John Calipari
John Vincent Calipari is an American basketball coach who is the head coach at the University of Arkansas. He has been named Naismith College Coach of the Year three times, and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.
Previously, he was the head coach at the University of Massachusetts from 1988 to 1996, the NBA's New Jersey Nets from 1996 to 1999, the University of Memphis from 2000 to 2009, and the University of Kentucky from 2009 to 2024. During the 2011–2012 season, he led Kentucky to a national championship. Additionally, he was the head coach of the Dominican Republic national team in the summers of 2011 and 2012 as well as the United States men's national under-19 basketball team in July 2017.
Calipari coached Kentucky to four Final Fours in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015. He also led UMass and Memphis to the Final Four in 1996 and 2008 respectively; those appearances were later vacated, though Calipari was cleared of wrongdoing in both cases. As a college coach, Calipari has twenty-nine 20-win seasons, eleven 30-win seasons, and five 35-win seasons.
As of December 2024, with 865 official wins, Calipari ranks 9th on the NCAA Division I all-time winningest coaches list.
Playing career
Calipari lettered two years at UNC Wilmington before transferring to Clarion University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in marketing. He played point guard at Clarion during the 1981 and 1982 seasons, leading the team in assists and free throw percentage.Coaching career
From 1982 to 1985, Calipari was an assistant at the University of Kansas under Ted Owens and Larry Brown. Calipari had several jobs as the lowest coach in the pecking order when Ted Owens hired him as a volunteer assistant for the Jayhawks' 1982–83 season, including serving food at the training table. "I was blessed to have the chance. Can you imagine being 22, 23 and your first opportunity to be around the game is at a program like Kansas?"From 1985 to 1988, he was an assistant coach at the University of Pittsburgh under Roy Chipman and Paul Evans. From 1988 to 1996, he was head coach at the University of Massachusetts. From 1996 to 1999, he was head coach and Executive VP of basketball operations for the NBA's New Jersey Nets. During the 1999–2000 season, he was an assistant coach for the Philadelphia 76ers under coach Larry Brown, before moving on to his next position at the University of Memphis.
Calipari is famous for popularizing the dribble drive motion offense, developed by Vance Walberg, which is sometimes known as the "Memphis Attack".
In his 31 official seasons as a collegiate head coach, Calipari's record is 855–263. His NCAA-adjusted official record in the NCAA tournament is 57–22, and in the NIT is 15–6. His teams have made 23 NCAA tournament appearances, including reaching the Sweet Sixteen 16 times, the Elite Eight 12 times, the Final Four six times, the NCAA Championship Game three times, winning the NCAA Championship at Kentucky in 2012, and finishing NCAA Runner-Up in 2014.
He is one of only four coaches in NCAA Division I history to direct three different schools to a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
University of Massachusetts
From 1988 to 1996 at UMass, Calipari led the Minutemen program to five consecutive Atlantic 10 titles and NCAA Tournament appearances, including periods where the program was ranked first nationally. He finished with a 193–71 record overall, with a 91–41 record in Atlantic 10 conference games. Calipari was named Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year in 1992, 1993, and 1996. He was also named the Naismith, NABC, Basketball Times & Sporting News National Coach of the Year in 1996. He led UMass to its first-ever appearance in the Final Four with the play of the John R. Wooden Award winner and Naismith College Player of the Year Marcus Camby, although this appearance was later vacated by the NCAA because Camby had accepted about $28,000 worth of gifts, in particular a gold chain, from two sports agents who were luring him to enter the NBA draft after his Sophomore season.Calipari helped accelerate the construction of the Mullins Center, UMass' basketball and hockey facility. He also reached out to eastern Massachusetts and Boston to enlarge the fan base. Before moving on to the New Jersey Nets, Calipari became the second winningest coach in UMass history behind Jack Leaman.
In 2010, then-ESPN.com writer Pat Forde, in his "Forde Minutes" column, said of the 1992 team:
In the Sweet 16 matchup with Kentucky in 1992, official Lenny Wirtz issued Calipari a controversial technical foul for being outside the coach's box during a crucial UMass possession. Kentucky went on to face Duke in the next round in one of the greatest games in college basketball history, won on a last-second shot by Christian Laettner.
In 1993, UMass defeated defending NCAA champion and preseason #1 North Carolina in the pre-season NIT in Madison Square Garden. The following year #3 UMass defeated defending NCAA champion and #1 Arkansas in the Hall of Fame Tip-Off classic, which resulted in UMass becoming the first New England college basketball team to be voted #1 in the Associated Press poll.
During Calipari's tenure at UMass, the program became one of the most dominant in college basketball despite recruiting just one McDonald's All-American and having only two players drafted by an NBA team. Forde recalled the Final Four team in Calipari's final UMass season in 1995–96 as a squad "with one superstar and a collection of complementary parts". By winning both the Atlantic 10 regular season and conference tournament championships from 1992 to 1996, UMass became the second team in college basketball history to win 5 consecutive regular season and conference tournament championships.
