If it feels like John Calipari is always linked to an NBA return, that’s only because he is always linked to an NBA return.
Those rumors never die down, not even now, with his Kentucky Wildcats in the thick of a March Madness tournament they’re favored to win. Even amid all this, he’s still thinking about an NBA return. Apparently.
From Steve Popper of The Record (h/t Eye On Basketball):
It’s simple to follow the trail of where it went wrong, but one NBA front office official looked at the situation and believed there is a way back — and one that could happen.
The one name that could return the Nets to all of those things they thought they could be, that they seemed primed to be, is currently guiding the best college basketball team in the nation, a coach who crashed and burned with the Nets once already. The Nets can be saved by John Calipari.
“He desperately wants it,” the front office official said. “He won’t say it out loud. The NBA is the only place he’s ever failed and it drives him nuts. He’s not the same guy he was then. He came to the NBA and he wasn’t ready. He’s ready now.”
Popper goes on to acknowledge that straws are being grasped at, because this is a long shot. And make no mistake, this is a long shot.
Coach Cal was linked to the Cleveland Cavaliers job before re-upping with Kentucky, so it would be weird if he up and joined a dumpster fire like the Brooklyn Nets—the same Nets, then of New Jersey, who fired him 20 games into the 1998-99 season.
Beyond this, Coach Cal’s desire does make some sense. In his two-plus seasons manning the Nets, he won fewer than 40 percent of his games. There’s no doubt an experience like that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of an accomplished college head honcho. Coach Cal is supposed to be better than that. And if Kentucky wins the national championship this year, there will literally be nothing left for him to accomplish at that level. Anything from here on will be gravy. Hell, everything now is just gravy.
But his contract with Kentucky is worth more than $50 million. It would take a lot for him to consider walking away from that, especially if he’s being asked to assume control of a crap fest.
If he was going to leave Kentucky at all, you have to imagine it would be for a more high-profile and/or ready-to-win situation—like if the Lakers canned Byron Scott after one season, or the Wizards decided to hand Randy Wittman his walking papers.
At any rate, don’t think too deeply about this stuff. We’ve been here before—every March pretty much—entertaining similar developments. They’ve never once proved true.
This one is no different.
