John Calipari and Rick Pitino: Best frenemies forever!

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November 23, 2009

Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl — one of the better college hoops writers working, which you probably already know — has a pretty interesting breakdown of John Calipari’s entree into Kentucky basketball this season.
You should totally read it. It covers all the usual bases (Calipari’s
popularity, his recruiting class, his troubled exit from Memphis). But
it focuses most of its time on the relationship between Calipari and
Louisville coach Rick Pitino.

You may have known these two supposedly hate each other, but did you know …

• That Rick Pitino initially recommended John Calipari for the UMass
job and paid $5,000 out of his own pocket to make sure the Minutemen
athletic director at the time sealed the deal?
• That John Calipari first met Rick Pitino as a teenage camper at Five-Star camp in Pittsburgh?
• That before he took the Kentucky job, Calipari called Pitino and
asked the coach what he thought? And that Pitino told him to take it?
• That Kentucky fans are sort of crazy?

OK, so you knew that last one all too well. But the other three speak
to a more complex relationship between the two coaches than what you’ve
heard. For his part, Calipari insists he’s on friendly terms with
Pitino, and clearly the two do share some sort of bond. But whatever
similarities bring them together — the Armani suits, the slicked-back
hair, the stints in the NBA — they also clearly brush up against one
another the wrong way.

Fortunately, we millenials
have devised a word for this: frenemy. That’s totes (totally, natch
[naturally, duh]) what Calipari and Pitino are. They like each other
and they wear the same clothes, but they’d also like to punch each
other in the face on occasion. Frenemies forever, y’all!

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