Larry Brown says John Calipari has “the best job in basketball” as the head coach at Kentucky.
“I really believe he’s got the best job in basketball,” the Hall of Fame SMU coach told The 4 Quarters Podcast on Monday. “Everywhere he goes, when we recruit, he’s recruiting five guys and he’s gonna get four and a half of them. We’re recruiting 150 and we’re lucky if we get two.
“He’s got a special situation. There’s about eight or 10 jobs in college that every year you’re going to be in the lottery. I got this theory, in the NBA when you’re bad, you’re in the lottery. In college when you’re great, you get multiple lottery picks.”
Calipari is seemingly always linked to NBA jobs and most recently was linked to the New Orleans Pelicans job that went to Alvin Gentry. Former Kentucky and current St. John’s assistant Barry “Slice” Rohrssen told SNY.tv Calipari will “always” be courted for NBA jobs.
“I don’t want to talk on [Calipari’s] behalf, but I’m happy the way it worked out,” Brown said. “Alvin Gentry worked with me for a long, long time and I think that was a great choice.
“The reason John’s name is mentioned [for NBA jobs] is because he’s a great coach, and why wouldn’t anybody want to play for him?”
Still, Brown, the only man to win an NBA and NCAA championship as a coach, said he understands why coaches like Billy Donovan and Fred Hoiberg would want to leave college for the NBA.
“It’s all the junk you have to go through other than coach the kids,” he said. “In the NBA it’s all basketball. I think finally maybe some of these NBA people are starting to realize that if you’re going to draft all these young kids, you better have somebody that can teach them. That really frustrates me. We got all these workout coaches but we gotta have somebody that can teach them….
“I think all this analytic crap has gotten so involved, they’re not teaching kids how to play.”
