Advertisement

John Calipari picks plenty of fights, but always walks away as big winner

INDIANAPOLIS – This was back a long time ago, back when John Calipari was at the University of Massachusetts, back when he coached in a 4,000-seat gym called The Cage, back when the NIT was a big deal, back when the idea of ever going 40-0 and winning a national championship was ridiculous, even by Cal's standards of outlandish dreams.

John Calipari sits by his AP College Basketball Coach of the Year trophy Friday. (AP)
John Calipari sits by his AP College Basketball Coach of the Year trophy Friday. (AP)

UMass had a basketball program but wasn't the kind of school that cared too much about it. Maybe you win, maybe you lose, maybe Julius Erving shows up. It wasn't going to spend a gazillion bucks on athletics.

John Calipari did care about it though. In 1988, Calipari talked his way into the job at the tender age of 29. He was ready to build a program that could win a national title. The fact the school had posted 11 consecutive losing seasons prior to his hiring didn't faze him.

Then one day a decree came down during some budget crunch that when traveling for work, university employees would be forced to rent economy cars only, the smallest and cheapest possible. It was classic UMass, anything to save five bucks.

This is not how major college athletics operated. Not then, not now. That's especially true for the programs Cal was chasing and would, no doubt, one day join. How exactly was he going to convince some recruit that this was a legitimate place to play when he was rolling up $14.99 a day Yugo? You think Jim Calhoun was driving those? Calipari was building something here and the school was almost literally nickel and diming him. So he complained. And argued. And demanded an exemption. And complained some more.

"Look," Cal said back then in one of his colorful, comical rants, "I've got kids. I'm not driving the kind of car where if there is an accident I die. I want to drive the kind of car where the other guy dies."

It was a joke, of course. He wanted no one dead, but this is how John Calipari entered the public eye of college athletics: balled up fists, kicking down doors and unapologetically refusing to take no as even an option. He wasn't much for tact.

Someone at the school finally relented and let the basketball program rent regular-sized cars.

A couple years later the Minutemen were No. 1 in the country and in the Final Four.

Today, as the head coach of Kentucky, he uses a private jet.


John Calipari was not introduced to the college basketball world via some cuddly Cinderella story, or as an assistant at the side of some lovable legend of the game.

John Calipari (L) and Rick Pitino prior to a Wildcats-Cardinals clash. (Getty)
John Calipari (L) and Rick Pitino prior to a Wildcats-Cardinals clash. (Getty)

He got a head-coaching job young and couldn't wait for tomorrow. He decided the best way to win – and the results proved him correct – was to find the biggest guys on the block and try to fight them. He's never denied the Pittsburgh in him.

So he poked and prodded them, battled them for recruits and claimed they were ducking him on the schedule. Whatever it took. He went after them all, from the local establishment program at Boston College, to Calhoun and Connecticut, who also aspired to national greatness, to Atlantic 10 powerhouse Temple and its iconic coach John Chaney. He drove them all crazy, to the point where Chaney even once tried to choke him at a press conference.

He was an undeniable pain in the neck. Rick Pitino recommended UMass hire him and even he got sick of the guy.

From Calipari's vantage point, this was strategy. Suddenly everyone was paying attention to his team, including better and better recruits. The goal here was to win, to lift his university and help his players achieve their dreams. No one ever said he wasn't successful at those items, especially the players who entrusted him and wound up loving him. La Familia, he dubbed it. He treasures loyalty, above all. He'll gladly take the bullets.

He certainly didn't care about making friends with people who are above you on the ladder.

I want the other guy to die.


John Calipari is at his best when surrounded by chaos. It works. Except when it comes to winning over general basketball fans who rather than see the son of a baggage handler at the Pittsburgh International Airport relentlessly driving his way to the top as a self-made man, saw someone the hierarchy of the sport either despised or feared. Or both.

John Calipari with Derrick Rose during the 2008 Final Four.
John Calipari with Derrick Rose during the 2008 Final Four.

