John Calipari
“I apologize for being a few minutes late, I was a little under the weather this morning. Let me – I’ll just say a couple things and then you guys can ask questions about the book. Yesterday, the experience for me was the full gambit of being able to sit down with President (Bill) Clinton for nearly two hours, talk about everything. I asked him a lot of questions, he asked me some things. I asked him this question, what would you do if you were in my shoes coaching Division 1 college basketball right now? And you could almost predict this answer because he’s always been about people. I think part of his campaign was ‘People First.’ So then I leave that meeting – or that lunch – and I get to go see Michael Kidd (-Gilchrist), Chris Douglas (-Roberts) and Derrick Rose. And it was like homecoming for all of them for me and the people with me, they could feel what was there. And it’s amazing because people say, ‘well you need four years to have a relation.’ No you don’t. It’s do they trust that you had their back. You ask them to sacrifice, did you – were you there for them, most importantly as an individual. And again, I go back to that’s basically what the book is about, talking about how we get to that point. So it was a good day, even though it was an extremely long day.”
“The book … (laughter). You know, what we did was I did what I always do. I sit down with all of the kids. Some of them I met down in Dallas, all of them I met and said do you want me to explore the NCAA – er, the NBA stuff with you. And a couple of them said no, a majority of them said yes. I then proceeded to; I ended up talking to or touching about 19 GMs. One of the players that said no, I received information not even trying, they gave it to me, that he potentially is a first round draft pick so I called him back in and said, you need to get with your mother and we need to talk about this because I need you to know what you’re passing on by coming back. And what I told him and his mother, I gotta live with myself. I told him, I want you to come back, I think you need to come back but you need to know what’s out there. So I’ve had to walk through that. The others, again, I talked to the NBA again yesterday as a whole, there was information given to me that I need to go directly to the parents and the reason is because I don’t want there to be any filter. This is what is, this is it, happy, sad, angry, whatever. This is it. And then I told all the kids when we met back on campus when I had the information that I had and it was pretty accurate from what I learned yesterday, whatever decision you make, to leave, to come back, this basketball program 50 years from now will be fine and so will this institution. You don’t make it because of me; you make it because it’s right for you, whatever you do. Willie (Cauley-Stein) said – I said Willie – raise your hand if you were stunned that he said he’s coming back. So, I never even talked about him coming back. My talk to him was about – you know what I said to him – Willie, you know when I went to your high school the first time, you had a tennis racket in your hand. The second time I went to the high school you were playing whiffle ball and the third time I went to your high school you were playing kickball, I never saw you with a basketball. I saw you play two football games where I had a seven-foot corner back and wide receiver and I’m on the sideline just – and I said, you right now are in the middle of this draft, maybe as low as the lottery. But, can you imagine? And that was our talk. And when he came back he basically said, ‘you know, coach, I’m in no hurry to leave. I love going to school, I’m going to be really close to my degree, I still have to grow as a player and we left something on the table there that I’d like to try again. That’s a good answer for me if you want to come back. If you say, I think it would be easier to come back I’d say, you need to go. It’s not easier to come back. There’s a reason why you do this and I want to make sure they’re thinking it through.”
“Yes. He still has a month or two to go, couple months but he’ll be fine.”
“He did have surgery. The best doctor in the world did it, kind of like we did with Nerlens (Noel). No, different. They’ve got knee guys, they’ve got ankle guys, they’ve got shoulder people, they have elbow people, he was with the best that there is in the world to have the thing done and it was a procedure that is done a lot so he’ll be fine.”
“First of all, I want to tell you, most of the interviews I walked in, I knew people, I was very comfortable, you could tell. With Mr. O’Reilly, I was scared to death, yes. When I sat down with him, you know, because I’ve watched and I love when he gets after people, I just don’t want him to get after me so, you know, he came at me with some questions. You have to understand at the time I didn’t care, I was just trying to protect myself, my – just, you know – and I didn’t know what the dialogue would go because I didn’t know him that way, I’ve never interviewed with him. He asked a couple questions that, you know, I could see someone that reads outlying stories would believe that’s what college athletics are about but let me give him his due this way, before we sat down to talk, I said, so were you rooting for Connecticut? He said, ‘I’m not a big college basketball fan so no.’ Kind of leads you to understand that he’s not into all the nuances of college basketball. That’s my defense of the question but I hope when he left, he said, ‘you know maybe I gotta step back and look at this a little different.’ And the second thing he said, ‘I want to come to a game.’ Yeah, so he wants to come down to Lexington to a game. So at some point we’ll have Bill O’Reilly in the first row having to have police around him because he is a rock star.”
