Rick Pitino has finally moved on from being fired at Louisville — or, at least that’s what he’s saying publicly. During an appearance on Governor Andy Beshear’s podcast, Pitino admitted that he was ultimately responsible for what happened during his tenure as Louisville’s head coach, specifically, the program’s involvement in Adidas’ college basketball pay-for-play scheme.
“I deserved to be fired,” Pitino said. “Because my assistant coaches did the wrong thing. And looking back on it, I learned a valuable lesson: who to hire, who to trust, what to believe in.”
“It taught me that delegating is great, but you’ve got to delegate with people you trust that you know will do the right things,” Pitino said of the end of his tenure at Louisville. “It was actually — I was trying to get more high school [players], one-and-done players at Louisville. I never went in that area, right? And John Calipari was having great success at Kentucky, so I hired some people I should not have hired, and learned a valuable lesson with that.”
Speaking of John Calipari, one of Pitino’s tweets is going viral today because it includes a picture of Pitino with a group of friends at a restaurant in New York City, one of whom must be Calipari’s twin. Pitino is sitting right next to Cal’s doppleganger, making for quite the double-take.
Rick Pitino’s comments about Louisville were just one part of the conversation, which lasted about thirty minutes. Here are some other highlights.
He knows he can’t coach players now like he did in 1996
A lot has changed during Pitino’s coaching career; the biggest may be the players themselves, and how he must approach them. Mark Pope has told tales of how hard Pitino was on his Kentucky teams and the grueling conditioning they would endure. Pitino told Beshear he could never do that with players these days.
“So when I was at Kentucky, I was a different coach. I could never coach the team today at St John’s the way I coached the ’96 team. Couldn’t do it. The players today couldn’t handle it. The parents pamper them. They get a lot of love, but not as much discipline as when I grew up or when your dad grew up. It was different, different times.
“So, the key to coaching and being a leader is that you must adapt with the times. So today, I coach differently than I coached at Kentucky. You motivate differently. You have to understand the motive behind these basketball players.”
Pitino used Richie Farmer walking away from the team because Pitino was so hard on him as an example, a story Farmer has told on KSR. Pitino met with Farmer and threatened to quit too and go back to New York City if Farmer didn’t come back. That tactic worked in getting Farmer back on the team — even if Pitino was fibbing.
“He said to me, many years later, he said, ‘Would you have quit?’ I said, ‘Of course not, but I had to get you to stay.’”
He thinks college basketball is at “an all-time high”
The college sports landscape has shifted dramatically in the NIL/revenue-sharing era. Pitino said that presents a lot of challenges — and some reform is still needed — but when it comes to the game itself, it’s never been better.
“I think college basketball, as far as the game, what takes place between the lines, is at an all-time high. It’s the best product we put on the floor, great because guys from the G League want to come back, right? Because college basketball now is no longer amateurism. They’re professionals.”
That said, he said the NCAA (or whatever powers that be) needs to find a way to stop players from transferring every year just to make more money.
“The product is great. What they need to do is, how do you stop kids from changing every year for $300,000 more to go to a different school? The University of Kentucky is experiencing it, right? They’re coming into their own right now because they had nine new players, and they’re finally meshing now for them as well, and they’re coming around like we are, so it’s great for all of us once they mesh.”
Derek Anderson and the ’97 title game
It’s one of the big “What ifs” in Kentucky Basketball history. Would Kentucky have won the 1997 national championship if Derek Anderson’s knee hadn’t held him out of the title game vs. Arizona? Beshear, a lifelong UK fan, asked Pitino just that. Pitino recalled a moment in the training room that made him rethink playing Anderson despite Anderson looking great in practice in the week leading up to the Final Four.
“We’re in the trainer’s room, and I said, ‘DA, awesome practice. That was great.’ I said, ‘You’re ready.’ And his response to me was, ‘Whatever you think, Coach.’ And that really bothered me. I know he’s going to be a lottery pick. He’s coming off an ACL, record-breaking time coming back. His response wasn’t, ‘I’m ready to go.’ He said, ‘Whatever you think, Coach.’
“And at that point, I said, you know what, we’re gonna beat Arizona without him. And I wanted to protect his career, and I decided not to play him. I brought him in to shoot two free throws on the technical, but looking back on it, I still feel comfortable with that decision, because he was coming back in seven or eight months, and that was a short period of time. And I honestly believed we would beat Arizona without him — and we would have, if Nazr would have learned to shoot free throws, we would have gotten them.”
Poor Nazr. More good stuff from Pitino on his time at Kentucky, Louisville, and beyond below or wherever you get your podcasts.