John Calipari could be coaching LeBron James in the NBA Finals; does he have any regrets?

ROYAL OAK, Mich. – Last spring, John Calipari had a chance to become the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Speculation on NBA jobs is an annual occurrence for the Kentucky coach but this was different.

"The only thing that was ever serious was the Cleveland thing," Calipari said Monday here outside Detroit at the "Coaches Beat Cancer" event, run by Oakland University coach Greg Kampe.

While there was no guarantee, there was, at the time, a possibility that LeBron James would return to the franchise, offering the chance to coach one of the greatest players of all time for an instant title contender. Opportunities like that just don't present themselves very often.

Cal, of course, said no to Cleveland. LeBron said yes. The Cavs open the NBA Finals on Thursday at Golden State.

So any regrets? Any pangs of wistfulness? After all, wishing you could do two things at once, run in dual tracts, doesn't denigrate the path chosen. Every coach would like to win an NBA title.

"No," Calipari said. "No, nope. Because what happened, and the reason I did what I did, was based on having guys come back who wanted to be coached. I didn't feel comfortable not being at Kentucky."

This was loyalty to a slew of players who decided to forgo the NBA for a season, join up with a batch of top recruits, and make a run at history … 40-0 and a national title, the latter more important than the former.

It was a good story. It would have been a great one except 38-0 Kentucky wound up losing in the Final Four to Wisconsin. The season, by any reasonable standard, was still a wild success.

Kentucky, however, wasn't living under reasonable standards.

"I was in New Jersey, getting a slice of pizza," Calipari said of a recent lunch down on the Shore in Lavallette. "The owner comes from around the back and says, 'I've got to give you a hug, Coach. I'm so sorry about your season.'

"And I kind of grabbed his arm as he's pulling away and I said, 'You know, I kind of feel the same way … and you know we were 38-1?'"

Calipari is just 56 but he's had three college head-coaching jobs (Massachusetts, Memphis and Kentucky) and one in the NBA (New Jersey). He is seen as a guy who will jump at the next opportunity, who is always looking. Hence his name is always coming up, whether it's legitimate or just speculation.

By the standards of karma, sticking around UK – being loyal to the players who were loyal to him, not chasing LeBron – was the right choice. Yet in pure wins and losses, in terms of that championship everyone expected, it didn't end how Hollywood would've scripted it.

No one saw Calipari and a small business owner in Jersey commiserating over a damn near perfect season. He tries to spin, tries to work through what could've gone differently, if only to cope, but, yeah, you can tell this one is going to leave a mark for a long, long time.

Jerry Tarkanian, the late UNLV coach who saw a similar perfect season end in the 1991 Final Four, said he never fully recovered from the pain of that loss. The stakes were just so great.

"I never thought we were losing," Calipari said. "When we won at Georgia [thanks to a dramatic comeback], I told my staff something crazy is going to have to happen for us to lose because this team has that will.

"I also think, though, that the [Wisconsin] game and the Notre Dame game [a close victory in the Elite Eight], that the other teams played really well. And there were times when I thought maybe the record was affecting us. And it's just natural."

So it might be better to actually lose a game rather than attempt the gauntlet of perfection?

"Now that I have gone through it with that team, we would have probably been better to lose a game," Calipari acknowledged. "Now that being said, if I am ever in that position again, we're trying to win every game. I don't even care. We were chasing history. And we made history, 38 wins is the most ever, the record is the best ever, so we fell short of generational history, but chasing…

"Looking back, a loss probably would've done us some good. Maybe in the conference tournament, which is what happened to us in 2012 [at UK]. We end up winning the national title.

"I can remember at UMass when we lost to [George Washington] at home [ending a 26-0 start to the season], my entire team and staff went, 'Whew,' " Calipari said. "I just never felt it with this team, but I think it was probably there. Some of them talked about it after, so I probably misread it a little bit.

"We just never discussed it because I thought we were fine."

This is anything but some pity session. Calipari talked about the great victories, the incredible fun, the joy of seeing his guys push for something everyone said couldn't be done and, in the end, "celebrating seven guys putting their names in the draft."

Besides, he was talking on Monday from a reception room of William Beaumont Hospital here outside Detroit, where Calipari and nine other top college coaches (Tom Izzo, John Beilein, Bob Huggins, Roy Williams, Sean Miller and so on) came to be part of the "Coaches Beat Cancer" golf outing run by Kampe, the respected Oakland University coach. It raised $162,000. Perspective was everywhere.

"Greg is such a good friend," said Calipari, who was so committed to the cause he golfed for essentially the first time since having hip replacement surgery a couple years back. At the hospital he even met a young patient who told him he wanted to get healthy and become his manager at UK one day.

"It's neat," he said. "This is just a really good thing."

Calipari grew up in a blue-collar household outside Pittsburgh, so he rarely needs a reminder of how good he has it. With his personality, he doesn't ever expect anyone to feel bad for him, which is why the fact some people do has been so significant.

It's why you could sense this kind of stuff, this charity work, wasn't just about fulfilling some obligation. He was also getting something back here.

This is just an undeniable strange spring in the man's life.

The team he rejected has a shot at the NBA title. The team he stuck with put together one of the most iconic seasons in recent college history, yet, in the end, there are pizza guys offering hugs of condolence.

When has anyone in basketball gone through that?

"No regrets," Calipari promised. "I'll be watching. But regrets? No. None. …I'm a guy that's usually looking through the front window."

Another season in Lexington will come. Maybe not a day too soon for John Calipari.

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