Ron Mercer was a two year Kentucky Wildcat that was a part of the NCAA championship team during his freshman year. Although his career at Kentucky was short, he scored over 1,000 points in just 76 games played scoring one point every two minutes he was on the court. He made the All-NCAA Final Four Team both years of his collegiate career and was the SEC Player of the Year, the SEC Tournament MVP and the NCAA Regional MOP during his sophomore year. But where is he now?
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Mercer entered the NBA draft after playing for the Wildcats for two seasons and was selected as the 6th overall pick by the Boston Celtics. Boston is the same program that his college coach, Rick Pitino, had just become the head coach of the year he was drafted. Mercer played as a Celtic for two seasons during which time is started most of their games and contributed 16.1ppg for the stint. The next four years included Mercer being traded to 5 different teams.
In his third NBA season Ron played for the Denver Nuggets for the first half of the year and then was traded to the Orlando Magic. During this season he started in all of the 68 games he played and continued to provide solid contributions on the offensive end with 16.8ppg. Mercer left on his own and as a free agent was signed by the Chicago Bulls for the 2000-2001 season which turned into his best season of his professional career scoring nearly 20 points and averaging better than 41 minutes per game. He stayed with Chicago for another season but despite his good play he was traded mid-year to the Indiana Pacers.
From this point forward his time on the court and output declined sharply. While at the Pacers for a season and a half, Mercer played in 85 games but only started in 4 of them. He was only averaging 19.8 minutes per game and was only scoring 6.6 points. The end of his basketball career came with a 13 minutes per game year with the San Antonio Spurs and a short 18 game season with the New Jersey Nets. He was waived from the Nets before the 2005-2006 season as a part of the new labor agreement.
Although the second half of his NBA career was lack-luster, Mercer tallied over $35 million in salary from the 7 NBA teams he played for including three years that he made an estimated $6,750,000 during his peak. Mercer will always be remember for being such a dynamic youth during his Kentucky Wildcat career and for being a part of that incredible national championship team during his freshman year.