“No, and again – you know – people have an image of this program or me that I know is off base, that’s not accurate. But they have it, how was that generated? By stories, by agendas, people have an agenda, they write a story, they, ‘I’m going to make this program or this guy look this way and everything I write I’m not changing. Even if I look ridiculous and my own credibility is at stake, I’m still going to do it.’ Well you’re going to lose your job. ‘I don’t care.’ It’s what we all deal with.”
“We’ll probably do something this summer but I haven’t made a total decision of what it will be. It will probably be something to do with the World Games. You know, trying to play teams from the World Games, which means we’d probably get beat up each game because you’ve got NBA players on every one of those teams but it would be a great experience. Listen folks, I haven’t slowed down right now. And it’s really good, why is it good that I haven’t slowed down? (Because if you did, you’d keel over) Yeah – no that and the fact that I’d think about that last game where we had a chance to win the national title and it’s a one-point game for five possessions, we miss a lay-up, we miss free throws, we miss a 3 and all of a sudden they make a 3 because eventually they were going to make a shot and it change – and then I want to jump off a bridge. So just keep running and I’m not looking back. Until May 2nd, I’m having my hip replaced here in town, one of the best hip doctors is right here in Lexington and so I’ll do it here, take a month to recuperate and then try to get back.”
“I have no idea.”
“They have ‘til the (27)th. No, I don’t – well we may – but this is about them, not me and the program. They have ‘til the 27th to make a decision. I don’t even know what the NCAA date is because we don’t worry about it. It has nothing to do with us. The only date they have to be concerned about is the 27th, when they have to put their name in or they don’t put their name in.”
“Well, we’re recruiting but it’s – we’re not really recruiting anybody for our team right now but there are some names out there if this thing in the next week or two – and I would imagine there are players out there waiting to see, if these guys leave I’m going because I’ll be able to step in. And we still have some guys that have decisions to make.”
“What – and Kenny Payne says this all the time – you guys don’t understand, people want winning players. So winning matters. It does. If our team had gotten in the NCAA Tournament last year and we had advanced, it would have been different for some of those guys, that’s just how it is. Winning matters and that’s why you keep convincing them, you’ve got to do this together, you’ve got to give up some of your game. Let me tell you, last night I go to watch that Bobcat game and Michael started and played nine minutes and then they played Chris Douglas and some other guys and then in the second half he started and played his nine minutes or whatever and I’m telling you the biggest cheerleader on the Bobcats was Michael Kidd. And I can’t tell you how proud that makes me. He is the greatest teammate and there is a value, there is a skill to that. We all know how hard he works, we know what a defender he is, we know all that. There is a skill to that. And so to see that means he learned it, he understands it and I believe he learned it here. You know, again, in the book – by the way – I tell the story about the Vanderbilt game in the (SEC Tournament) championships where he comes into me 30 minutes before the game and he says, ‘You need to start Darius (Miller).’ I go, what are you talking about? He said, ‘coach, the kid hasn’t scored in the first two games, you’re killing him and we need him to win a national title.’ So I do start him and I tell Darius why he is starting, Michael wants you to start in his place. Darius takes 17 shots, which you all know means we were not going to win. Michael comes off the bench which he hadn’t done all year and gets in foul trouble because he didn’t know how to come off the bench. We lose the game, but we win the national title because of a player who said, ‘let somebody – I’ll step back so they can step forward.’ That’s the kind of stuff that’s in the book because people don’t understand we’re teaching servant leadership here. We’re teaching guys to do less, which is more. To be wrong so that someone else can be right. To take responsibility, which takes it off someone else. Well, how do you do it with guys that are all coming in here as the star and the only guy, the center of attention and you’re asking them to do less. Well you know what it is? They have to know, ‘I’ll do this but coach you’ve gotta have my back because my family’s life is at stake. Do you have my back? Are you going to be there for me because you want me to be there for everybody else but I’m trying to survive. I haven’t made it yet coach, I’m trying survive.’ That’s what we talk about, the one-and-done, the NCAA stuff, it was just a coincidence that that food thing changed yesterday. Just a coincidence. But it did change so I’m happy. So now we’re down to 12 more things they have to do instead of 13 and I have another 15 but that will be for another book after they get through these 12.”
