New Arkansas basketball head coach John Calipari just revealed a key reason why he decided to leave Kentucky for the Razorbacks in an appearance on The Pat McAfee show.
“I hired my son! I couldn't do that at Kentucky. He's on my staff,” Calipari said. “I'm helping all of these coaches and all of these (players), how about I help my son? How about I do that?”
Calipari shared a similar sentiment during an earlier interview with Dan Patrick, listing being able to hire his son as one of the top-three reasons why he took the head-coaching position at Arkansas.
“I got to hire my son! He's not one of my top-three guys, but he's in, he's on-court and he can go out and recruit a little bit.”
John Calipari hired Brad Calipari for Arkansas basketball staff
Brad Calipari, John Calipari's son, will be an assistant coach/director of on-court player development this upcoming season at Arkansas.
The younger Calipari spent the last two seasons as a player development coach — first at Long Island working under former NBA star Rod Strickland in 2022-23 and then at Vanderbilt in 2023-24. He was also a grad assistant under his father at Kentucky in 2022.
Brad spent the first three seasons of his collegiate career playing for his father at Kentucky from 2016-19, making two Elite Eight runs and a Sweet 16 before transferring to Detroit-Mercy for two seasons.
During his junior season in 2019-20 at Detroit-Mercy, he averaged a career high 6.1 points, 1.1 rebounds and 0.3 assists while shooting 38.0 percent from three in 20.1 minutes per game.
The fact that Calipari has now mentioned his ability to hire his son as a reason he's excited to be at Arkansas twice shows that this was a significant issue at Kentucky. Administrations do not usually worry too much about low-level coaching decisions, so it is very noteworthy that it seems Kentucky would not allow Calipari to bring his son on his staff in any capacity.
While there may be calls of nepotism with this hire, Brad has built up quite the basketball resume with five years of D-I playing experience, one year as a graduate assistant and two years working in player development, with one of those seasons coming within the SEC at Vanderbilt.
Arkansas is expected to be one of the top teams in the SEC this upcoming season. Led by their explosive backcourt of Kentucky transfer DJ Wagner and Florida Atlantic transfer Johnell Davis, the Razorbacks are going to be one of the highest-scoring offenses in the country.
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