The University of Louisville's men's basketball team has built quite a resume. It has appeared in the NCAA Tournament 45 times and gotten to the Final Four 10 times, and it has won three national championships, although its 2013 title was vacated.
Perhaps the most well-known member of the Cardinals was Wes Unseld, who went on to be named both the Rookie of the Year and the MVP of the NBA during the 1968-69 season. He went on to make five All-Star teams and lead the Washington Bullets to the 1978 championship, and he was later inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Today, Donovan Mitchell of the Cleveland Cavaliers is the most notable University of Louisville product currently in the league. Overall, 75 members of the school
have been drafted into the NBA, with four of them being selected by the Los Angeles Lakers.
Here is a look at each of those four men.
Fred Sawyer -- center
Sawyer spent three years with the Cardinals, averaging 11 points and 12.1 rebounds a game during that time. After the Lakers took him in the second round of the 1961 draft, he never played in the NBA, as he instead chose to play in the American Basketball League.
Jim Price -- guard
The Lakers took Price in the second round of the 1972 draft after he had averaged 17.1 points, 4.8 rebounds and 4.3 assists in three years at the University of Louisville. He spent his first two and a half seasons with the Lakers and started to become a scoring threat in his second pro season.
They traded him to the Milwaukee Bucks during his third season, a season in which he made the All-Star team. He later returned to Los Angeles for the 1978-79 campaign to close out his NBA career.
In seven total seasons, Price put up 10 points and 3.7 assists in 25.1 minutes per game.
Junior Bridgeman -- small forward/shooting guard
Bridgeman, who averaged 15.5 points and 7.6 rebounds in four seasons with the Cardinals, was taken by Los Angeles with the No. 8 pick in the 1975 draft. Just a few weeks later, Los Angeles sent him to the Bucks in the deal that brought it Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
He spent 10 of his 12 NBA seasons with the Bucks, and for his career, he averaged 13.6 points a contest.
DeJuan Wheat -- point guard
After averaging 16.1 points a game in four years at the University of Louisville, Wheat went to the Lakers in the second round of the 1997 draft. They waived him a few months later, and he spent his rookie year with the Minnesota Timberwolves and then wrapped up his NBA career the following season with the Vancouver Grizzlies.
Across both seasons, Wheat averaged 3.3 points and 1.6 assists in 9.3 minutes a game.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Every University of Louisville player drafted by the Lakers