“Yeah, oh yeah. They get their – maybe their grant money and they send half of it home to help their family. Oh yes, sometimes more than half. They feel responsibility to their family. Absolutely happens. See, in all this, the food was one part of it, it just showed you how ridiculous some of these things are and they’re not ridiculous because they’re dumb people in the NCAA, they have three degrees – well that doesn’t make them intelligent, let me stop right there. But they are people that have common sense so why would they have these kinds of archaic rules? Because there are people within the NCAA that can’t afford to feed their kids right and those of us that can, can’t feed our kids right because they can’t feed their kids right. They can’t do that, so you can’t do that. That has to end, that is what is ending. It’s what I’ve talked about for the last five years that has to end. The second thing is you cannot call a player professional if he is – we’re flying his family in an expense to a game, to the NCAA Tournament. We fly them home a couple times a year to come to school, to go home to go to Christmas that makes them professional? Stop it. It doesn’t. These people can’t afford to do it so you cannot do it. That’s what’s got to end. We can’t afford to have a cost of living or cost of attendance stipend so you can’t have it. It’s gotta stop. You gotta stop. That’s why this thing is starting to separate, which I talked about five years ago. And then everybody says, ‘he only does this because he’s got an axe to grind with the NCAA.’ Really? Really? I owe a lot to the NCAA. I was able to play basketball, to get a scholarship to go to college, to work in this profession and the NCAA is overseeing it all. No. But – and I don’t agree with all the critics who trying to take people up – but I do have a feel for where this needs to go.”
“Did you read that last chapter of the book, by the way? (No) OK, did anybody read the last chapter of the book? You didn’t read it? OK, you guys read slow, I know that. Maybe have someone read it for you. They also have, you can put it in the cassette form. Like they have it where you can put it in your car and listen to it. But anyway, the last chapter I talk about this year’s team before the season started and it was very dangerous because I knew it was dangerous, we didn’t know where the season would go, I had no idea. But when you read what we were talking about and where we were trying to go, there is a process and there are steps but the end result if it looks like this, we will still be playing in April, basically what I said. Which was dangerous and ended up playing out pretty good because it was about accurate. But there’s a process to what we’re doing. There’s a process now, after the season it’s very simple what we do, we get the information, we let every player know that I would really love to coach him more but you have a decision to make, here’s your information. Whatever decision you make, I will fight for you, coming back or leaving. Don’t make it because of our university, you won’t believe this but 50 years from now the University of Kentucky will still be here. This basketball program that Adolph Rupp built will still be what it is. The ground he built it on, the cement he built it on, what he did to have it sustain this long, think about it. His legacy lives on and it will live for another 50 years so make it for you and your family. We don’t know what each of these families is going through. We’re not living their lives. It’s easy to say, ‘well he should go four years.’ What if your son were Bill Gates? You’d make him stay in school four years? Or Jordan Speith, you’d make him stay in school? ‘Son, you don’t need to keep playing, you don’t need that professional golf crap. You need that degree.’ Really? He can go back and get a degree. Why do you have to do it in four years, you can’t do it in 12 years? Tell me, tell me what – ‘and they gotta do it on the campus.’ Yeah, now they’re saying you don’t need college campus, you can do it on the internet. Why waste all that money? I mean, this stuff is changing right before our eyes? Are we staying up with it? The social media, ‘you shouldn’t let those kids tweet, Facebook…’ Why? Why don’t we teach them? It’s not going away.”
On what it would be like to have a couple of juniors and a couple of sophomores if players return …
“Well, obviously it makes my job different than my job has been the last four years. And that means--every one of these kids needs me in a different way. It’ll be even more of a challenge in that regard because I’ve got juniors, sophomores and freshmen. And they all need you different. They need you in a different way. You also have a really talented team of—look, our young players coming in wanted kids to come back. They were calling kids and telling them to come back. So it’s not any of that. Someone would say, ‘Well, would someone leave because of who you have coming in?’ Oh, it’ll be easier against those guys in the NBA than a high school guy? What are you nuts? It has nothing to do with that. It becomes what is best? What is best for that family? You may look at it and say that’s ridiculous, but you don’t live their life. You haven’t done what they’ve done.
