Willie Cauley-Stein ready to start with blank canvas in Houston

Amateur artists paint with the colors of the rainbow, but the extraordinary ones utilize the full spectrum within the personality of Willie Cauley-Stein.

There has never been a more interesting man to don the Kentucky Wildcat basketball uniform than Willie Cauley-Stein. Unlike most NBA players during the Calipari era, Willie stuck around three years in Lexington before entering his name into the draft, where he went #6 overall to the Sacramento Kings in 2015. The only Kentucky player drafted higher since was De’Aaron Fox at No. 5 (also to the Kings) in 2017.

After bouncing around to a few different teams, Cauley-Stein fell on some hard personal times last season and ended the year an unrestricted free agent with many teams weary of picking him up. The Houston Rockets, however, saw him as a low-risk, high-reward player and took a chance on him.

The Rockets signed Willie Cauley-Stein to a one-year deal, but that contract is far from guaranteed. He will get a chance to compete in the team’s training camp for a spot on the final roster, where he will have to beat out Usman Garuba and Hollywood’s favorite player, Boban Marjanovic, to claim the backup center role behind Alperen Sengun.

However, it is not Willie’s basketball prowess that makes him worth rooting for. It is everything else. He truly is the most interesting man in the Kentucky Sports world.

Willie Cauley-Stein the artist

Willie Cauley-Stein has fascinated me ever since the picture of him drawing with sidewalk chalk was first released during his recruitment. That image appears lost to the netherworld of the internet, but the likable albeit quirky subject of the picture still produces art. ESPN highlighted Willie’s paintings in 2021, which are as trippy and unique as you would expect.

While I don’t think Willie is ready to cut off his ear, call himself Vincent, and sail off to the south of France, he does have a history of enduring bodily pain for the sake of art, changing his name, and moving cities of residence.

His advice to young artists out there of any genre pinpoints his passion for the subject:

“Keep creating. At all costs, create something. I don’t care if you’re good at it or if you think you’re good at it, because it’s perception. Somebody ain’t never drawn before goes and draws a picture of something. There’s a billionaire over here that’s going to buy it for a million dollars just because of how abstract it is, and you ain’t never painted before. That’s how powerful art is.”

I’m still waiting for a billionaire to stumble across my dinosaur watercolor on construction paper I did when I was seven that Mom still keeps in a cabinet at the house, but appreciate his message and fully endorse it.

Willie Cauley-Stein: Beyond the ink

Perhaps the most prominent canvas Cauley-Stein uses to express himself is his own body. From awesome hairstyles (including my personal favorite, the asymmetric frosted blonde look he rocked for a short time in Kentucky), to a host of tattoos (including a few on his face), Willie has never been shy about wearing personality on his arm sleeve. As for the tattoos, each one has a meaning.

Many Kentucky fans will remember the special bond he formed with Blake Hundley in 2015, the nine-year-old who unfortunately succumbed to brain cancer. After Blake’s passing, Willie did what most of us would do and got a large “Team Blake” script tattooed on his neck.

As for those face tattoos, the two Xs (or should I say, Dos Equis) above his left eye are in remembrance of a friend who passed away, and the three Ps on his forehead stand for “Philosophical, power, and peace.” The red ink on his cheeks read, “Puso” which means ‘heart’ in Filipino, and was inspired by a trip to the basketball-loving country of the Philippines. The word “Shift” on his other cheek embodies the change he seeks to invoke in everything he does.

There is an obvious stigma that comes with facial tattoos, but not only is Willie Cauley-Stein trying to break that stereotype, but it is also part of what drove him to get them in the first place.

In the most Willie quote ever, he said, “I want people to look at me, think I’m some thug and then talk to me and realize this dude is intelligent. Just completely different than what we thought. And that’s my whole movement.” He later added, “What does it matter what’s on my body if my mind, my heart, and my soul are pure?”

Willie Cauley-Stein’s extracurricular adventures

Willie hasn’t just stopped with skin ink and hair dye, he actually changed his middle name to “Trill” which is a phonetic mashup of “true” and “real.” In everything he does, no one is more trill than Trill.

Kentucky fans will remember his YouTube antics with Jared Polson and Kyle Wiltjer, the self-proclaimed Goonies. Mainly, it was just a bunch of college friends being silly on the Internet before social media had evolved into the video reel beast it is today, but at the time, their uploaded playful antics were a movement in their own right.

While the Goonies’ days existed prior to the mass monetization of YouTube, it was the start of his exploration of turning hobbies into a business. His side entrepreneurial projects include a clothing line called Don’t Fit (a name derived from negative feedback he received from NBA teams), a production/record label called Shift (hence the aforementioned face tattoo), and according to him, more to come.

“Art and photography are hobbies that will one day become a business. [I] want the stuff [I] do for fun to be my job in the long run. Creativity runs so deep in my spine, give [me] an hour, and [I] can make something that will change the world.”

Willie also professes an interest in Jimi Hendrix (who is tattooed on his leg), fishing, Bruce Lee movies, anime, and the Renaissance era. While I doubt he is the kind of guy you’ll see in faux armor eating fried corn on the cob at the local fair, a Rennaissance man Willie Cauley-Stein undoubtedly is.

Willie Cauley-Stein plays basketball too

So where does basketball fit into Willie Cauley-Stein’s life? After all, he was the #6 overall draft pick in the NBA draft, a coveted top-tier selection often reserved for players who claim to eat, sleep, and breathe nothing but game.

Teams have criticized Willie in the past for not fitting this mold, interpreting his plethora of outside interests as not having a love for the game. They often prefer a master of one trade (basketball), rather than a jack of them all, like Willie.

Of course, he has a deep rebuttal to that. “I honestly believe all that other [creative] stuff is what fuels my basketball. [It] fuels me to be the greatest player I can.”

He even went as far as turning the blame back onto NBA executives for suppressing players’ outside interests. “They put that tag on you. ‘Well, you don’t love basketball because you do other things.’ You’re like, ‘What?’ I bet there are a lot more [artists in the NBA than we know about] just for that reason — they don’t want people to know.”

Cauley-Stein averaged just 1.9 points and 2.1 rebounds in just under 10 minutes per game last season with the Dallas Mavericks, a big dip from the 12 points and eight rebounds he roughly averaged for the Sacramento Kings where he started every game. After the Mavericks waived him, the Philadelphia 76ers him to a 10-day contract, but he only saw minimal minutes in two games played.

Willie Cauley-Stein and the Houston Rockets are a great fit

Willie turned 29 years old on Thursday, far from past his prime, but the sharp decline in his statistical production has spelled the end of careers for other players at this point in their careers. One of the reasons he hasn’t seen much court time is that he has been on some really good teams, including the Golden State Warriors.

The Houston Rockets, though, are not that. After giving up John Wall for nothing, the Rockets are in full-fledged rebuild mode, having drafted a slew of SEC rookies including Kentucky’s own TyTy Washington. On a team full of young guys trying to find their NBA footing, a veteran athletic big man like Willie Cauley-Stein who is versatile, mobile, and ready for a fresh start of his own is a perfect match. Willie couldn’t have drawn it up better.

Speculate all you want about the “personal reasons” that led the Dallas Mavericks to waive him. Artists like Willie have a personality so diverse, that it can sometimes lead them down an array of less-favorable paths. But Willie is the most interesting man to come out of the Kentucky Sports world, and I hope he stays thirsty, my friends. Here’s to him painting a masterpiece both on and off the court in Houston.

I don’t always dream of being a Kentucky basketball player, but when I do, it’s Willie Cauley-Stein.