Apr 4, 2015; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Kentucky Wildcats head coach John Calipari reacts during the second half of the 2015 NCAA Men
John Calipari, Kentucky
Record: 593–174 (College); 72–112 (NBA)
*One NCAA Championship
Calipari has already tried his luck at the pro level, never finding much success. Watching Kentucky’s teams the past few seasons certainly don’t inspire much hope for a bright NBA future. While as a whole, Kentucky’s been successful under his tenure, it has been mostly driven by monster talent advantages. He’s had unparallelled dominance as a recruiter.
In six seasons as Kentucky’s head coach, he’s brought in the No. 1 recruiting class four times and the No. 2 recruiting class twice. In that same span, he’s had 24 players drafted in the NBA, with exactly half of them going in the lottery. He’s coached the No. 1 pick three separate times at Kentucky alone. There’s no doubt he’s been playing with a stacked deck.
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Calipari hasn’t completely mishandled things. Just looking at the bottom line, he’s brought the Wildcats a lot of success: One Championship, one runner-up finish, two Final Fours, and one Elite Eight. But anybody watching the games can see the team’s success isn’t a result of the brilliant tactician on the sidelines.
Kentucky never seems to have much of a system in place. They just go out there and abuse their size and athletic advantages. In 2015, their average team height was bigger than 29 of 30 NBA teams. Their offensive success comes from total offensive rebounding dominance and their dominant defense in 2015 was entirely driven by their personnel. All things considered, it’s pretty jarring that Virginia was able to beat out Kentucky for the No. 1 kenpom defense considering Kentucky didn’t start a player under 6’6” and had two future NBA defensive anchors.
If there’s an argument for Calipari as an NBA head coach, it’s that his NCAA recruiting prowess could follow him to the NBA. If Calipari could convince the likes of Kevin Durant to follow him wherever he were to end up, it’d seem likely that he could have some strong NBA seasons. Also working for him is his seeming ability to manage personalities. He’s spent a good amount of time in recent years working with young players that already had the superstar mindset.
Ultimately, I can’t believe his recruiting dominance could realistically happen at the professional level and I’d stay away from hiring him as my team’s coach as his in-game acuity is far from desirable.
Next: Bill Self