“So what you have to do is accept their decision, understand it’s been well thought out, they’ve gotten the information, they know the downside because I gave it to them. They see the upside. I have to remind them of the downside of what could happen. And when they make that choice, you gotta live with it. It’s them; it’s their families.”
On if he got a call from Rex Chapman … “I haven’t talked to Rex but I’m fine. Look, there a couple of other rumors that I’m glad he didn’t talk about on radio. It’s fine. I mean, we didn’t hear it, I didn’t hear it. The only time I learned about it is when the game ended and then Anthony Davis and Darius (Miller) and John Wall and the guys were in there. I can’t remember if one of them said to me, ‘You’re going to Lakers.’ It might have been Anthony. I said, ‘Come on, no, I’m not going to the Lakers.’ And then I looked at him and I said, ‘Unless you’ll come with me.’ As I joked, please. (Pause.) Maybe. (Laughing.)”
On repeating himself and if he believes he’s changing minds and if he even cares about that … “No, I think—the haters are not changing. They don’t care what I say. They turn the TV off and I’m fine with that. The lovers accept whatever I say. It’s all those independents out there that are looking at this in a different light and saying, ‘Well.’ And then the question is: Am I making sense? Is this common-sense stuff?
“I even think the NBA and the NCAA should get together and plan on the players’ association saying, ‘We’re not changing.’ And then I think the NCAA and the NBA should get together and say, ‘How do we encourage kids to stay in school longer, which is good for you and good for us and good for kids.’ It’s not the baseball rule. Would you really want to be a part of the decision that took a whole generation of ninth and 10th graders that said, ‘Forget about education, you’re going directly to the NBA,’ when, in fact, of those 50,000, one or two may do it – maybe, maybe do it. Would you really want to be that person? Or do you want to be that person that encouraged a whole generation of young people, ‘If you want to play pro basketball, you’re going to have to go to college for two years.’ Then by the time they figure out they’re not good enough, they’ll have a college degree and can get on with life. Would you rather be that guy?
“The guys that say let them go out of high school don’t want to coach against them. It’s simple as that. They don’t want to coach against them. For anybody to say Brandon Knight or any of my kids have no business being on a college campus, you’re old, you’re grumpy, go away. You don’t understand what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with young people and families that have goals and aspirations; that have done right by raising their kids the right way, give them an academic base. Every one of these parents wants their kids to go to college, just like my parents. The goal of my parents is to have all three of their children college educated so they know they did their job to give us the start we needed. My parents, everybody in our family were laborers. They wanted us to be professional people. So I know where these families are coming from.
“Now there are ways that we can encourage, but the NBA’s going to have to work closely and move the NCAA where they need to be so players and families say, ‘It’s not going to hurt you staying another year in school; you need to stay.’ And the players say, ‘I’m fine.’ You can stay in school. And then the families know after two years and three summers, they’re a year away from a college degree. An educated man, even if they didn’t get their degree, they’re educated to the point (where) they’re not going to get fooled, they’re not going to get robbed. They don’t have to give power of attorney to somebody because they can’t read a contract and don’t know what it means and then they give power of attorney and they have no money at the end of their career and they don’t understand why. Well, can I explain it why? Or you’re going to get into all these deals and ‘I’m telling you, you’re going to triple your money.’ An educated man says, ‘There’s nothing for free. If it doesn’t sound real, it’s not real.’ But that’s why you mature and you educate.”
On what he was looking for in filling vacancies on his staff … “I haven’t—everybody’s already named assistant coaches, they tell me, and I haven’t gone through the process. I’ve called some people up. I still—I have work to do but I haven’t had time. I mean, I’ve not done—like, there’s no one I’ve sat down and said, ‘Hey, I want you to do this.’ But I will.”
