Players First by John Calipari

Author:John Calipari
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

HUMBLED

February 16, 2013. No, it’s not a day that will live in infamy, but I can tell you that it was a pretty low moment in Big Blue Nation. My team, my fourth at Kentucky—in the season after our national championship—got absolutely obliterated by Tennessee in Knoxville. We lost by thirty points—88–58. At one point we were actually down thirty-nine points. We could easily have lost by fifty.

We deserved to lose by fifty. I don’t even have the words to tell you how bad we were.

We played without our best player, Nerlens Noel, because in the previous game he’d slammed into a basket support at Florida and torn the ACL in his left knee. It had happened on a pure hustle play typical of Nerlens. He had been chasing down a breakaway, trying to block a shot. The injury ended his season. But believe me, it would have made little difference if he had played. Maybe we’d have lost by twenty.

A couple of days later, I was talking to the media back in Lexington, and they were asking me about this debacle and the dismal state of our team. Truly, we looked at this point like we were headed straight over a cliff.

I was at a podium with the usual huge press contingent pointing cameras and microphones at me. I talked about all our various deficiencies. Kids who weren’t listening. No bench. No fight. No basketball IQ. And now, no Nerlens. And then I said, “All that aside, we can make whatever we want of this season. Whatever we want to make of it, we can. We can be the story of the year. Of recovery. We can do that if they choose to do that. We don’t have to win every game. We just have to see kids getting better and figure out how this team needs to play. And then see how we march on.”

Yep, I said we could be the story of the year. And just to drive home the point, I amplified that same argument in an item I wrote for my Web site that day: “I went to Mass this morning and had a chance to reflect on where we have come from this season, what we have been through and where we are right now. I believe in this team if our players will compete and battle, which they have the ability to do. . . . Make no mistake about it, we are still in a great position to do whatever we want to do. We can still write our own story.”

Here’s the funny thing. I absolutely meant that, what I told the press and what I wrote. I believed it. And as irrational as it may seem, when I look back on those words now, a part of me still believes them. You don’t know if you will win or lose until you do.

I don’t give up on kids. I don’t give up on teams. I don’t give up on seasons. That’s bred into me as a coach, a big part of who I am.

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