{"id":137867,"date":"2025-07-01T00:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T00:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/137867\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T00:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T00:25:11","slug":"reece-potters-favorite-former-kentucky-player-isnt-someone-youd-expect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/137867\/","title":{"rendered":"Reece Potter’s favorite former Kentucky player isn’t someone you’d expect"},"content":{"rendered":"

Born and raised a Kentucky basketball fan, Reece Potter<\/a> has plenty of memories from his younger days cheering on the Wildcats. <\/p>\n

Potter remembers how dominant DeMarcus Cousins<\/a> was during the big man\u2019s lone season in Lexington, he remembers breaking out the John Wall<\/a> dance with his friends, he remembers all those clutch Aaron Harrison<\/a> shots in the 2014 NCAA Tournament. Potter recalls being in Florida on spring break during that postseason run to the national championship game over a decade ago. He was at a restaurant with the only group of people losing their minds as Harrison dropped in yet another game-winning shot. <\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody\u2019s like, \u2018Who are these nuts back here screaming for Kentucky?’\u201d Potter jokingly told reporters on Monday as he reminisced on his favorite UK memories. <\/p>\n

But there\u2019s one former Wildcat who sticks out in Potter\u2019s mind as his personal favorite. <\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I have to say Daniel Orton<\/a>,\u201d Potter said. \u201cBecause he trained me for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before beginning his college career at Miami (OH) for two seasons, which later led to him transferring to Kentucky back in the offseason, Potter was a star player at Lexington Catholic<\/a> High School. Suiting up for one of the more well-known schools in the entire state, there was a bit of a target on his back at the time. Granted, being seven feet tall made that somewhat unavoidable, but Potter wanted to make sure he was up to the task. <\/p>\n

Enter Daniel Orton, who has become a more prominent fixture around the city of Lexington since his professional basketball career came to an end a few years ago. The 6-foot-10 Orton was teammates with Wall and Cousins on the 2009-10 Wildcats, John Calipari<\/a>\u2018s first team as head coach. He now lives in central Kentucky. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve known him probably since like my freshman year of high school,\u201d Potter said of Orton. \u201cSo he moved from Oklahoma here after his playing days. So me and him used to go at each other during practice. Every single morning we used to work out. So I was able to learn from him and grow from him, and we have a great relationship. I still talk to him every single day, so he always calls me just to tell me to hop on the game or stuff like that. So it\u2019s been great, growing into a great friendship, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orton, now 34 years old, is a good confidant, both on and off the court, for someone like Potter to have. A former first-round NBA Draft pick after his one season at Kentucky, Orton played basketball all over the world for more than a decade. He\u2019s been in the NBA, he\u2019s been overseas, and he\u2019s even been on La Familia, Kentucky\u2019s alumni team in The Basketball Tournament that made it to the semifinals last summer. <\/p>\n

Now, he\u2019s helping with the new era of Kentucky basketball. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Subscribe to the KSR YouTube Channel for press conferences, interviews, original shows, fan features, and exclusive content.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Born and raised a Kentucky basketball fan, Reece Potter has plenty of memories from his younger days cheering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,26974,4892],"class_list":{"0":"post-137867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-daniel-orton-09-bishop-mcguinness","10":"tag-reece-potter-23-lexington-catholic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114775138206751319","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}