Calipari: Being Kentucky basketball coach comes with ‘a responsibility’
A month or two after Kentucky won the 2012 NCAA Tournament, John Calipari sat in his office and pondered the immediate future. Ken Bennett, a friend from Memphis who happened to be on one of his regular visits to Lexington, served as a sounding board.
“Hey, here’s what we’ve got to think about,” Bennett recently recalled Calipari saying. “My name is a big name right now. I’ve got to leverage my name at this moment to do good. Because it won’t last forever.”
Yes, Calipari is mindful of how being the basketball coach at Kentucky comes with a metaphorical megaphone. You talk. People listen. You win. People follow.
“You cheat the position if you don’t do things to help other people,” Calipari said recently. “You have a responsibility.”
The latest example of Calipari using the UK basketball megaphone this way is the McLendon Minority Leadership Initiative. There have been other efforts while he has been at Kentucky (for example, telethons to help earthquake and hurricane relief) and earlier coaching positions (donations to the Memphis-based Streets Ministries organization run by Bennett).
“That’s why he’s such a special guy,” said P.G. Peeples, the president and CEO of the Urban League of Lexington-Fayette County. “He realizes the value of the platform. He uses it for the good of other people.”
Peeples said he has been a partner on projects since Calipari became UK coach in 2009.
Calipari has shied from taking bows. He pooh-poohs the notion that it took courage to rally support for a program to help minority candidates gain access to positions in athletics departments.
“I always wonder if I was a coach in the ‘60s, would I have had the courage to do the stuff I do now?” Calipari said last month.
Calipari suggested C.M. Newton and Dean Smith served as examples of courage. As Alabama’s coach, Newton integrated the program in 1969 by signing Wendell Hudson. Reaction included a cross burning in Newton’s yard and threats directed at his children. Four years later, Alabama became the first SEC team with five Black starters: T.R. Dunn, Charles Cleveland, Leon Douglas, Charles Russell and Ray Odums.
Newton, who played for UK and later became the school’s athletics director, also integrated Transylvania basketball in his first head coaching job. Adolph Rupp did not approve, author Andrew Maraniss wrote in a 2016 story for The Undefeated.
In the late 1950s, Smith joined a Black pastor and UNC student for a meal at a Chapel Hill restaurant that previously served only whites. In 1966, Smith signed UNC’s first Black player, Charlie Scott. Incidentally, Smith’s father, Alfred Smith, integrated the Kansas high school team he coached in the 1930s.
“I love the fact those two coaches had unbelievable courage to do the things they did when it could have cost them their jobs,” Calipari said of Newton and Smith. “That was courage.”
Longtime Lexington pastor and former UK Board of Trustees member C.B. Akins Sr. saluted Calipari for seeing the Kentucky basketball job’s potential impact off the court.
“We’ve seen a guy like a Billy Gillispie who came in here and couldn’t handle the pressure,” Akins said. “Basketball X and O, Jims and Joes, he can do. But dealing with the Big Blue Nation? Uh-uh.”
Bennett gained further insight into Calipari’s view of being Kentucky coach during another visit to Lexington. After attending a UK game, he went to a bar and engaged the owner in a conversation.
“What do you think about John Calipari?” Bennett asked the owner. “And he goes, ‘Greatest coach in the history of Kentucky.’
“I said, ‘OK, wait a minute. What have you been drinking?’”
As Bennett recalled, the owner replied, “‘We’ve never had a coach who leveraged his name for the greater good more than John Calipari.’
“And I thought, OK, maybe I can go with that one.”
Transition game
Even if the coronavirus pandemic did not exist, uncertainty would mark the upcoming college basketball season. That’s because rosters are increasingly preliminary in nature.
Of course, Kentucky awaits a NCAA decision on transfer Olivier Sarr’s eligibility. This fits a pattern. There have been at least 16 other examples of players transferring in or out — or simply stunning the UK basketball program by staying — since 2013. And then there’s the more than 20 early entrants in NBA drafts during that span.
Before Sarr, Reid Travis (2018-19) and Nate Sestina (2019-20) joined the Kentucky team as graduate transfers.
Players who have transferred away have included Johnny Juzang (2020), Quade Green (2019), Jemarl Baker (2019), Brad Calipari (2019), Sacha Killeya-Jones (2018), Tai Wynyard (2018), Marcus Lee (2016), Charles Matthews (2016), Kyle Wiltjer (2013) and Ryan Harrow (2013).
Plus, there was the surprise in 2014 when Andrew and Aaron Harrison, plus Willie Cauley-Stein, bucked convention by deciding to return for the 2014-15 season. That ushered in the one season of — cover your eyes and swear to never repeat this to rival recruiters — platoon substitutions.
Other programs have revolving doors, too. Hence, ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla has changed his job description for college coaches. He used to say the job title began with “Crisis Management Coordinator.” Now, he thinks “Roster Management Supervisor” is an apt name plate to put on a coach’s desk.
“You have to worry about your roster 12 months a year,” Fraschilla said. “It used to be you sign your guys. You figure it out in the spring. Who’s turning pro? Then you move on to the next year.
“It’s so different now with grad transfers, guys leaving for the NBA, maybe some guys potentially transferring. Who wants to be at Kentucky? You lost this guy, now you’ve got to get a transfer.”
Conclusion: “You have to go into a year with the idea that anybody on your roster is capable of transferring or turning pro, period,” Fraschilla said. “One to 13.”
‘He was murdered’
During a Zoom teleconference last month, John Calipari said that the video of George Floyd’s death helped inspire the effort to create career opportunities in athletics administration with the Minority Leadership Initiative.
The UK coach did not mince words or try to be diplomatic about what happened to Floyd. Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin pressed a knee into his neck for almost nine minutes.
“How can one human being do that to another human being?” Calipari asked. “… He was murdered.”
‘Like a pitbull’
After the official launching of the Minority Leadership Initiative, Houston Coach Kelvin Sampson spoke of John Calipari’s persistence.
“If you’re in the same class with John, you would want John to plan the class reunion because you know it’s going to be done right,” Sampson said of the UK coach. “When he latches onto something, he’s like a pitbull.”
Money manager
When asked about John Calipari’s support of charity, Ken Bennett retold a familiar story. As the former executive director of the Streets Ministries in Memphis, Bennett got to know Calipari and became a family friend.
Bennett, who became the Memphis team chaplain, recalled being at a cookout at Calipari’s house. He said he turned to Ellen Calipari and asked the coach’s wife, “‘Ellen, who manages the money?’
“And she said, ‘Oh, I do or Cal would give it all away.’”
Do or die
John Calipari was a marketing major in college. He knows the importance of promotion. So, his charitable work can help boost the brands of the coach and his program. Nothing wrong with that, Ken Bennett said.
“In his world, if you don’t self-promote, you die,” Bennett said.
Yeah for cynics
To think that coaches who support the Minority Leadership Initiative might be at least partly motivated by self interest could get you labeled as a cynic. Nothing wrong with that, said Dan Wann, a psychology professor at Murray State.
“We need cynics to keep those who want to look at the world through rose-colored glasses honest,” he said.
Happy birthday
To Hamidou Diallo. He turned 22 on Friday. … To Gene Stewart. He turned 75 on Friday. … To Mike Flynn. He turned 67 on Friday. … To Donald Williams. He turned 32 on Friday. … To North Carolina Coach Roy Williams. He turned 70 on Saturday. … To Florida State Coach (and former UK assistant) Leonard Hamilton. He turns 72 on Tuesday. … To Mike Pratt. He turns 72 on Tuesday.
