In Billy’s view, John Calipari is exploiting every aspect of the University of Kentucky’s preeminence in his favor.
by Billy Reed
As he begins Year III in his reign over Big Blue World, King John is a wonder to behold. He’s easily the most popular and powerful ruler the kingdom has seen since Adolph The Great, who built the empire a zillion years ago. His style is a wondrous admixture of arrogance, charm, defiance, imagination, and audacity. He is everywhere you go, much like Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984, inescapable and relentless and right in everybody’s face.
Indeed, there now is a sort of Forrest-Gump-like quality to John Calipari’s overweening presence in Kentucky. Look closely at the renderings of Daniel Boone surveying Cumberland Gap, the young Abe Lincoln splitting logs, Col. Harland Sanders peddling fried chicken in a white suit, the young Cassius M. Clay Jr. sparring in a boxing ring. Isn’t that Calipari in the background?
“Kings think differently than we think,” says Calipari. “When I talk about ‘The Kentucky Effect,’ that’s thinking like a king. I told my team that we want to compete on all levels…the highest grade-point average in the country…the national title…let’s see if we can get six guys drafted. Why don’t we think like kings?”
Well, actually, the ‘Kentucky Effect’ is really the ‘Calipari Effect.’ The bigness and growth of UK basketball has been well-documented from the days of Adolph Rupp. But no coach has ever exploited it, examined it, expanded it, and extolled it quite like John Calipari. He feeds the needs – pathological needs, critics might say – of the Big Blue Kingdom and his subjects, in turn, roar with approval every time he re-enforces their notion of their own superiority.
On Oct. 12, King John appeared before a packed room of devout subjects at the annual Wildcat Tip-Off Luncheon in Louisville, the part of his realm where former king Richard the Lion-Hearted lives and works in exile. Every chance he gets, either directly or indirectly, King John tries to bewitch, bother, and bewilder Rick Pitino, who left the University of Kentucky after eight glorious years in the 1990s to crusade in the NBA. That did no work out so well, so he came back, battered but unbowed, to lead the merry band of rebels at the University of Louisville.
Last spring, when Pitino announced he would coach the Puerto Rican national team in the world championships, his media conference was barely over before Calipari announced he was going to coach the Dominican Republic team. When Pitino eventually wriggled out of his Puerto Rican commitment, Calipari pressed on, going so far as to take the Dominican team into Pitino’s castle – the majestic KFC Yum! Center in Louisville – for an exhibition game against an all-star team of former UK and U of L players.
The game attracted a full house of around 22,000, and, even better from King John’s standpoint, one of the Dominican players, former U of L point guard Edgar Sosa, was so profuse of Calipari and his wide-open dribble-drive attack that his remarks could have been construed as a slap at Pitino – which, in fact, is exactly how radio talk-show hosts construed them.
Then, earlier this fall, when asked to talk about “The Kentucky Effect,” Calipari said that part of it was that, unlike North Carolina and Michigan and other lesser kingdoms, Kentucky ruled supreme, unchallenged, in its state. It was as if Louisville didn’t exist, as if the two NCAA banners hanging in the Yum! Center were only rumors. In case anybody missed the point, Calipari didn’t offer an apology or explanation for his omission because, well, kings think differently than we think.
Unlike Pitino, Calipari uses Twitter, Facebook, and blogging to his advantage. He understands that this makes him seem accessible to his subjects when he’s really not. He also understands that he can get across his message unfiltered by the media. Like any effective demagogue, Calipari works hard to shape public opinion by controlling the knaves in the media.
His minister of information and mind control, Sir Dewayne Peevy, has admitted publicly to instituting a policy by which friendly reporters will be rewarded with access to Calipari and the players through special “invitation only” gatherings. Conversely, reporters deemed to be unfriendly will be punished by having access denied.
This policy was enforced in two off-season incidents, one involving the student newspaper and another involving Hall of Fame reporter Jerry Tipton of the Lexington Herald-Leader. In both cases, Peevy tried to impose his will on the media under the guise of “protecting” student-athletes. Although Peevy’s heavy-handed tactics were deplored by media professionals on both the local and national levels, the subjects of the realm either didn’t care or vociferously supported UK.
Interestingly, just as he was able to distance himself from the scandals that caused Final Four appearances to be vacated at both Massachusetts and Memphis, Calipari distanced himself from the media battles, leaving open the question of whether Peevy was acting on his own or doing Calipari’s bidding. Whatever, when the UK administration deferred to Peevy, it only enhanced the perception UK basketball is a kingdom unto itself, accountable to nobody except King John.
Speaking of Memphis, where Calipari ruled before being crowned in Lexington, not even Peevy could punish the Memphis newspaper that reported an unseemly legal situation involving Calipari.
The upshot of the matter was that Calipari and Derrick Rose, the one-and-done star who led the Tigers to their vacated 2009 NCAA runner-up finish, agreed to pay a $100,000 settlement to a group of disgruntled Memphis season ticket-holders who had threatened to sue those two and the Memphis athletic department. Although the grounds of the lawsuit were, at best, specious – the buyers said their tickets had been “de-valued” by the circumstances surrounding Rose – it was interesting that Calipari and Rose agreed to pay.
The story also revealed that Calipari, who was never found guilty of having anything to do with the fact that somebody took Rose’s SAT test for him, also had agreed to pay back his bonus from the vacated season — $232,000 after taxes — in four installments of $58,000 each. The money goes into the university’s scholarship fund.
It’s just another example of King John’s cavalier attitude toward academics. He says he doesn’t like the one-and-done rule, but will exploit it fully as long as it’s on the books. Of Calipari’s first 14 recruits, five were one-and-done guys who now are on NBA rosters — John Wall, Demarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe, Brandon Knight, and Eric Kanter. (Kanter was drafted in the first round despite being ineligible to play during his year in Lexington).
One of the 14 (Darnell Dodson) quit the team and transferred; two are currently sophomores who will probably leave after next season (Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb) and four are freshmen who all are one-and-done candidates (Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Anthony Davis, Marquis Teague, and Kyle Wiltjer).
That leaves sophomore Stacey Poole, who barely played last season, as the leading candidate to become Calipari’s first four-year graduate – provided he doesn’t get fed up with his lack of playing time and transfers. It’s fair to ask what will come first – an NCAA title or a four-year player getting a degree. The betting windows are now open.
After telling the audience in Louisville that he would be “disappointed” if UK won the NCAA title without having a player drafted in the NBA’s first round, King John recounted something that another ruler, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), told him. “Boy,” McConnell said, “you’re creating more millionaires than a Wall Street firm.”
It was not the first time that Wall Street and King John’s empire have been mentioned in the same context – and you can bet it won’t be the last. But that’s fine with Calipari. That’s his job, isn’t it? Recruiting players good enough to become millionaires in a year or less? Isn’t that why he said, after five UK players were picked in the first round of the 2010 NBA draft, that it was the greatest day in Big Blue hoops history?
When that statement came unbridled out of Calipari’s mouth, purists, academics and many former Wildcat stars cringed. It’s almost as if he will be disappointed the day his first recruit receives a degree because that would mean he made a recruiting mistake. But that’s what big-time college basketball has become here in Year III of King John’s reign in Big Blue World, so get used to it or get out of the way.
