Kentucky Wildcat Basketball – The Calipari Manifesto: A Player's First program

It’s been a rough couple of days for John Calipari after the announcement that Brandon Knight, Terrence Jones, and DeAndre Liggins will test the waters in the upcoming NBA Draft.  The issue at hand is that tow of these players, Knight and Jones, are freshmen and subject to the usual “Calipari and one and dones are bad for basketball”.

Half of that is true.  The one year rule in the NBA is ridiculous and I hate it.  and I am sure that Calipari hates it as well.  But when you have a kid like Brandon Knight, who will be selected in the top five of the draft, you let the kid do what is best for him.  And if Brandon Knight’s dream is to be a NBA star, so be it.

Let me ask you something.  What is college?  A place to get a degree?  Or a place to prepare and plan for your future?  I say it is the latter.

I am a UK alumni and I got my bachelor in Communications.  Now say that a network like ABC, NBC, or CBS or a handful of cable channels had found my rudimentary attempt at being a news anchor online and came to me and told me that they loved what I was doing and needed me to come work for them immediately and offered me say, $150,000 a year.  And gave me a four or five year contract guaranteed?  Would I have taken the offer?

HELL YES.

And I am sure that 90% of you reading this would have done the same thing.  So let’s ease on the hate for John Calipari.  If the man wants to double his work load each year knowing that he has to keep getting the best players every year, So be it.  He could  play it safe and go after “four year players” and have a nice leisurely summer.

Let’s save the analysis of Calipari’s Kentucky career until he retures and then let’s decide if it is a success or a failure at that time.  I’m off my soapbox.

Here is the open letter that Calipari wrote concerning the “Player’s First Program” :

"There’s been some talk about what it means to be a “players-first program” and coming off the road from recruiting seems like a perfect time to discuss this.Being a Players-first program means:1. During the recruiting process, we don’t make outlandish promises about playing time, starting positions, minutes, shots, points or anything to these young men that we can’t keep. At Kentucky, you have to work for everything and compete every day at the highest level.2. The second part is that once the season begins, we are teaching players to be the teammate they want to play with. Our whole focus is on team play. I want individuals to play well but I’m getting them to understand nothing of significance will be accomplished by themselves.3. Lastly when the season is over, when our TEAM is done playing, my job is to help them make the best decisions, with the best information I can give them, for them and their families. I’m not trying to convince them to come back if that’s not in their best interest. Likewise, I’m never trying to shove anybody out the door.The Truth is that these top players in the country want to play for a certain kind of coach in a certain kind of program. They are not playing for just any coach. They want to play with someone who has proven results.The Lie is that because a player won’t go to a certain school, it’s impossible to win championships with that type of young, elite talent.None of this takes away from our goal of winning championships. If you do right by these kids you will win championships and we have. It’s a ludicrous statement that you can’t win with players who earn a chance to pursue their NBA dreams early.We’ve done pretty well in March. Winning a championship won’t change me one bit; but it would change me if it came after I told a young man to return to school for my own selfish reasons.I’ll leave you with this, if we do right by these young people they will do right by us."

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