On how to get past kids thinking they have failed if they return to school … “Well, you have to convince each kid that everybody’s different and we got your back, that you have to trust the process of how we do this. Because the bottom line of the process is developing people and players. That’s what we do. And there’s no skipping steps. Some are mature physically. Some are mature emotionally. Some are both. The ones that are both can go. The ones that are one better be physically and then emotionally you better grow. If you’re emotionally ready and you’re not physically ready and you go, you’re out of your mind. If you’re both, you’re the No. 1 pick in the draft, which we’ve had. So why is one year a failure? ‘Because so-and-so made it.’ You’re not him; you’re you. And he’s not you; he’s him. You have to look at each of these situations, and I’m even doing it in recruiting now where I’m going into homes and one of the things I started saying was, ‘You’re not a failure if you come back two, three or four years. You’re not a failure. You cannot plan on coming into this university for one year and thinking you’re going to get out. If it happens, hallelujah, I’m happy for you. But if it doesn’t happen, you understand, ‘I’m maturing. I understand the grind. I’m physically getting better.’ But it can’t be me just doing it. It’s gotta be everybody out there. Staying in school more than one year is not a failure.”
On how often he mentions Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb, players who came back and won a title … “Well, they both did the right thing and, again, what’s wrong with Patrick Patterson? He’s going to get a big contract, folks. What’s wrong with him? You know what he said? ‘The best thing I did was go back to school and learn how to play out on the floor. It’s changed my life now.’ Well, what’s wrong with that? Now he gets his contract, he gets success. I mean, it’s just—we’re developing people. You know, these guys are up there, freshmen, and I’m stunned because I don’t do it an outward way, but they say, ‘He’s teaching us life skills, too. He’s teaching us about life.’ And I don’t sit there and have a meeting about life. I do it through the context of basketball and tell them how—I’ll give you an example. When you’re worried about yourself, life is really difficult and it’s really lonely. If all you’re focused on is you and how you’re going to do this and what you’re going to do. If you focus your life on everyone around you and less on yourself or not on yourself at all, well, life just became easier. That’s no different as a basketball player. And that’s why I loved it when John (Wall) and DeMarcus (Cousins) did what they did with charity, a million dollars each. When I see these kids tell me, ‘Coach, I’m going to Children’s Hospital,’ or they’re doing stuff on their own or when Jon Hood comes up to me and says, ‘That’s the best thing I’ve learned while I’ve been here.’ And now he wants to get on teaching after he’s done playing or coaching or whatever job. He wants to get involved at any point with helping children with special needs. I mean, that’s what this is about.”
On the argument that players develop better in the D-League … “Ask the guys that all played in the D-League. Ask Terrence Jones. Ask those guys. Don’t ask somebody that’s speaking. ‘I’m gonna tell you that it’s better.’ Really? Have you done it and played it? Let’s all ask the guys, ‘Would you have been better off playing or when they sent you down to the D-League what was better?’ Ask those guys. All I can tell you is its not wasted time if you take advantage of all the stuff that we’re trying to do. But I’m going to come back to we have to make decisions for these kids while they’re here. We can’t make them for us. I made a statement: We’ve gotten into the business of running the railroad instead of moving people. And the minute you do that, the railroad goes out of business. If you’re in the business of moving people, it prospers. It prospers. It feeds on itself. ‘We’re in the business of running the railroad, getting up at 8, leaving at 5.’ Really? ‘Well, we can’t do this.’ Why aren’t you doing it? ‘Because we don’t.’ Really? I presented this to the NCAA, my wife and I: We wanted to start a fund. We’ll fund it; we’ll put the money in. That every player that’s ever played for me, whether they be at Mass, Memphis or Kentucky, can request a grant for their children’s education. And that fund would peel off that money for that reason. And when I stop coaching 25 years later, the money that’s left in that fund would be split between Memphis, Massachusetts and Kentucky. What was the response? ‘It’s an extra benefit.’ My wife and I sat there and said, ‘We’ve been thinking about this for five years. This is what we want to do. So why can’t we put five or 10 million in an account that spills out money that all those players that have played for me?’ ‘Because you’ll use it in recruiting and you’ll have an advantage.’ Well I won’t if 50 other coaches do the same thing. Now if 50 of us do it. We can afford—I’m not the only guy that’s done well and been blessed. Well 50 of us do it. ‘That’s bad.’ That’s the kind of common-sense stuff. Like, they want to act like I don’t want—‘Well how much does he make?’ Well how much have I leveraged this position to do for other people? You all know it. No one else knows it. Now you want to go a step farther and that’s what we fight.”
