Chill out haters — WWW is not the straw that stirs Kentucky’s recruiting drink

by Paul Jordan

All throughout this blog, I have pretty much stayed away from the Worldwide Wes debate.  Yes, I know he is friends with John Calipari.  And so is LeBron James, and so is over a million people on twitter.  point is, you can be friends and associates with John Calipari without doing shady, nefarious things in the world of recruiting.  Not that the haters would believe that.

Whenever John Calipari visits a recruit, they murmur “Worldwide Wes”.  When a recruit commits, they murmur Worldwide Wes.  When Louisville goes off and names their new stadium something incredibly lame for $1.3M a year, Worldwide Wes was probably involved.  Everything eeven remotely good that happens to Kentucky is related to Worldwide Wes … according to our critics.  Hell, I am sure that some Louisville fans are paranoid and delusional enough to believe that WWW was the one who said “Hey Rick, I’d love you to meet my friend Karen”.

Gary Parrish of CBS Sports recently took up the WWW story and made a few very good points and in the process probably earned him a good bit of hate mail from the Kentucky haters:

"And just so we’re clear, understand that I’m not here to tell you Wesley doesn’t have influence on lots of things because, well, he does. You don’t gain the reputation of being one of the most powerful men at all levels of basketball without being powerful. He’s everything you think and more. But his celebrity has reached a point over the past few years where he’s either blamed or credited for everything that happens, and that’s just silly.Let’s take Brandon Knight, for instance.Knight is the top point guard in the Class of 2010.He committed to Kentucky last week.Best I can tell from talking to people on both sides of Knight’s recruitment, Wesley was uninvolved. He’s never met Knight’s parents and never attended one of Knight’s games at Pine Crest High in Florida even though he had every reason in the world to be there considering Billy Thompson Jr was among Knight’s teammates. Thompson Jr, case you didn’t know, is the son of former Louisville star Billy Thompson, a Camden, N.J. native just like Wesley. They’ve known each other forever to the point where they’re considered “family.”But Wesley never went to watch Knight and Thompson play."

So you see, WWW is not the straw that stirs Calipari’s recruiting drink.  Remember when Josh Selby de-committed from Tennessee and all the uproar and rage and accusations that were thrown at Calipari when it was revealed that Selby was considering Kentucky?  Well WWW did not deliver Josh Selby to John Calipari.  Josh Selby is a Jayhawk this morning,  I will sit back and wait for you to hurl all those accusations and rage onto Bill Self now for accepting that “WWW influenced Josh Selby”.

Nothing.  Whaaaaaaa?  That is hypocrisy, my friend.

Parrish finished with another statement that haters are not going to like, but is none the less very true and is something that all these UK/WWW obsessed fools need to pay note to:

"For every time you’ve seen Wesley at a UK game, there’s another time where he had dinner with Ben Howland, spent an afternoon with Mike Krzyzewski, sat with Bill Self’s wife at a KU game.Remember, he’s Worldwide Wes. Not Commonwealth of Kentucky Wes. Anyway, I guess my message is this: Chill.Each thing that happens at Kentucky or with Calipari is not the result of Wesley. Trying to credit or blame him for every UK player is like trying to credit or blame Osama Bin Laden for every terrorist attack. Things are more complex than that. So my advice is to chill and take a step back because though Wesley is more than most understand he’s not exactly what most seem to think. I mean, if Calipari somehow ends up coaching LeBron James next season, absolutely, credit or blame Worldwide Wes. I know I will. But those who are now tying to credit or blame him for every little thing are going overboard because sometimes, if you can believe this, he’s just not all that involved."

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