John Calipari
Depending on who you talk to about Kentucky Wildcats head basketball coach John Calipari, you’ll get differing opinions. Some of Calipari’s detractors may refer to him as a snake oil salesman while his supporters see him as a genius. But one thing that Calapari has morphed into is a winner. In the early 1990’s, Calipari turned the Massachusetts Minutemen into a national power. After taking UMass to the Final Four of the 1996 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, Calipari sought out another challenge by jumping to the NBA to become the head coach of the New Jersey Nets. Some folks may call Calipari’s brief stay with the Nets a failure, but in 1998, he did lead New Jersey to the NBA Playoffs and their first winning season in four years. After being fired by the Nets in 1999, Calipari became an assistant coach with the Philadelphia 76ers before returning to college in 2000.
The Memphis Tigers welcomed Calipari with open arms and in his first season there, the team won 21 games. In 2002, Memphis would win the NIT Championship and by 2003, they would be ready for their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1996. Calipari turned Memphis into a national power and he sent talent to the NBA that includes Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose, Houston Rockets center Joey Dorsey, and New Orleans Pelicans point guard Tyreke Evans.
In 2009, the money and the prestige of the University of Kentucky were too much for Calipari to turn down and he brought his coaching skills to the Bluegrass State. The folks in Kentucky are basketball crazy and they wanted a head coach that would make and keep them as a dominant force in college basketball. And they’re getting it in Calipari.
From his first day on the job in Lexington, Calipari has been able to get the top-tier high school basketball talent to come to Kentucky regardless of where they are from. In Calipari’s first year at Kentucky, he signed McDonald’s All-Americans such as point guard John Wall and Eric Bledsoe, along with power forward DeMarcus Cousins. All three players were one-and-done at Kentucky as they entered the NBA Draft, but they did hang around long enough to help the Wildcats reach the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament in 2010.
Calipari would get another batch of McDonald’s All-Americans in 2010 who were led by point guard Brandon Knight that helped Kentucky reach the Final Four in 2011 for the first time since 1998. But unlike the previous year, most of Calipari’s talented freshmen remained in school as the threat of an NBA Lockout didn’t make it appetizing for them to leave. And when the next group of McDonald’s All-Americans came to Kentucky led by power forward Anthony Davis, the Wildcats were on their way to their first national championship in men’s basketball since 1998.
Kentucky’s title run in 2012 was followed up by a surprising trip to the NIT as his new crop of freshmen weren’t ready for the big time. But after an up and down 2013-2014 college basketball regular season, Kentucky got hot in the NCAA Tournament and made it all the way to the title game as an eight seed. Calipari and Kentucky would receive great news last spring when all of his talented freshmen except for power forward Julius Randle would return to school and forgo the NBA. So when you mix all of that returning talent together with a new batch of McDonald’s All-Americans at Kentucky, you have a team that is one the verge of becoming the first men’s basketball team since the Indiana Hoosiers in 1976 to go undefeated.
This season the Wildcats have made some good basketball teams look ordinary. On November 18, Kentucky ran through the Kansas Jayhawks 72-40. Then on December 13, it was the North Carolina Tarheels that fell to Kentucky. Kentucky would come back the following week and destroy the UCLA Bruins 83-44. Just before the end of 2014, the Wildcats would have a road test against the in-state Louisville Cardinals whom they got by 58-50. And when conference play began, there wasn’t a team in the Southeastern Conference that was able to make the Wildcats taste defeat. After breezing through their first three games in the NCAA Tournament, Kentucky would get a scare in the Midwest Regional Final against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish as it took a pair of free throws by sophomore guard Andrew Harrison to send the Wildcats to their second consecutive Final Four appearance and fourth under Calipari.
Along with the Wisconsin Badgers and Michigan State Spartans, Kentucky will make a very short trip to Indianapolis for the Final Four, but with a record of 38-0, they’ll be the talk of the town. Calipari has a squad at Kentucky that is littered with future NBA talent as without the current starting five, Kentucky would still be a ranked team this season. Only three players on this year’s Wildcats team are averaging double figure in points as Calipari has made a team that is filled with McDonald’s All-Americans buy into team basketball which is a big reason why Kentucky is still undefeated.
Calipari will always have people that question his method as he’s had questionable departures from past jobs. After Calipari left UMass, the school had their 1996 Final Four appearance vacated by the NCAA due to the fact that center Marcus Camby received money from an agent. After taking Memphis to the NCAA Title Game in 2008, it was revealed that their was academic fraud involving Rose. And by the time that Memphis was forced to vacate all of their 38 wins from that season, Calipari was in Lexington.
To me it’s an absolute joke that Calipari continues to replace one group of McDonald’s All-Americans each year with another, but this is the system that’s in place and you cannot be mad at him for using it to the best of his ability. Since the NBA is basically forcing kids to go to college for one year before they can legally earn a paycheck, Calipari gets these talented youngsters to come to Kentucky because they know that he has a proven track record of getting guys to the next level. And in this current era, players are much more concerned with playing for a coach that’ll get them to the NBA the quickest than the name on the front of their jersey. Calipari isn’t as conventional as Duke Blue Devils head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski is and he doesn’t come off as being a tough as Michigan State head basketball coach Tom Izzo, but what he has become is a man that has adapted to the rules of the game and like it or not, he’s one of the best at doing what he does.
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