Kellan Grady excited to return to Rupp Arena with La Familia in TBT

Kellan Grady is the most recent Kentucky alum on La Familia, the Cats’ alumni team for The Basketball Tournament (TBT), but he’s already counting down to his return to Rupp Arena. On Tuesday, the former Davidson and Kentucky Wildcat hopped on Zoom with some reporters to preview the TBT, which tips off next month. La Familia is hosting a regional at Rupp from July 19-23. Grady can’t wait to be reunited with BBN.

“That’s probably one of the things I’m most excited about, is getting a chance to play in Rupp again,” Grady told KSR. “I think one of our proudest moments collectively we could agree on from our 2021-22 team was that we were undefeated at home. And that’s a special place. We have an amazing fanbase — and I like to shoot there so I’m excited to get back there.”

In his lone season in Lexington, Grady started all 34 games, averaging 11.4 points per contest while shooting a career-high 41.5% from three-point range. After his graduate season at Kentucky, he signed an Exhibit 10 deal with the Denver Nuggets and played for the Grand Rapids Gold, their G-League affiliate, for a year. In the fall of 2023, Grady moved his career overseas, playing for Chorale Roanne Basket in France’s top division, averaging 8.4 points and 1.9 assists per game.

Grady is hoping to continue his career overseas in the German, Italian, or Spanish markets. First, he’s excited to team up with fellow Kentucky alums for the chance to win the TBT grand prize of $1 million.

“I’m extremely excited to get back and interact with the fans, just feel like I’m a part of Big Blue Nation again, up close and intimately. And really excited to play with all the guys we’ve selected and I think we’ve done a great job assembling this team. I think we’re going to win some games and make the fans of the product we’re putting out there.”

Grady is the ninth member of La Familia, joining James Young, Andrew Harrison, Daniel Orton, Marquis Teague, Willie Cauley-Stein, Eric Bledsoe, Doron Lamb, and Reid Travis as the players announced so far. La Familia is one of eight teams in the Lexington Regional, the winner of which will advance to the semifinals and championship August 2-4 at the Daskalakis Athletic Center at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. We’ll find out who the other seven teams in the Lexington Regional are next week at the bracket reveal.

Grady on La Familia teammates: “I remember watching all of those guys”

Grady’s time at Kentucky didn’t overlap with any of his La Familia teammates, but he said he’s familiar with all of them from watching college basketball growing up. He singled out Eric Bledsoe as the player he’s most excited to play with, recalling watching the 2009-10 team (which also included Orton) with his dad.

“I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever play at Kentucky when I was growing up. My goodness, I think when [Bledsoe] was there I was 12 years old but I remember that team and I remember my dad saying, ‘You’ve got to watch this Kentucky team.’ I think they were playing in [Madison Square] Garden.”

“Everyone watches Kentucky to some degree growing up,” he added later. “I remember watching all of these guys. Harrison, Teague, Orton, Willie Cauley-Stein, I could go down the list. Reid Travis was around a little bit working out in the summer when I was there. I’m not intimately familiar with the guys but I definitely have recollection of watching Kentucky Basketball games growing up and things like that.”

La Familia has a pretty impressive roster, with more players still to be announced in the coming weeks. What will their style of play be like? The team won’t assemble in Lexington for a few more weeks, but with the amount of facilitators on the roster, Grady sees potential.

“I envision we’ll probably have some pretty basic sets. But I think it’ll be a bit more based on principles and making plays for each other. And I think the way the roster has been assembled, I think we will have no problem doing that. As long as we’re given space and some concepts and some principles to follow, I think, we’ll be able to make plays for ourselves and for others.”

Grady reflects on his season at Kentucky

The 2021-22 Kentucky Basketball team finished with a 28-8 record, 14-4 in the SEC. Sadly, most will associate that season with how it ended, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to Saint Peter’s, but Grady recalled so many great memories of his year at Kentucky that he couldn’t pick just one as his favorite. His 25-point performance vs. Alabama is up there, specifically the three he fired off after Davion Mintz threw him a pass he wasn’t expecting.

“We had so many great moments. I’d say just a fun one was when Davion [Mintz] threw the ball at me and I wasn’t looking and made that shot against Alabama but on a larger scale, I’d say going 14-4 in the SEC, having the great regular season that we had, undefeated at home, all those things kind of jumbled into one.”

“Obviously, we had a disappointing finish, but that’s not fully reflective of the great season that we had up until that point. Hard to pinpoint but a lot of great meaningful and memorable experiences.”

After the season ended, we found out that Grady was playing through plantar fasciitis in both of his feet, which affected his performance down the stretch. When asked today, Grady admitted the injury was “brutal” and got worse as the season went on, but refused to use it as an excuse for the way the season ended.

“It was bad. I mean, I could barely walk after games. At halftime, I had to be stretching and trying to do things to keep both my feet loose. But ultimately, I played on it all year and I shot at a very high level, and down the stretch, I didn’t and I’m accountable for that. I don’t want it to be misconstrued just because I had bad plantar fasciitis and both my feet.”

Grady on La Familia: “I think we’ll be exciting to watch”

Now, Grady gets the chance to make more happy memories in Rupp. He thinks the TBT is the perfect opportunity not only for Kentucky fans to cheer for some of their old favorites but get a much-needed basketball fix. Tickets are now on sale at thetournament.com/tbt/tickets.

“There’s no college basketball in the summer and I imagine a lot of people in Lexington miss watching Kentucky Basketball. And like I’ve said already, I think we’re going to provide a really good product. You’re going to see a lot of people who really cared about representing Kentucky playing together and competing for a championship.

“I don’t think there’s really anything else we have to say. I think we’ll be exciting to watch. There’s a brotherhood that lives within playing for Kentucky. I know we’re all really excited about this and that’s why we signed up to do it. So I hope we can pack Rupp out as well as we can.”

One thing you can say for certain is that Grady will be soaking up every moment.

“Outside of hopefully winning the tournament — which I think we have an incredibly good chance of doing — I think I’ll be filled with gratitude when it’s over being able to interact with BBN again and being able to play with guys who have had legendary impacts on Kentucky Basketball and what that means. You know, I was there for one year and I feel honored — it’s a privilege, honestly, to be able to be a part of this.”