People
have called John Calipari a fake. A cheater. A
low-life. An asshole. A sell-out. But what you can’t call him is a bad coach. When Calipari’s Wildcats beat KU in the
NCAA Tournament Finals, he dispelled all criticisms that he couldn’t win big games.
On
paper it doesn’t seem like Calipari had much to do with it because Kentucky had
the best frontcourt of the past decade with Anthony Davis, Michael
Kidd-Gilchrist, and Anthony Davis’ unibrow. Every time they played, UK defined what it meant to be “in a
different league” than an opponent, like they were in on a basketball secret
that no other team even knew existed.*
**Sidenote:
I don’t care what anybody says, after watching last night’s Wizards-Bobcats
game there is no doubt in my mind that Kentucky would beat the Bobcats…
handily**
But
what doesn’t get the publicity is the work that goes into making that
team. If recruiting is cool then
consider Calipari Miles Davis. Old
school coaches (aka Bob Knight) hate Calipari because he makes a living with
the very thing they despise: one-and-dones.
Back in the day, coaches like
Knight created great basketball teams with good players. The team was its own amorphous entity
that the players were taught to respect and hold above everything else. It was like a typical Mighty Ducks movie. Individually the players weren’t that
good, but thanks to coaching, heart, courage, and just a touch of luck, they
were able to make their wildest dreams come true!
But if you watched the Mighty Ducks
movies past the credits and all of the bad sequels, you’d see this great team
break apart in the draft and its fragments fade away into professional
obscurity. This is the same with
Knight’s teams: none of his players really made it in the NBA because they just
didn’t have the talent to keep up. If movies are your thing then Knight was
like Patches O’Houlihan from Dodgeball,
except he doesn’t drink his own urine (yet). You take away Patches and the Average Joes never learn the
five D’s of dodgeball and beat Globo Gym.
I mean, the only really great
player Knight ever coached was Isiah Thomas during Indiana’s ’81 title run,
and Isiah left after that season as a sophomore.
The culture in college basketball
was for players to stay until they finished their upperclassman seasons, so
Knight was able to develop his teams for the future, knowing that he would have
his players for three to four years each. Why did the players stay when they
could have been making money professionally, you might ask? It was an unspoken rule, like letting
people out of the elevator before you get in or taking your shoes off before
entering an Asian household. It
was something you just did.
John Wooden was the one coach who
really benefitted from this culture.
Wooden’s Bruins finally started to gain some recognition after their
1963-64 undefeated season that ended in his first National Championship. This season, Wooden’s glasses, and, for
Marques Johnson, the copious amounts of cocaine in the LA area gave Wooden the
tools necessary to entice insanely talented players like Johnson, Gail
Goodrich, Bill Walton, and Lew Alcinder, Jr. (aka Kareem-Abdul Jabbar) to come
and play for him. However, unlike in
today’s college basketball, these great players stayed for three to four years
each, and they created a dynasty in the process. Wooden took individual talent and molded it into a team,
which is what any coach is supposed to do, but Wooden did it with the best of
the best. He had a system that
worked for talented players playing with other talented players. If Wooden coaches in today’s college
basketball he wins maybe three titles at most because he only has players like
Kareem and Walton and Goodrich for a year.
It's a little early to say
that Calipari is a modern day Wooden, but there are no doubt similarities. Calipari takes insanely talented
players and somehow got them to play with each other just like Wooden did. For Christ sake Calipari got Boogie*
and John Wall to play together! The difference is that Calipari has adapted his
coaching/recruiting style to match the new culture in college basketball, which
is “if you ain’t one-and-done, you’re done.” You really don’t think Calipari couldn’t have won three
straight championships with Boogie, Wall, Davis, and Kidd-Gilchrist on the same team?
**For DJLR’s older
generation of readers, Boogie = DeMarcus Cousins**
Calipari is the beginning of a new
wave of coaches who put their jobs on the line for players who only stay for a
year, yet Calipari embraces this cycle and it looks like he’s perfected the
system. Calipari uses his intangible ability to recruit to construct a team
that is head and shoulders above everybody else, and then encourages his
players to leave after they’re done wrecking everybody’s shit for a year. As my good friend/acquaintance/guy whose
column I read, Chuck Klosterman, wrote: “he [Calipari] cares more about ‘young
people’ than he cares about The Game of Basketball…” and this is why Knight
can’t stand him.
Knight hates Calipari because they
are at the complete opposite ends of the coaching spectrum. Knight took decent players, put them
together, and developed them to make great teams over the course of four
years. Calipari takes crazy talented
players, assembles them into a team for a year, creates a unique system for the
players that he has that year, and then rinses, washes, and repeats the process
the following year. One isn’t
necessarily better than the other, they are just reflections of the differences
in the culture of college basketball over time.
So why am I talking so much about
Calipari? Obviously I have a
hidden agenda. There happens to be
a professional basketball team that plays in New York that also happens to have
recently fired a coach… Hmmm… I wonder…
Maybe Calipari would be a good fit
for the Knicks?
OF COURSE Calipari would be a good
fit with the Knicks. Calipari
really never got a clear shot with an NBA team. His first and only NBA head coaching experience was as head
coach of a dismal Nets team in 1996.
The Nets traded their number seven overall pick (Tim Thomas) to the
76ers for basically a box of donuts, which left the Nets with a young Kerry
Kittles and Kendall Gill as their one-two punch. The following season Calipari coached the Nets to the
playoffs, but lost to a Michael Jordan-led Bulls team that went on to win the
Finals (the same Finals that Jordan hit that shot over Byron Russel with 5.2
seconds left in Game 6). The next season was shortened by a
lockout and, if it wasn’t clear before that the basketball gods hate the Nets, Sam
Cassell got injured in the first game of the season.
[insert nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah,
hey hey hey, goodbye]
Calipari
is so good at his job because he makes high profile athletes work
together. As Klosterman said, he
puts the individuals over the game.
If Calipari came to New York there is no doubt in my mind that his
sleezebally charisma would be the perfect catalyst for this Knicks team. Amar’e
is like a less aggressive Boogie (if his knees can hold up) and Melo is a purer
scorer than any player Calipari has ever coached (including Rose). Throw in Tyson to sure up the boards
and Lin next season (THE KNICKS BETTER GET HIM SIGNED!!!!) and you’ve got
yourself on the road to at least a four seed in the east.
Will Calipari to the Knicks ever
happen? Of course not. It makes
too much sense. Calipari just
conquered the college basketball world and he’s not going to want to give up
his basically guaranteed tenure at the number one school in the nation to go to
the controversial Knicks after what he saw happen to D’Antoni. On the other side of the ball, the
Knicks would no doubt hire Mike Woodson (who is doing a fantastic job to his
credit) over Calipari if they make the playoffs because Woodson is genuinely a
good coach and Calipari’s only experience in the NBA was a bust.
But you can’t blame me for
dreaming, right?
Shoutout to Im A Mutha Drucker for da ill shirt and
everybody else whose keeping the word alive
#DJLR
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