Let’s Juice with Sean Kilpatrick at His Juice Lab
Sean Kilpatrick will forever be linked with White Plains High School basketball. Just as Art Monk (’76) is in football, the 1996 Tigers Relay Team is in Track & Field and Mal Graham (’63) is also in basketball.
“Sean is only the second player to play in the NBA, after Mal Graham. I wish him luck the remainder of his career,” remarked Don Gano, the WPHS Athletics Historian and longtime Boys Basketball Scorekeeper.
Kilpatrick graduated in 2008, after averaging 25.6 points his senior year and 19 points per season in three years playing varsity basketball under Head Coach Spencer Mayfield. Kilpatrick played one season of prep school basketball at Notre Dame Prep, before becoming a First Team All-American selection at the University of Cincinnati in 2014. Kilpatrick’s Bearcats resume also reads: Second All-Time Scorer behind Oscar “The Big O” Robertson.
“The thing I am most proud of Sean is how he did in college and graduated,” said Gano, while visiting Kilpatrick at his Juice Lab on Mamaroneck Avenue on Saturday.
Kilpatrick recently concluded his third season in the NBA, which proved to be a season of ups-and-downs. However, through Kilpatrick’s perseverance the season had a positive conclusion. He averaged 13.8 points per game in 23 games for the Brooklyn Nets in 2015-16 and 13.1 ppg. in 70 games for the Nets in 2016-17.
Nonetheless, Kilpatrick’s playing time diminished from about 24 minutes a game in his first two seasons with the Nets to 11.5 minutes per game this season, with his average dwindling to a mere five ppg. Kilpatrick was finally waved by the Nets in December, 2017, after a trade with the 76ers brought Jahlil Okafor to Brooklyn.
However, Kilpatrick signed a NBA Two-Way contract with the Milwaukee Bucks 11 days later, which he played into a standard NBA contract less than a month later. Kilpatrick felt despair again when he was waved by the Bucks, on March 2, 2018, but the L.A. Clippers did not let him rest signing him to two NBA 10-Day contracts.
Less than two days after the expiration of his second 10-day contract with the Clippers, the Chicago Bulls grabbed the NBA scorer. On March 26, Kilpatrick found a home in Chicago when he signed a three-year deal with the Bulls for $6. 2 million with team options for the next two seasons.
Kilpatrick impressed the Bulls and their fans by averaging 15.4 points per game in nine games this season. On April 18, he made the options for the Bulls easier to consider when he scored 19 points in the fourth quarter in a Bulls win over the Charlotte Hornets.
“Yeah, I think anybody would get frustrated moving from team to team. But that is the nature of the league,” commented Kilpatrick, at his Juice Lab, on Saturday. “I think, I had to go through what I went through this year to actually get to where I am now; Chicago is a beautiful situation,” stated Kilpatrick.
Regardless of a season that could have extinguished anybody’s hopes and dreams; there was Kilpatrick, back home in White Plains at his Juice Lab, on Saturday, smiling as he greeted customers with a new three-year NBA contract.
The Tigers basketball marvel was accompanied by his lovely girlfriend Nikki, their six month old daughter Scarlet, his grandmother Evelyn Turner, his aunt Latrice Kilpatrick and his younger brother Travis Williams. “I am very proud off Sean, it is an amazing accomplishment, God blessed us,” commented Williams.
Kilpatrick also welcomed his former teammate Jordan Griffith, longtime Tigers Scorekeeper and Athletic Historian Gano, Eliseo Lugo his Criminal Law and Economics teacher at WPHS and Jamel Robinson his Youth Basketball Coach from his early days living in Yonkers.
Kilpatrick greeted many fans who are customers of his healthy smoothies and natural juices served at his Juice Lab and signed autographs for anyone upon request. Steadying the operation at his Juice Lab is his farther Sean Kilpatrick, Sr. and his best friend and former Tigers teammate Sean Brooks.
“It really feels good to be able to come back and give back to the community, which is important to me. The more and more that I continue to show my face around the neighborhood, I think the people really appreciate it,” said Kilpatrick.
