Its a weird situation. Pope has to know his job is on the line next year and if he puts together a team that under performs he is gone, he is currently casting off players he vastly over paid to either cover reduced income or free up additional money yet he can't get trapped in a bidding war with the trickle down effects of landing other needed players.
I am personally against paying outrageous NIL demands of players, but at the same time, I'm not willing to accept a team of bargain value players in the hope they gel into some greater. The reality in all this is that if you have to spend $20m to put a team together and its playing on Wednesday of the SEC tournament, you've failed - not just failed, you've failed spectacularly, and the teams making deep tourney runs are in the $5m - $12m range.
If you are paying 1 player 1/3rd of that range, you've overcommitted unless that player is a guaranteed Cooper Flagg level player, and while UK fans would certainly accept the SEC championship and final four, there was no national title for Duke.
My point is that I don't see Stokes as make or break if his price is prohibitive from landing other players. The long term play here is to invest in players if the NCAA adopts Trump edict for saving college sports where you land a player thru NIL knowing they will stick around. Unfortunately as I started out this rambling post, Pope may not have a long term plan with UK if he doesn't deliver immediately. Stokes is a one and done, and if he is not, then you've overpaid and the last thing you want is a returning 20 year old player who demands significantly more than market value. Good luck with that.