Himmelsbach | Genius of Calipari's NBA combine

As the curtain was pulled back and the ESPNU broadcast began on Friday, commentator Jay Bilas summed up the moment succinctly and accurately.

"It's something we've never seen before," he said.

And he was right. While other college basketball teams went about their normal early-season practices, Kentucky once again pulled out its big blue spotlight and shined it directly on itself, like only Kentucky can.

It was the first day of coach John Calipari's Wildcats-only NBA scouting combine. The ESPN commentators sat at a courtside set emblazoned with a UK logo. About 90 NBA scouts and executives sat at courtside tables. And thousands of curious fans around the nation—and surely plenty of recruits—sat in front of televisions and watched the Wildcats practice.

For a team that is still a month away from playing a real game, Kentucky has already spent a good portion of this offseason soaking up attention, starting with its nationally televised exhibition tour in the Bahamas. Friday's production was oh-so-Kentucky, oh-so-Calipari and oh-so-brilliant.

"It's a good way to put another event on the calendar for UK," one NBA team's director of scouting said in a text message.

The genius is that it serves so many purposes, both obvious and unspoken. Calipari will tell you that it is about his players. He wants them to shine in front of the largest collection of talent evaluators possible.

The irony is that after this weekend's spectacle, Calipari plans to mostly close his practices to NBA personnel. He doesn't want the distractions. So his players will ultimately be seen by scouts less often than they have in previous Octobers.

But when a few NBA types shuffle in and out of the Wildcats' facility each day, no one really talks about it. No one really broadcasts it. We were all talking about this event.

"Duke, Carolina, Arizona, etc., let scouts into nearly all of their practices, and it works out fine," the NBA scouting director said. "Is not letting scouts into the other 27 practices going to win [UK] more games? No, I don't think so."

But it's different, it's a niche, and it will remind everyone who is in control. When Calipari was interviewed during the broadcast, he spoke indirectly to the scouts who were sitting just a bounce pass away.

"You don't need to be back," he said. "I gave you everything."

The two-hour practice wasn't exactly riveting television, but infomercials are rarely riveting television. And make no mistake, this was an infomercial.

Interviews with Kentucky personnel were spliced into the practice coverage. There was assistant coach Kenny Payne, there was former UK star Tony Delk, there was the team's new analytics guru, Joel Justus. And of course, there was Calipari. They were talking to the ESPN crew, but they might as well have been talking to recruits. In an honest moment, Calipari even acknowledged that potential edge.

"I'm working on my guys," he said. "If it helps recruiting, that's fine. But that's not why I did it."

Will recruits be impressed by this production? I'd think so. It certainly makes UK look important. No, there's nothing stopping other schools from mimicking this. But good luck getting ESPN and 90 scouts to show up.

Surely, other athletic departments will scramble to enter the fray somehow. Calipari knows this, and on Friday he even took a subtle jab at the competition, diluting it with a bit of self-deprecation.

"This will probably get outlawed," he said of the combine. "All you coaches that think you're going to start doing this, believe me, since I did it first, it's outlawed."

The second part of that message, the 'since I did it first,' was no accident. This was John Calipari's idea, his vision, his infomercial, and he wants to be sure no one forgets that, because it's something we haven't seen before.

Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at 502-582-4372 by email ahimmelsbach@courier-journal.com and on Twitter @adamhimmelsbach