Platoon system is one of necessity for Calipari

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Before Big Blue Nation gets the wrong/red idea, John Calipari has gone out of his way to clarify that he is not a communist.

The University of Kentucky's basketball coach is embarked on a great experiment, committed to a two-platoon system built on common goals, shared sacrifice and sublimated egos. Though this is a relatively new concept in basketball, it is not nearly as revolutionary as was, say, Karl Marx.

"If one group deserves to play a little bit more, they will," Calipari said Thursday afternoon. "It's not communism. If two guys separate themselves and need to get more minutes because you all look and say, 'That kid is so good, he needs more minutes,' it's not communism, they'll get more minutes. But we're going to figure that out as we go.''

Though we're sure glad he cleared that up, did anyone think differently? Did anyone believe Calipari would distribute playing time to preserve equality at the risk of results? Or is Coach Cal already in midseason form in imagining issues that don't really exist?

Ranked No. 1 nationally in the USA Today coaches' poll released Thursday, Kentucky approaches the season as Noah did the flood – with two of everything. The Wildcats are so strong, so deep and, for once, so experienced that their most difficult games may well be intrasquad scrimmages. Yet to hear Calipari tell it Thursday, you'd think he were attempting to reinvent the wheel with a garage full of Ferraris.

You'd think winning with waves of top-drawer talent were something other than a layup.

"All my mentors that are the older coaches – Jack Leaman, Joe B. Hall, Gene Bartow, even Coach John Wooden, when he talked to me – (said) the best teams they coached they played six guys, maybe a seventh," Calipari said. "The best teams that I've coached, I've coached six guys, whether it was (at) UMass, Memphis or here.

"Now that being said, I'm doing it twice now. In other words, I'm coaching these guys together, and I'm coaching two different teams. I've asked to be paid twice. I'm not sure they'll do that, but if I've got to coach two teams, then I think it's fair, a fair question anyway."

If Calipari has a problem, it is one of his own canny creation. He has recruited so well, and supplied the NBA with so many players, that an unexpected backup in his pipeline has temporarily left him with nine McDonald's All-Americans – more than many of his peers will coach in a career. When Aaron and Andrew Harrison, Alex Poythress and Willie Cauley-Stein chose to stay in school last spring, Calipari's already loaded roster became a double-barreled embarrassment of riches.

The challenge is to prevent petty jealousies from inhibiting team performance, and that's not always easy when so many elite players must accept reduced roles. Yet with three starters returning from a team that played for the NCAA championship and a precocious freshman class, freshman forward Trey Lyles says, "we have 10-12 guys who can play at a high level all the time. We take five guys out, put five guys in and we don't lose anything."

A lot of athletes will say that sort of thing out of respect for their substitutes, but at Kentucky it's a lot more than lip service. How many schools have three draft-worthy 7-footers like Stein, Dakari Johnson and Karl-Anthony Towns? How many schools could have two holdover draft-worthy 7-footers and be able to attract a third?

"There's probably a lot of people who wouldn't fit here," freshman guard Tyler Ulis said. "If you're not ready to share the spotlight, you can't come here because everyone on the team is good, everyone on the team can play."

When the bulk of last year's team decided to come back, Calipari called his new recruits and their parents and promised that he would make it work; that he would succeed in showcasing everyone for the NBA scouts; that he would allow no one to be left behind.

A capable coach plays to his strengths and exploits his advantages. If playing two platoons costs Calipari some cohesiveness on offense, it enables him to apply more full-court pressure on defense. If the parts at his disposal are not all interchangeable, there's a lot to be said for fresh legs and different looks.

"I'm not doing this to be a genius. . ." Calipari said. "If I was worried about me, we'd play seven guys. Do you know how good those seven would be?. . .

"What I'm doing is what's right for these kids. Will it change? Will it morph into something else? Probably will. But right now all I know I'm trying to make sure that I'm taking care of every one of these kids. That they're eating first."

That's not communism, but pragmatism. When you have more talent than you really need, you need to find a way to make it work.

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, by email at tsullivan@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @TimSullivan714