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CBS' Parrish: HOF won't change Cal

Kyle Tucker
@KyleTucker_CJ
Kentucky coach John Calipari, seen attending the NBA Draft on Thursday in Brooklyn, N.Y., has denied a report that the Sacramento Kings are courting him.

As John Calipari prepares to enter the Naismith Hall of Fame on Friday night, who better to provide some insight on what got him here and what the moment means to Kentucky's coach than a man who has seen him in his underwear?

CBS digital columnist and TV analyst Gary Parrish covered Calipari at Memphis from 2001 to 2006 for the Commercial Appeal and got to know the man in a way few journalists have. Some of Parrish's thoughts appeared in a story (linked below) for today's Courier-Journal on what this honor means to Calipari, but there's only so much ink and paper. Here now is an extended Q&A (mostly A, because he had a lot to say) with Parrish:

Outsider no more: Calipari in Hall of Fame

GARY PARRISH (CBS)

What was the John Calipari you knew at Memphis like compared to the John Calipari we see at Kentucky?

"I think it's probably true that there's no media member alive who's spent more time around John Calipari than I have, like, in terms of his practices, in terms of one-on-one time. Because it's not like what you guys have to deal with (a horde of media covering UK); in Memphis, I was his only beat writer for four years. I was the only media member talking to him every day for four years. I'm not trying to pretend that I'm particularly close with him now or closer with him than anybody, but there was a time where he and I dealt with each other every day. That's probably the best way to put it: we dealt with other every day. We had our battles, but he was pretty resilient. I don't know if he held grudges, but we got over things pretty quickly. And he was available.

"I know this must sound weird to you (one-on-one interviews with Calipari are extremely rare now that he's at UK), but if I wanted him before practice, after practice, on the phone, whenever, I had him whenever. It wasn't ever anything where I had to set up a conversation or 'one-on-one with John Calipari.' It was like just call his cell phone and we would talk about whatever I needed to talk about. That, I know, is something you guys have never been able to have, for practical purposes. The Kentucky job is bigger than the Memphis job.

* At the end of the interview, Parrish added this anecdote to illustrate how open Cal was then:

"Like, here's how it was for us: after practice, he'd take me in his office – he was always trying to be efficient with his time; he might've had a flight to catch to go recruit – and he had a shower in there. I'd talk to him while he took a shower. There was a curtain, but we talked while he was in there and then he'd get out and I'd turn away and then he'd be standing there talking to me in his tighty whities."

* So, yeah, Parrish knows Calipari well. The coach has conducted no interviews in the nude at UK.

"But to me, the thing that's most interesting about this night for him is that I can't tell you how many conversations he and I had about – he never put it explicitly, but it was always pretty clear how much it meant to him to get on what he considered the right side of the rope and how much it bothered him that he wasn't accepted, arms wide open, by The Establishment. He'd always been the UMass coach or the Memphis coach, but he'd never been the Carolina coach or the Kansas coach. And there was a time where it didn't look like he would get that opportunity. You have to remember: The Kentucky job opened a couple years before, and he would've killed for that job. He didn't even get a phone call.

"He was still the same guy then that he was two years later, but they didn't want to – and I don't want to speak for (UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart), but I would be surprised if he would deny this – at Kentucky, they didn't think they needed to hire 'somebody like John Calipari,' whatever that meant. Of course, two years later, after the Billy Gillispie debacle, they were desperate and they just needed a sure thing, no matter what, and Cal is a sure thing. But I know that hurt him on some level when he couldn't even get a phone call from Kentucky when it opened, when Jay Wright got a phone call and Rick Barnes got a phone call and obviously Billy Gillispie got a phone call and who knows who else. Billy Donovan, of course. And yet John Calipari couldn't get a phone call. I think he thought at that moment he was forever going to be an outsider, and that was always going to bother him. It was going to motivate him, but it was always going to bother him.

Q&A | UK's Calipari reflects on HOF career

"And then you fast forward a little bit: he gets the Kentucky job, he kills it at the Kentucky job, and frankly I still don't know if he expected this. Because you could reasonably wonder if the two vacated Final Fours would keep him out. But now here he is, still in the prime – what you could reasonably call the prime of his career – being honored in a way that is really unique for active college basketball coaches (Calipari makes the sixth active coach in the Hall). I think it's the ultimate moment for him where he can finally say, 'I've been accepted by The Establishment.' Like, 'I am Mike Krzyzewski. I am Roy Williams. I am Rick Pitino.' I don't know that he ever expected this, but I know he always wanted it. So that'll be a neat thing for him. I don't know whether he'll explain it (tonight) quite the way I explained it just now, but trust me when I say this: This means the world to him."

Does it seem to you that Cal has managed to keep his underdog, outsider attitude – which no doubt drove him to greatness – even after landing the dream job at Kentucky?

"Oh, sure. If he doesn't have issues, he'll invent them. And his best friends will tell you that. Like, he needs a fire storm. He needs something to rail against. He needs something to push him. Sometimes those things are actually there, like a couple years ago with the team that ultimately made the Final Four but was struggling throughout the season. People started to question him. This is when the (Harrison) twins were freshmen and people were starting to question John Calipari. Like, 'Why can't you do more? Stop putting it on your young kids. Why can't you do more?' That was one of those times he didn't have to invent something to work against. Like, it was really there.

"But there are other times when he'll totally just invent something to be angry about or to be motivated by, and I do think that mindset is the key to his success. He actually did have a chip on his shoulder when he was at UMass because, you know, even Jim Calhoun at Connecticut didn't really take him seriously – until he was kicking everyone's ass. And then at Memphis, I mean, he was a complete outsider, right? He was coaching in Conference USA. What am I doing here? He built it into a monster, but people would question everything he accomplished. 'Oh, your teams aren't really that good. They're just beating up on Conference USA.' But at Kentucky you sort of run out of things to get a chip on your shoulder about. You're at Kentucky. You're in the SEC.

"But he still has that same mindset. You guys don't get to see it every day, because he just can't provide access at Kentucky the way he did at Memphis, but trust me: His assistants see it every day, his players see it every day. That constant us-against-the-world, or more specifically me-against-the-world thing, is why he is who he is."

So what will John Calipari do now that he's on 'the right side of the rope' as a first-ballot Hall of Famer?

"I know, it's weird, right? What else does he have to accomplish? He's done it all. He's putting kids in the pros, he's having No. 1 picks, getting top recruiting classes, going to Final Fours basically every year that his team doesn't suffer a catastrophic injury. What else can you do? What are the goals? I mean, the perfect season is always going to be out there as a carrot. I don't know if he can get it, if only because I don't know if anybody can get it, but obviously he's best positioned, more so than anybody else. But it's still such a hard thing to do in this era of college basketball.

"I wonder if his goal could be to try to get Kentucky even with UCLA in (NCAA) championships. Not necessarily him even with John Wooden but Kentucky even with UCLA. Like, that's probably a goal somewhere. But I don't think he'll change much. You're still going to look up in January of this year and things are probably going to be going really well – why wouldn't it with the roster he has? – and he'll be pissed off about something.

"Like, you're going to write a story where it'll be an analyst on ESPN, it'll be a writer who maybe works for a national site but who happens to live in your state. It might even be the Memphis columnist who he's butted heads with for a decade but hasn't dealt with in seven years. He'll find something. So I think the way people view him will change slightly, and his Wikipedia page will change significantly, but he's still going to be the same guy."

Kyle Tucker can be reached at (502) 582-4361. Email him at ktucker@courier-journal.com.