Rob Dillingham sums up this Kentucky basketball team. John Calipari is dealing with it.
For a couple of seconds in Kentucky’s 87-83 victory over No. 9-ranked North Carolina on Saturday night, John Calipari simply needed a little time to himself.
Freshman guard Rob Dillingham had just made one of those plays that he sometimes makes. The kind that leaves you wondering what he was thinking. The kind that leaves Calipari beside himself, screaming out at the court or shuffling down his sideline to put somebody else in the game.
In this moment, Calipari simply stood there. The frenzied action was still happening out on the court. Carolina was running the other way with the ball. But UK’s coach wasn’t watching. He stood still and stared down at the floor. He looked like he might throw up. Or pass out. Maybe both. He did neither.
And Dillingham stayed in the game.
Such is life this season. These Wildcats are a little different. So far, Calipari has let them be just that.
Dillingham’s basketball style — often brilliant, sometimes maddening — is the most extreme example of what Kentucky has cooking this season. And the 18-year-old freshman is Calipari’s biggest challenge in patience. To let the kids play, you have to let the kids play through mistakes. Even if it makes you want to pull your hair out sometimes.
Calipari acknowledged after Saturday’s game that Dillingham makes him want to do just that. But he also does a lot more.
“So you’re coachin’ a kid that can create space and get a basket when he wants to. Do you clip his wings? You can’t. You gotta let him go.”
This lesson in patience began in Canada, where Dillingham — a five-star recruit — was Kentucky’s most underwhelming player, relative to expectations. But the teenager said Saturday that his relationship with his college coach has grown so much since that exhibition tournament in July, each side figuring out more about the other and learning to make some concessions that lead to winning basketball.
“He still shows me that he has confidence in me. He still lets me rock,” Dillingham said. “But, at the same time, he wants me to be more (like a) pro and make smarter decisions and stuff. Really, I’m just thankful for having him. He helps me while letting me be me.”
Letting Rob be Rob is the antithesis of the recent narrative surrounding Calipari, who seemingly hasn’t given such a player this much leeway in years. There are ground rules, which Calipari has already explained. He gets two of those head-scratchers per half. After three, he comes out.
Dillingham’s do-little-wrong start to this season had him flying up NBA draft boards, and then he turned in a 1-for-9, four-turnover dud in Kentucky’s stunning loss to UNC Wilmington. That seemed to carry over to the first half of the Penn game a week later, when Calipari yanked the young guard after too many “messin’ with the ball” moments. He was much better in the second half.
On Saturday against the Tar Heels, he was 1-for-7 in the first half. And he was 5-for-9 after the break, making some of the biggest buckets down the stretch with fellow North Carolina native John Wall sitting courtside and cheering him on in Kentucky’s biggest win so far.
“I just wanted to win,” he said. “So I just tried to make winning plays.”
He still made some of those bad ones. It left Calipari flustered in the moment, but he could at least find the humor afterward, relaying a back and forth that the two have had numerous times already.
“Why did you do that?” Calipari asked.
“Because I do that sometimes,” came the response.
And the 64-year-old coach just has to learn to live with it.
“I gotta let some of that stuff go,” Calipari said.
He added that freshman guard D.J. Wagner needs similar space to be himself. You take a little bad, because you know there’s a whole lot of good in there. Aaron Bradshaw will make mistakes — he’s played only three college games so far — but there are things that he can do on the court that few, if any, can at this level. Reed Sheppard can get out of position, too. Not every pass will be perfectly placed. Not every defensive chance will be perfectly timed. But, most of the time, he’s going to make the right play and be in the right spot.
Calipari is hyper-aware of all those narratives that surround his current self. Once the innovator of college basketball, he’s seen in some circles as behind the times, reluctant to accept and adapt to the obvious trends of the sport. Playing small. Bombing 3-pointers. And all that.
The UK coach will tell you that the past two seasons looked different because when you have the national player of the year, you have to play a certain way. He would tell you that the 2021-22 team could be just as fun as this one, pointing to the 98-69 beatdown of UNC two years ago as his evidence.
“You would have thought we were playing 1950 basketball,” Calipari said of the way his critics have talked about him. “We played exactly how we played today. Now, we got injured that year at the end, but I had a good team, and we could play that way.”
He’d also tell you that the 2019-20 team — led by Immanuel Quickley, Nick Richards and Tyrese Maxey — could have won the title had the tournament not been canceled. And he’d tell you that he doesn’t pull a player out for missed shots. It’s bad decisions, not bricks, that get you a seat on the bench.
Calipari often litigates the past, and now he’s defending himself in the present.
He heard the rumblings when Bradshaw — a 7-1 player but a uniquely skilled one — joined Kentucky’s lineup a couple of weeks ago.
“Everybody thought we were going to walk it up the court, somebody told me,” he said, feigning shock. “I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ We’re playing fast. This is who we are.”
Bradshaw and de facto center Tre Mitchell — really a 4, and a skilled one, at that — have played well together so far. “Now we’ve got a 5 guy that can play like he’s a 3 or a 4,” Calipari said. “So you play the same way.”
Almost as if giving a political stump speech, Calipari sat in a room in State Farm Arena after Saturday night’s win and hit all the major talking points. He’s going to let the kids play. He’s going to let them play fast. He’s going to let them shoot 3-pointers. And he thinks that’s a winning strategy come March.
“The game is going to this,” he said. “You’d better have a bunch of shooters.”
It might sound like pandering at this point, but he’s been practicing what he’s preached. So far.
“This is a group of young, talented basketball players that are still learning,” he said. “We’re not near where we should be or where we will be. But I’m kind of liking where we are at this stage of the season.”
Next game
No. 9 Kentucky at Louisville
When: 6 p.m. Thursday
TV: ESPN
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 8-2, Louisville 5-6
Series: Kentucky leads 38-17
Last meeting: Kentucky won 86-63 on Dec. 31, 2022, in Lexington
This story was originally published December 17, 2023 at 6:00 PM.
