. He did not like to hit. “That part is not fun,” he said. Rather than continue as a sensational defensive back chased by Georgia, Penn State, Tennessee, Notre Dame and another school — Florida — he made a decision that could have cost him a life of millions.
He quit football in high school.
And focused on basketball.
Today, Clayton is vaguely compared to Stephen Curry as the shooting star of a Gators team that plays Saturday in the Final Four. He only hits three-point tries and is watched closely by NBA teams searching for hints of Curry or Jalen Brunson. There is physicality in his play, as LeBron James might recognize as an all-time player who excelled in high-school football. But generally, Clayton is the 6-3 guard who wants the ball late in games and crushes opponents, such as Texas Tech, which watched him approach the basket before he turned around and buried a killer jumper beyond the arc.
He’s already bigger than any top-rated safety on Mel Kiper’s list. If he beats Auburn, Clayton will have the national hype of a Monday night championship game. He is left to shrug when he hears Curry comparisons. “I mean, I don't know. He’s arguably the greatest point guard in the history of basketball. I've got a ways to go,” he said. “I wouldn't quite compare myself yet. But just thankful for the recognition.”
See him perform. See him create a shot and fire. Who knows?
Who knew about Curry until the NCAA tournament?
“I thought Walt had a great answer,” Florida coach Todd Golden said. “I think in his mind, like everything that Steph has been able to do in his career leading his organization to multiple NBA championships — to being the best shooter of all time, one of the best winners of all time in the NBA — that's kind of a lot to put on a young man. But I'd say the one thing where Walt 100 percent is similar to Steph is their incredible shot-making and their ability to get it off whenever they want, and have the IQ and intelligence to get separation and tend to be unflappable with a hand in his face. In my humble opinion, he is the best guard in America right now.”
Better, Clayton is an inspiration to teammates and fans. “You're either a fountain or a drain and Walt is definitely a fountain,” Golden said. “He's a guy you enjoy being around with his personality. He has juice. He has it. There’s not another player you would rather have right now than Walter Clayton with the ball in his hands in a big-time moment. The biggest thing in those moments is you need to have somebody that wants to take those shots. They’re obviously difficult plays, but someone that has the confidence to step up and make incredible individual plays.”
Not once has he wondered about football. Patrick Mahomes pitched and opted to play quarterback, the right call. Clayton said no to major offers and didn’t know where he was headed. He liked the challenge. “It was hard to give up all the offers. It was kind of more like a straighter path, a clearer path, if I would have played football,” he said.
First he played at Iona, choosing Rick Pitino until he left for St. John’s. Then Clayton’s mother called Golden and asked for a return to Florida, where her son played at Bartow High School. It was the hookup for a berth in the national semifinals. The rest of us are placing Clayton on an NBA path, knowing he’ll need to fix his defense but will keep firing fearlessly. He’s a first-round pick, as Dan Hurley realizes after Clayton scored 13 points in the final eight minutes to beat two-time champion Connecticut.
“He just went ballistic,” Florida center Alex Condon said. “There’s no one else we’d rather have take the shot than Walt, so getting the ball in his hands at the right time is something I try to do down the stretch. He’s an amazing player and can create space at any time.”
Behind the scenes, Clayton helped keep the locker room together when Golden was in trouble. He was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, stalking and cyberstalking. Did the coach send lewd photos of himself and make sexual advances on social media? In late January, the university said it had found “no evidence.” Golden likely will pursue lawsuits in the offseason.
“We’ve just kept our head down and focused, and we haven’t let the outside attention disrupt us and take us off our path,” Golden said. “I’ll continue to handle some of those situations after the season is over.”
He spoke to the team once about the issues. Said Condon: “We did a great job as a team just coming together, kind of just turning off our phones. Obviously, we all saw it. It was just coming together as a team and continuing to hoop.”
All Clayton does is take the ball and look for a cylinder. He is the reason the Gators are in San Antonio. “Coach being young, he definitely connects with us a lot more. I think he kind of sees our point of view on some things,” he said. “And people talk about (his age), I think it put another chip on his shoulder that he could do it.”
The coach is known for using data. No way does he remove a player in the first half if he has accumulated two personal fouls. An early gig came at Columbia, where he was director of basketball operations and an assistant coach. He is an Ivy Leaguer, you can say. When Clayton’s mother called, he put aside the spreadsheets.
A football player didn’t want to bust helmets anymore. He wanted to deepen the joy for all sabermetricians. Catch the ball, ignore the defense, make the shot from anywhere.
Who isn’t watching?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.