John Calipari, head coach of the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team, is never shy about speaking his mind on the sport that he has been entrenched with for decades.
Now, after recent comments from Duke University head coach and figurehead Mike Krzyzewski, Calipari has chimed in on the topic of expanding the NBA Draft. He believes it would “ruin college basketball.”
“If anybody supports more rounds in the draft, those more rounds are to get kids to go to the G League, you do not care about college basketball or you're trying to ruin college basketball,” Calipari said, per Alex Scarborough of ESPN.
Certainly, more rounds of the NBA Draft would cut into the talent level of NCAA basketball, and Calipari is right to be concerned about that. However, this does seem rather rich coming from a coach that has perfected the one-and-done model in college basketball.
Over the past four seasons, Calipari has coached 17 players that made the NBA, including No.1 overall pick Karl-Anthony Towns. A plethora of lottery picks, such as Devin Booker, Willie Cauley-Stein, De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk, Bam Adebayo, Kevin Knox, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and PJ Washington also played for Calipari.
While expanding the draft would certainly cut into the available players for college teams, in the end, the best players will always rise up and get drafted sooner rather than later. With that said, Calipari’s claims ring a little hollow.
It seems likely that Coach Cal wanted to dig into his nemesis Coach K on this topic.
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