Darryn Peterson, freshman at Kansas and top prospect in the 2026 NBA draft, has something keeping him off the floor. Those deeply invested in either this Jayhawks season or Peterson's NBA future might find themselves close-reading the cryptic remarks of Kansas head coach Bill Self and watching the superstar guard abruptly disappear from competitive games. Skeptical and angry fans have circulated images of a benched Peterson sitting on a chair, a supposed symbol of his aloofness from the team. The obvious context is that Peterson, a 6-foot-6 combo guard with outlandishly pure ball skills, is just a few months out from earning generational wealth. How much is he willing to risk for the sake of a college basketball campaign?
Peterson has appeared in six of the Jayhawks' 15 games to date, two of them within the past week. Self has said that his star player already had a hamstring injury going into the college season. Peterson appeared in the team's first two games, then missed seven games across November, with the absences attributed to the balky hamstring. He returned to play two games in December, only to be shut down again; Self said the issue was "quad cramping," distinguishing it from the hamstring.
On Dec. 23, Self said Peterson's family had "made a decision, which I don't disagree with it at all, that they want him to be as close to 100 percent as possible when he comes back." On Jan. 1, the coach said that the freshman was at "a little bit of a different level now as far as his explosiveness." Peterson has been back on the floor for two games in January, but under what Self has deemed a "minutes restriction." How would those minutes be determined? Unclear.
"There’s not medical evidence saying only play this much or play him that much or anything like that," Self said Monday. "The one thing I would say, playing him less in the first half is something that we haven’t done. So if we haven’t done it, would that possibly impact the second half? So I don’t know." Self also ruled out the idea that Peterson would be shut down for the season. There's a strange lack of specificity about which leg experienced what: In November, Self said Peterson's right hamstring was tight. Then came the quad cramping in December, with the side unspecified. This month, Peterson was seen using a massage gun on his left leg.
These tensions played out in the most dramatic possible fashion Tuesday night when Peterson effectively benched himself with 2:30 left in the game and Kansas down by nine points to TCU. "He started the cramping, or he felt it coming on,” Self later said of that substitution. "So that was his decision to come out, and he wouldn’t have come out, obviously, unless he had to."
Kansas closed the gap without Peterson, and he returned with 5.4 seconds left in regulation and his team down by three points. “I didn’t ask him if he wanted to [come in],” Self said of that decision. "He had to. That was where that was, right there." On the ensuing play, Peterson was fouled on a three-point attempt, and tied the game with three free throws—then sat out overtime, where his team won, 104-100. Peterson ended the game with 32 points on 8-for-18 shooting. After the game, Self praised him for getting downhill instead of settling for jump shots (which have made up the bulk of his college scoring).
Will this hurt Peterson's draft stock? The Athletic's draft analyst, Sam Vecenie, "reached out to five NBA executives and scouts," and the gist was that it won't. The real reckoning, Vecenie writes, will come in the lead-up to the draft, where all prospects undergo medical evaluations that are then circulated to teams, a stipulation under the most recent collective bargaining agreement. Until then, Peterson can sit in his chair in peace.