The Calipari Room, a classroom in the Du Bois Library at UMass, is so named in recognition of donations from the Calipari family.
New Jersey Nets and Philadelphia 76ers
In the 1996–97 season, John Calipari replaced Butch Beard as head coach of the New Jersey Nets. After a 26–56 debut season, the Nets made a major draft-day trade in June 1997, acquiring Keith Van Horn, Lucious Harris and two other players in exchange for Tim Thomas.In 1997, while coaching the New Jersey Nets, Calipari directed profanities at Star-Ledger sports reporter Dan Garcia and referred to him as a "Mexican idiot". Garcia sued for $5,000,000 for emotional distress. Though the case was dismissed and Calipari apologized for his remarks, he was still fined $25,000 by the NBA.
The 1997–98 season was a lone bright spot for the Nets in the late 1990s. The team played well under Calipari, winning 43 games and qualifying for the playoffs on the last day of the season. The Nets were seeded eighth in the Eastern Conference and lost to the Chicago Bulls in the 1998 playoffs in three straight games.
The 1998–99 season was delayed for three months due to an owners' lockout of the players. When the abbreviated 50-game season began, the Nets were a choice by experts as a surprise team. However, Sam Cassell was injured in the first game and the team started poorly. With the Nets underachieving at 3–15, the Nets traded Cassell to the Milwaukee Bucks, while the Nets acquired Stephon Marbury from the Minnesota Timberwolves. After two more losses, Calipari was fired as head coach with the team at 3–17. He finished his tenure with an overall record of 72 wins and 112 losses and a.391 overall winning percentage. He then joined Larry Brown as an assistant coach for the Philadelphia 76ers.
University of Memphis
Calipari became head coach at the University of Memphis in 2000. In Calipari's first nine years as head coach at Memphis, he won 214 games and posted seven consecutive 20-win seasons, plus one more in his final season. He also earned seven consecutive postseason bids. His 2007–2008 team's 38 victories set a new NCAA Division I Men's Basketball record for most victories in a season, a record that now belongs to the 2011–2012 Kentucky Wildcats due to NCAA violations that vacated all of Memphis' wins. The nine consecutive 20-win seasons and the nine consecutive postseason appearances would have been the most in school history, though that officially stands now at seven because of the vacated 2007–08 season. He was named Conference USA Coach of the Year in 2006, 2008, and 2009. In 2008, he was named Naismith College Coach of the Year, receiving the honor for the second time. In 2009, he was named Sports Illustrated College Basketball Coach of the Year.He built a national program by recruiting blue chip players from the Eastern part of the country, such as Dajuan Wagner from Camden, Darius Washington Jr. from Orlando, Rodney Carney from Indianapolis, Shawne Williams from Memphis, Joey Dorsey from Baltimore, Chris Douglas-Roberts from Detroit, Antonio Anderson from Lynn, Robert Dozier from Lithonia, Derrick Rose from Chicago, and Tyreke Evans from Aston.
While at Memphis, Calipari popularized the dribble drive motion offense that was invented by former Pepperdine basketball coach Vance Walberg.
On January 21, 2008, Calipari led the Tigers to the No. 1 ranking in the AP Poll for only the second time in school history.
In 2006 and 2008, Memphis earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. In 2008, Calipari's Tigers advanced to the national championship game, their first under his leadership. They also won 38 games, the most regular-season wins in NCAA history. His team, however, would lose to the Kansas Jayhawks, 75–68, in overtime. This team later had its entire season record vacated by the NCAA because the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT college admissions test, invalidated Derrick Rose's score on that test. Despite this, Rose still denies any wrongdoing. The NCAA began to investigate the test and contacted the ETS. Because the NCAA had begun to investigate, ETS decided to review the test. The ETS sent three letters to Rose's family's former address in Chicago to ask that Rose verify some information on his test. Because he did not reply to the letters, ETS invalidated his SAT. This happened even though the NCAA investigated and reported that they could not find significant evidence to prove that Rose did not take the test. Because the ETS had invalidated the test, the NCAA retroactively declared Rose ineligible. To this day, the official position of the NCAA is that Rose did take his own SAT. If not for the vacated wins, Calipari would be the winningest coach in Tigers history, as he would have 252 wins to Larry Finch's 220.
On May 28, 2010, John Calipari, Derrick Rose, and University of Memphis athletic director R.C. Johnson reached a $100,000 out-of-court settlement with three attorneys who represented Memphis season ticket holders and threatened a lawsuit over the vacated 2007–08 season. Also as part of the settlement, Calipari donated his near-$232,000 bonus to the Memphis scholarship fund.