{"id":95426,"date":"2025-06-13T06:32:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T06:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/95426\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T06:32:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T06:32:15","slug":"john-calipari-reveals-unusual-pitch-to-demarcus-cousins-ahead-of-2010-nba-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/95426\/","title":{"rendered":"John Calipari reveals unusual pitch to DeMarcus Cousins ahead of 2010 NBA Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

DeMarcus Cousins<\/a> was one of John Calipari<\/a>\u2018s first major recruiting wins when he got to Kentucky<\/a> in 2009, hauling in the Mobile, AL native over schools such as UAB<\/a>, Alabama<\/a>, Kansas State<\/a> and NC State<\/a>. He was one of a few star-studded pieces in Calipari\u2019s first recruiting class at Kentucky, including John Wall<\/a> and Eric Bledsoe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In his lone season at Kentucky, Cousins emerged as one of the most dominant players in college basketball. After averaging 15.1 points and 9.9 rebounds and earning First-Team All-SEC honors, he would be projected as one of the top picks in the 2010 NBA Draft.<\/p>\n

During a conversation on \u201cGolic & Golic\u201d on FanDuel Sports Network on Wednesday, Calipari revealed his pre-draft conversation with Cousins.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to do what\u2019s right for me and my family, why don\u2019t you stay two more years?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, first of all, I can remember DeMarcus Cousins saying, \u2018Should I go or stay?\u2019 And I said, \u2018If you want to do what\u2019s right for you and your family, you put your name in that draft,\u201d Calipari said. \u201cIf you want to do what\u2019s right for me and my family, why don\u2019t you stay two more years?\u2019 But I will tell you, now you got players making more \u2014 at least this season \u2014 more in college than they\u2019d make late in the first round or in the second round. So they should have come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if this goes as planned, and we\u2019re living by the rules, you\u2019re not going to have enough money to pay a bunch of guys a bunch of money, unless you\u2019re not paying the others any money,\u201d continued Calipari. \u201cSo, well, we\u2019re going to see where this goes. But, look, if you could make more \u2014 I told one guy, and he said, \u2018They\u2019re going to pay me this.\u2019 I said, \u2018Well, take their money and see if they\u2019ll give you two years. Stay two.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Cousins would enter the NBA Draft, where he was selected by the Sacramento Kings with the fifth overall pick. He would go on to play 11 seasons in the NBA, where he averaged 19.6 points and 10.2 rebounds across seven teams. He was named an NBA All-Star four times (2016, 2017, 2017 and 2018) and was named All-NBA Second Team two times (2015 and 2016).<\/p>\n

Calipari would go on to coach 15 seasons at Kentucky, where he won 410 games and a National Championship in 2012. He made the jump to Arkansas<\/a> following the 2023-24 season, where the \u2018Cats lost in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament to Oakland<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DeMarcus Cousins was one of John Calipari\u2018s first major recruiting wins when he got to Kentucky in 2009,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,19914,14154,6,12],"class_list":{"0":"post-95426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-draft","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-demarcus-cousins-09-leflore","10":"tag-john-calipari-78-moon-area","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nba-draft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114674661260663456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}