Keaton Wallace always by the side of younger brother Cason
Cason Wallace‘s commitment video opened up with a spiritual-like outline of his older brother, Keaton Wallace. The theme of the two-minute clip was based on the classic mid-2000s cartoon, Avatar: The Last Airbender. The younger Wallace “mastered” the four elements of fire, air, water, and earth before ultimately choosing Kentucky once his training was complete.
There was plenty of symbolism throughout the video, which was all Cason’s idea, but the role his brother played was perhaps the most significant: no matter which school Cason picks, Keaton will be right there next to him. Just as he was while growing up in Texas.
Cason and Keaton bonded over Avatar: The Last Airbender throughout their childhood. It was a personal favorite for them over the years as they developed into Divison I basketball players and formed an even greater bond through an orange round ball.
“We actually grew up watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, the cartoon. It was really all Cason’s idea,” Keaton Wallace told KSR of Cason’s commitment video. “He put all these pieces together and came up with the idea that he wanted to do Avatar. It was all his idea, all his creativity.”
As most of us know by now, Cason is a 6-foot-3, five-star class of 2022 combo guard rated as a top 10 high school senior. His commitment to the ‘Cats gave head coach John Calipari another No. 1 recruiting class with expectations that he won’t stay longer than a year in Lexington. Wallace is widely regarded as the premier two-way guard in the entire class.
But Keaton is no slouch on the hardwood either. In fact, he’s one of the best players to ever come through the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). His four-year career at UTSA included multiple all-conference selections and over 2,000 career points. Keaton left as the program’s second all-time leading scorer and now plays in the NBA’s G League.
If UTSA sounds familiar in relation to his brother, that would be because Cason included the Road Runners among his top four potential schools, joining UK, Tennessee, and Texas. Cason took an official visit to UTSA in October, but the allure of Kentucky was too strong. Even still, it meant a lot for Keaton to see his brother show respect to his alma mater.
“It felt good,” Keaton said. “My brother has seen the things I went through as a basketball player and he took the good and the bad and he made his own corrections on how he wanted to handle certain situations. He threw UTSA some love over there. It was appreciated.”
Cason owes a good deal of credit to his brother Keaton for where life has taken them. Keaton paved the path of success for his younger sibling, teaching him life lessons on and off the court along the way.
They were never ones to argue all that often when it came to basketball. They knew that, eventually, they would only have each other.
“We don’t do the comparison thing, we don’t fight over basketball,” Keaton said. “We don’t feed into who’s better or things like that because at the end of the day, me and him is the only ones that are at this level right now. When he’s a professional, we’re gonna be the only two we got. We don’t do that who’s better than who, we just look out for each other.”
Keaton has been looking out for Cason since they were young. The two trained together, practiced together, and developed together. “He was always in the gym with me; wherever I went he went,” Keaton added. The Wallace family is bigger than basketball, though.
“We really truly hold each other accountable,” Keaton explained. “If we see some slippage, we’re gonna speak on it. It’s not personal. We don’t take everything personal. We just understand that we all look out for each other and have a close-knit circle. It’s not a lot of people in our circle that we rely on. It’s a lot of trust built.”
Keaton says that Kentucky is getting a high-character player and person in his brother Cason. The younger Wallace brother should mesh perfectly with John Calipari’s three-guard system–and Keaton will be supporting him the entire time.
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