Media, fans and their fickle relationship with John Calipari
By Joe Nardone
Mar 30, 2014; Indianapolis, IN, USA; KKentucky Wildcats head coach John Calipari at a press conference after the finals of the midwest regional of the 2014 NCAA Mens Basketball Championship tournament against the Michigan Wolverines at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
Everyone has an opinion about Kentucky Wildcats head coach, John Calipari. Some think he is a greasy car salesman, while others praise his honesty and approach about the one-and-done rule. Nevertheless, Calipari has easily become the most polarizing coach in all of college basketball.
Why? Because we said so.
Which is weird, for whatever it’s worth really, because Calipari has never attempted to be anything more than he actually is, a winning basketball coach. Not a leader of young men (he attempts to be but to a much lesser degree), a guy who pretends to value college education while others use it as an excuse as to why they recruit like they do, or a general amateur sports ideologist (a fictitious idea, mind you). All of which are things we use while we praise coaches who, frankly, can’t recruit on his level.
Mar 30, 2014; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Kentucky Wildcats head coach John Calipari reacts in the first half of the finals of the midwest regional of the 2014 NCAA Mens Basketball Championship tournament against the Michigan Wolverines at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
We constantly complain about athletes and coaches being disingenuous. That their press conferences are filled with clichés, strange hyperbole, and pointing the finger at others. Not so much with John Calipari, though.
Instead, we complain about his honesty. That we don’t agree with it or it doesn’t fit with our narrative.
Last year we were mad when he said that people who voted his team in the preseason top-five should be drug tested. That Calipari was trying to lower expectations to soften the blow “because he can’t actually coach” or whatever narrative it was that people were trying to sell.
This year we were mad when John Calipari was more optimistic. I mean, really, how dare he think his Kentucky team is going to be that good?
Then the season started. When actual games were to be played and real life criticisms could have been made. Rather, everyone reverted back to the bigger picture narratives. You know, “This is why the one-and-done rule stinks”, “Cal can’t coach all this talent, so he is a horrible coach”, “Tom Izzo’s method is much more preferable”, and more things that might have been appropriate at that moment.
Because, you know, kicking things while they are down happens to be pretty easy.
And who knows what is really the truth? Maybe Izzo’s method of getting recruits that aren’t as good as Calipari’s is the way to do it. I mean that is what everyone was referring to, right? That Calipari is somehow horrible because he lands the best recruits that he possibly can. That turning a broken rule on its own head, for his own benefit, somehow makes him the bad person, not the rule.
We do all of that while we praise other coaches who attempt to get the best recruits, but don’t land NBA-ready players.
If anyone thinks any coach in the country would rather an average player who might develop into a stud over one that is projected to immediately be one, just isn’t being honest with themselves. Plus, those coaches have been doing it for some time now.
But, again, let’s knock Calipari for being better at it than anyone else.
Mar 30, 2014; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Kentucky Wildcats guard Harrison (2) reacts after making a basket against the Michigan Wolverines in the second half of the finals of the midwest regional of the 2014 NCAA Mens Basketball Championship tournament at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
In another interesting side note to entire Cal can’t coach debate, is the fact that he can. Just because he gets great players, doesn’t mean they are supposed to win every single game they play. It’s not an excuse that having a slew of freshmen will cost the team some wins, but it is pretty irrational to think that they are going to be the same type of team in March as they were in December.
I might not know a ton about player development, but I do think it is a safe bet that 18 and 19-year-old kids are going to get better as each day passes. Really, judging the Harrison brothers as failures early in the season, but praise them now as “having finally gotten it” is rather uneducated. Were they supposed to walk right in, based off of your expectations, and be the greatest thing since sliced-bread? Were they not allowed to get better as they practiced under Calipari?
More importantly, because they failed to live up to the hype others created, do they now get less credit for developing? Does John Calipari become a better or a worse coach because it took until March for them both to start clicking on all cylinders?
Obviously that answer depends on which side of the love-hate relationship you have with Calipari.
Regardless, we are now at the end of March with the Final Four coming at us in just a few days. Fans and the media have started to change their tune on Calipari. Gone are the “you did this to yourself” articles and in its place are vague praises, but not enough to prevent them from bashing him if he were not to win the National Title.
Still, Calipari seems destined to be a coach that isn’t appreciated until long after he is gone. Blamed for embracing a rule someone
else put in place, he has essentially excelled in the role of making Kentucky what it always wanted to be — a relevant place, where relevant players go, before they are relevant elsewhere. Which, like it or not, is what most major programs attempt to be.
Words can no longer describe the place Calipari has in the world of college basketball. Either a horrible villain and all that is wrong with the sport or a guy who has completely revolutionized the way college hoops functions. All of that while he never gets any of the credit, but certainly takes more than his fair share of the blame.
This is Calipari’s fifth year with the Kentucky Wildcats. This is also his third trip to the Final Four since taking over the program. Yes, certainly, there were some iffy years in-between, but let’s continue to dismiss John Calipari because you don’t like what he’s selling.
Brand new, shiny cars that work just fine. No lemons, and if there were, he would let you know about them.
Don’t think there’s many car salesmen out there willing to let you know that the Toyota you’re buying is actually a piece of junk. But if there are, I doubt you would hate him for it.
So that leaves us with a few different reasons you don’t like Calipari or don’t believe in his success. Either you are jealous from his success, naive to the way in which he got it, or just don’t like that he doesn’t really fit in that narrative you’re trying to sell.
Because, honestly, there’s nothing about this man that screams “polarizing” other than the fact that he wins basketball games at Kentucky.