‘The pain of a lifetime’ led Pitino to give up coaching. Is a NBA comeback ahead?
A year removed from being fired at the University of Louisville due to a college basketball corruption scandal , Rick Pitino hopes to become an NBA head coach once again.
Pitino told ESPN he wants to be in the NBA developing young players. He hired Drew Rosenhous, a high-profile agent, to represent him.
“I want to be a part of a team. I miss it terribly,” he told ESPN. “I’m using this time to really study the NBA. If something opens up with a young basketball team, I’d have deep interest in it.”
Throughout his career, Pitino has gone back and forth from NBA to college basketball. He coached the New York Knicks to a 90-74 record over two seasons from 1987-1989 before coaching the University of Kentucky from 1989 to 1997.
Pitino then returned to the NBA, where he coached the Boston Celtics to a 102-146 record in four seasons. After he was unable to restore the sport’s most successful franchise to its glory years, Pitino resigned and returned to the state of Kentucky as the head coach at Louisville.
A Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, Pitino coached Louisville for 16 seasons until the FBI and prosecutors revealed an investigation into college basketball corruption centered on payments made to recruits or their families to get players at certain programs. Adidas executive James Gatto, business manager Christian Dawkins and amateur league director Merl Code were found guilty of fraud last week in the first of at least three trials, according to the Associated Press. .
Testimony and recordings from the trial suggested Pitino was unaware of payments made to Brian Bowen, a former prized recruit.
Still, “the father of prized recruit Brian Bowen Jr. described how a Louisville assistant handed him an envelope stuffed with cash,” the AP reported.
Throughout his career, Pitino was 647-392 with two college national championships and five Final Fours.
His eyes set on the NBA once again, Pitino told ESPN he does not want an upper management role in addition to his coaching duties as he had with the Celtics.
“I’m not looking for any of that at this stage of my life,” he told ESPN. “I want to develop teams and develop players and build a winner. I value analytics. I want to fit into an organization. At this stage, that’s all I’m interested in.”
ESPN reported the biggest obstacle Pitino will face in returning to the NBA is “convincing league executives and owners that his ego would allow him to be a willing partner with a front office.”
His wishes to coach again refute what he told ESPN’s Mike Greenberg in September. “I’m not going to coach again. It’s been too painful the last three years — the pain of a lifetime,” he said last month.
This story was originally published October 29, 2018 at 9:08 AM.