Rick Pitino with UK coach Mark Pope and his family on a visit to Lexington. (UK Athletics Photo)
Before John Calipari returned to Rupp Arena this season as the coach at Arkansas, former Kentucky coach Rick Pitino put a video on social media asking UK fans not to boo the former UK coach.
Obviously, Pitino knew about getting booed in Rupp Arena because after coaching he later became the head coach at Kentucky and got booed when he was back in Rupp.
“It hurt (getting booed). I realize why today, but it was tough to go in there and be booed by 24,000 people. I felt that it was the right timing for John to try something different, and certainly when you look back at what he did at the University of Kentucky, not only winning a championship but assembling probably the greatest talent in the history of our game, even to the level of Coach Wooden,” said Pitino, who is now the coach at St. John’s and will face Calipari and Arkansas in the NCAA Tournament second round today.
“I just thought they should really appreciate that, and coming back and you just want people to feel good about what they accomplish and because I went through it — the one thing you do when you get to be 72, you hate when people get fired. John wasn’t fired but other people in the business right now, they’re only coaching two years, they get fired and they don’t… just thinking about Coach K or Jay Wright or some of the other coaches early on in their career that didn’t go real well for them.
“In today’s market, they probably would have been fired because everybody is in such a rush, and those guys are the two legendary names in our game. If you go back and look at their first few years, they probably wouldn’t have survived today in this climate. So it’s different today, certainly. I don’t know if it’s better or worse, but I wish that young coaches would — if you’re going to hire young coaches …”
That reminded Pitino of Billy Donovan, his former UK assistant coach and player under him at Providence, becoming the head coach at Florida and going on to win consecutive national titles.
“I will never forget this story. It’s an amazing story to me. Some of you will remember Lon Kruger and the meat hook, and the two great guards they had at Florida. And all of a sudden they were going to be decimated and go from the Final Four to having no players at all,” Pitino said Friday. “Billy Donovan was at Marshall. He had two decent seasons at Marshall but he didn’t go to the NCAA. I believe he went to the NIT the second year.
“Jeremy Foley was the (Florida) athletic director’s name. I said, Billy, you don’t always have to listen to me. You’re not working for me, but do not take that job. They are decimated. You will be fired. Just wait for a great job. You’ll hit it big someday, kid. He said, I got you, Coach. I’m not going to take it then.
“I got a call from Jeremy Foley and he said, why don’t you think Billy Donovan should take the job? I said, Jeremy, your program is decimated. Everybody is leaving. You’re going to be at the bottom of the SEC.’ He said, Let me ask you a question. If I asked you this question in three or four years, Billy Donovan would be one of the best college coaches in the game, what would you say? I said, undoubtedly, I’d believe it a hundred percent. He said, okay.
“So you think it’s going to take at least two years before he could turn it around? I said, yes. So he said, well, how about I give him a six-year contract instead of a four-year contract? Will you call him up and tell him to take the job? And I said, yeah, I could. He said, I’ll give him a six-year contract.
“So I called Billy the Kid up and I said, ‘Billy the Kid, take the job. That guy is a good man. He’ll stick by you.’ And the rest, obviously, was history. But he got a long time to prove himself, and today it doesn’t happen that way.
“If you’re going to invest in a young coach like Billy Donovan or whoever, you have to give them time to build this thing. I don’t know why I’m saying all that, by the way.”