“So what you have to do is accept their decision, understand it’s been well thought out, they’ve gotten the information, they know the downside because I gave it to them. They see the upside. I have to remind them of the downside of what could happen. And when they make that choice, you gotta live with it. It’s them; it’s their families.”
On if he got a call from Rex Chapman … “I haven’t talked to Rex but I’m fine. Look, there a couple of other rumors that I’m glad he didn’t talk about on radio. It’s fine. I mean, we didn’t hear it, I didn’t hear it. The only time I learned about it is when the game ended and then Anthony Davis and Darius (Miller) and John Wall and the guys were in there. I can’t remember if one of them said to me, ‘You’re going to Lakers.’ It might have been Anthony. I said, ‘Come on, no, I’m not going to the Lakers.’ And then I looked at him and I said, ‘Unless you’ll come with me.’ As I joked, please. (Pause.) Maybe. (Laughing.)”
On repeating himself and if he believes he’s changing minds and if he even cares about that … “No, I think—the haters are not changing. They don’t care what I say. They turn the TV off and I’m fine with that. The lovers accept whatever I say. It’s all those independents out there that are looking at this in a different light and saying, ‘Well.’ And then the question is: Am I making sense? Is this common-sense stuff?
“I even think the NBA and the NCAA should get together and plan on the players’ association saying, ‘We’re not changing.’ And then I think the NCAA and the NBA should get together and say, ‘How do we encourage kids to stay in school longer, which is good for you and good for us and good for kids.’ It’s not the baseball rule. Would you really want to be a part of the decision that took a whole generation of ninth and 10th graders that said, ‘Forget about education, you’re going directly to the NBA,’ when, in fact, of those 50,000, one or two may do it – maybe, maybe do it. Would you really want to be that person? Or do you want to be that person that encouraged a whole generation of young people, ‘If you want to play pro basketball, you’re going to have to go to college for two years.’ Then by the time they figure out they’re not good enough, they’ll have a college degree and can get on with life. Would you rather be that guy?
“The guys that say let them go out of high school don’t want to coach against them. It’s simple as that. They don’t want to coach against them. For anybody to say Brandon Knight or any of my kids have no business being on a college campus, you’re old, you’re grumpy, go away. You don’t understand what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with young people and families that have goals and aspirations; that have done right by raising their kids the right way, give them an academic base. Every one of these parents wants their kids to go to college, just like my parents. The goal of my parents is to have all three of their children college educated so they know they did their job to give us the start we needed. My parents, everybody in our family were laborers. They wanted us to be professional people. So I know where these families are coming from.
“Now there are ways that we can encourage, but the NBA’s going to have to work closely and move the NCAA where they need to be so players and families say, ‘It’s not going to hurt you staying another year in school; you need to stay.’ And the players say, ‘I’m fine.’ You can stay in school. And then the families know after two years and three summers, they’re a year away from a college degree. An educated man, even if they didn’t get their degree, they’re educated to the point (where) they’re not going to get fooled, they’re not going to get robbed. They don’t have to give power of attorney to somebody because they can’t read a contract and don’t know what it means and then they give power of attorney and they have no money at the end of their career and they don’t understand why. Well, can I explain it why? Or you’re going to get into all these deals and ‘I’m telling you, you’re going to triple your money.’ An educated man says, ‘There’s nothing for free. If it doesn’t sound real, it’s not real.’ But that’s why you mature and you educate.”
On what he was looking for in filling vacancies on his staff … “I haven’t—everybody’s already named assistant coaches, they tell me, and I haven’t gone through the process. I’ve called some people up. I still—I have work to do but I haven’t had time. I mean, I’ve not done—like, there’s no one I’ve sat down and said, ‘Hey, I want you to do this.’ But I will.”
