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It would be hard to add much to Al Featherston's article on the controversy Adrian Wojnarowski caused with his column about Coach K and the national team, but we thought we'd like to add one or two minor points.
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Even the Lexington Herald-Leader's Jerry Tipton thinks that Calipari's carping was overboard and suggested that his rather more positive tweets on Thursday were "damage control, and in the Louisville paper Tim Sullivan said this:
"If Kentucky coach John Calipari has a problem with Coach K's national gig — as Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim alleged Wednesday — perhaps he should level the playing field by hiring a concierge and a bellhop for the Wildcat Coal Lodge, to go along with the private chef who works the players' dorm. Perhaps he should bring in Beyonce as the opening act for Big Blue Madness. Perhaps he should simply continue to do as he has done, reaching high, winning big and churning out NBA prospects with assembly-line efficiency, because no coach has a bigger edge in college basketball."
One of the more interesting things to come out of this..coachly carping...is that Calipari was quickly identified as one of Wojnarowski's sources. As Sullivan points out, it's ludicrous for him to complain about disadvantages when everyone agrees that he's recruiting on a different planet.
There are two chapters from Calipari's past which are worth remembering: first, that John Cheney was so enraged by Calipari, then at UMass, that he crossed all kinds of lines and threatened to "kill" him. We're not suggesting for a minute that Cheney is incapable of explosions - he dubbed himself the Black (Bob) Knight after all - but that was an extraordinary bit of public rage for any one, much less such an accomplished coach.
And secondly, and perhaps more revealing, was his paranoia. When he was coaching the Nets, he apparently sincerely thought that management was bugging his phone.
Is that what's driving his issue with Coach K? It can't be recruiting - Duke does just fine, but Kentucky, as Tipton points out, has more McDonald's All-Americans than the Charlotte Hornets, is off the charts.
We always figure that he would have an internal conflict with that part of himself and it would happen because of Kentucky fans being, well, Kentucky fans. Who figured it would be Coach K and his summer job? That's amazing to think about.