Later, when he got to the University of Memphis, it was the same act. He battled the SEC schools around him. Who would want to go play for a football school, he'd ask.

In Conference USA he got after it with Pitino and then Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins. He saved his best venom for Tennessee and Bruce Pearl from the SEC. It wasn't just basketball either, he'd venture into politics complaining about the legislature not funding the entire university or even the city of Memphis itself.

In 2008 he even proposed not just that the university leave the state system and gets it own Board of Trustees, but that the City of Memphis actually cede from the State of Tennessee and along with a few area counties in Arkansas and Mississippi create their own state.

"The State of Memphis," he declared.

That's him. He always has been great theater. If you went to Memphis, you loved it. If you lived in Memphis, you loved it. Finally someone was fighting for us, bashing the state legislature that always seemed to be cheating a predominantly African-American city out of revenue.

If coaching hadn't worked out, Calipari would make a great cable news talk show host. You're either with us or you hate America.

I want the other guy to die.

A couple years later Memphis was No. 1 in the country and in the Final Four.

A lot of people outside of the State of Memphis still didn't like him.


"I know this," Calipari said here Friday, on the eve of playing Wisconsin in his fourth Final Four in the past five seasons. "I'm the same guy I've always been. Well, not really. A lot of things change as you get older. My heart's the same. My friends are the same. My approach to things are the same. Hopefully I've matured and grown up a little bit."

He laughed a little.

"That's questionable also, I hear."

He's changed but hasn't changed. He's been around so long, won so much, that he's become the fabric of the sport. Multiple NCAA run-ins have caused two Final Fours to be vacated, yet he manages to keep getting stronger anyway.

Love him or loathe him, he is not going away. Getting the job at historic, blue blood University of Kentucky helped. Winning a national title in 2012 did also. He no longer has to take some of the at-risk recruits he did at Memphis. He can play a prettier brand of ball.

John Calipari (L) talks with his former player Anthony Davis during a Team USA practice session. (Getty)
John Calipari (L) talks with his former player Anthony Davis during a Team USA practice session. (Getty)

And when likable personalities such as Anthony Davis and Derrick Rose swear by you, it matters. He is devoted to his players, he gets them to the league and he treats them well. When it comes to those guys, he does not care who he angers.

"The biggest day in the history of Kentucky's program," he said of the 2010 NBA draft, when five Wildcats were picked in the first round. Cal had been on the job exactly one season and to fans that cherished the program's seven national titles, this was not the biggest day in the history of Kentucky program.

Deal with it, Cal said. I'm right, you're wrong. We aren't driving Yugos here. And, it's worth noting, the celebratory images of John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins hugging David Stern helped deliver batches and batches of great recruits to Lexington. So maybe Cal was right.

A couple years later the Wildcats were No. 1 in the country and in the Final Four.

They won the national championship.

"I want to go 40-0," Calipari told reporters after, not basking in climbing the mountain but instead searching for a higher peak.

A few years later Kentucky is again No. 1 in the country and in the Final Four.

And 38-0.

He somehow figured out how to use the nebulous concept of "someone" doubting something to not just draw so many great players -- "someone says you aren't selfless enough to all play together" -- but to get them to play a near perfect system of complementary ball.

He has all these guys jockeying for draft position by trying to show how they aren't jockeying for draft position.

It makes talking some Massachusetts bean counter into a bigger rent-a-car seem like child's play.

So here he is, two victories from 40-0, from achieving everything for his guys and his school and his La Familia that stood by him. Two victories from silencing all the people who spent nearly 30 years trying to dismiss him as an act, as a hustler; all the people who predicted he'd fail or fade; all the people that shaped his image that is only slowly coming around.

He came into this sport looking for a fight and he found plenty of them; 40-0 would be the how-do-you-like-me-now, knock out punch.

How do you argue with perfect?

The other guy would be dead.