On how to get past kids thinking they have failed if they return to school … “Well, you have to convince each kid that everybody’s different and we got your back, that you have to trust the process of how we do this. Because the bottom line of the process is developing people and players. That’s what we do. And there’s no skipping steps. Some are mature physically. Some are mature emotionally. Some are both. The ones that are both can go. The ones that are one better be physically and then emotionally you better grow. If you’re emotionally ready and you’re not physically ready and you go, you’re out of your mind. If you’re both, you’re the No. 1 pick in the draft, which we’ve had. So why is one year a failure? ‘Because so-and-so made it.’ You’re not him; you’re you. And he’s not you; he’s him. You have to look at each of these situations, and I’m even doing it in recruiting now where I’m going into homes and one of the things I started saying was, ‘You’re not a failure if you come back two, three or four years. You’re not a failure. You cannot plan on coming into this university for one year and thinking you’re going to get out. If it happens, hallelujah, I’m happy for you. But if it doesn’t happen, you understand, ‘I’m maturing. I understand the grind. I’m physically getting better.’ But it can’t be me just doing it. It’s gotta be everybody out there. Staying in school more than one year is not a failure.”
On how often he mentions Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb, players who came back and won a title … “Well, they both did the right thing and, again, what’s wrong with Patrick Patterson? He’s going to get a big contract, folks. What’s wrong with him? You know what he said? ‘The best thing I did was go back to school and learn how to play out on the floor. It’s changed my life now.’ Well, what’s wrong with that? Now he gets his contract, he gets success. I mean, it’s just—we’re developing people. You know, these guys are up there, freshmen, and I’m stunned because I don’t do it an outward way, but they say, ‘He’s teaching us life skills, too. He’s teaching us about life.’ And I don’t sit there and have a meeting about life. I do it through the context of basketball and tell them how—I’ll give you an example. When you’re worried about yourself, life is really difficult and it’s really lonely. If all you’re focused on is you and how you’re going to do this and what you’re going to do. If you focus your life on everyone around you and less on yourself or not on yourself at all, well, life just became easier. That’s no different as a basketball player. And that’s why I loved it when John (Wall) and DeMarcus (Cousins) did what they did with charity, a million dollars each. When I see these kids tell me, ‘Coach, I’m going to Children’s Hospital,’ or they’re doing stuff on their own or when Jon Hood comes up to me and says, ‘That’s the best thing I’ve learned while I’ve been here.’ And now he wants to get on teaching after he’s done playing or coaching or whatever job. He wants to get involved at any point with helping children with special needs. I mean, that’s what this is about.”
On the argument that players develop better in the D-League … “Ask the guys that all played in the D-League. Ask Terrence Jones. Ask those guys. Don’t ask somebody that’s speaking. ‘I’m gonna tell you that it’s better.’ Really? Have you done it and played it? Let’s all ask the guys, ‘Would you have been better off playing or when they sent you down to the D-League what was better?’ Ask those guys. All I can tell you is its not wasted time if you take advantage of all the stuff that we’re trying to do. But I’m going to come back to we have to make decisions for these kids while they’re here. We can’t make them for us. I made a statement: We’ve gotten into the business of running the railroad instead of moving people. And the minute you do that, the railroad goes out of business. If you’re in the business of moving people, it prospers. It prospers. It feeds on itself. ‘We’re in the business of running the railroad, getting up at 8, leaving at 5.’ Really? ‘Well, we can’t do this.’ Why aren’t you doing it? ‘Because we don’t.’ Really? I presented this to the NCAA, my wife and I: We wanted to start a fund. We’ll fund it; we’ll put the money in. That every player that’s ever played for me, whether they be at Mass, Memphis or Kentucky, can request a grant for their children’s education. And that fund would peel off that money for that reason. And when I stop coaching 25 years later, the money that’s left in that fund would be split between Memphis, Massachusetts and Kentucky. What was the response? ‘It’s an extra benefit.’ My wife and I sat there and said, ‘We’ve been thinking about this for five years. This is what we want to do. So why can’t we put five or 10 million in an account that spills out money that all those players that have played for me?’ ‘Because you’ll use it in recruiting and you’ll have an advantage.’ Well I won’t if 50 other coaches do the same thing. Now if 50 of us do it. We can afford—I’m not the only guy that’s done well and been blessed. Well 50 of us do it. ‘That’s bad.’ That’s the kind of common-sense stuff. Like, they want to act like I don’t want—‘Well how much does he make?’ Well how much have I leveraged this position to do for other people? You all know it. No one else knows it. Now you want to go a step farther and that’s what we fight.”
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