John Calipari has been the head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats since the 2009-10 season and in that time, Coach Cal has made four trips to the Final Four and won a national title in 2012 with Anthony Davis leading the squad. Over his time with Kentucky he’s produced top talent and rampant rumors.
Calipari has been linked to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Sacramento Kings and Brooklyn Nets over the years but now, with the Nets undergoing a sudden change, it appears that Brooklyn is up to bat for coach Cal.
The debate if Calipari would help or hurt Brooklyn is valid but before you can even consider his return to the NBA, after a failed first stint, there needs to be a discussion concerning his contract. Is he really worth $120 million?
Following from Yahoo! Sports Adrian Wojnarowski.
Yormark is pushing Prokhorov to reach back to the Nets’ Jersey roots, dust off a failed ’90s experiment and sell it as something sparkling and new. Twenty years ago, the Nets stunned everyone with a five-year, $15 million contract for the UMass coach. For Calipari to consider the Nets – and, yes, the Sacramento Kings, too – league sources tell Yahoo Sports that the teams have been informed of his asking price: 10 years, $120 million.
When Calipari spoke with minority ownership in Sacramento last spring, he told them that it would take an offer of $11 million-plus a year to get his attention, league sources said. Calipari turned down a 10-year, $80 million-plus offer with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2014, because he wouldn’t leave Kentucky with only an incremental raise on what is now an $8 million to $9 million annual package on campus.
Cleveland’s offer has become a baseline for Calipari’s contractual demands: He wants the 10 years and now the $12 million a year that Phil Jackson makes to run the Knicks.
Calipari’s sell will be this: As his old Kentucky stars – DeMarcus Cousins (2018), John Wall (2019) – become free agents, he’ll have the Nets positioned to sign them. His former players have largely kept excellent relationships with him, but there are those close to them who say that most of his ex-stars remain reluctant to committing to 82 games a year of Cal’s abrasive style. It wore out players fast in the 1990s in New Jersey, and Calipari would need to bring a different disposition to the NBA and prove that he’s willing to treat NBA players like men, not teenagers.
Before the Kings approached him late last spring, Calipari had been hoping the New Orleans Pelicans would consider him, league sources told Yahoo. The idea of reuniting with Anthony Davis was the allure, but New Orleans had no interest in giving him complete control, nor paying his massive salary.
Eventually, Calipari engaged in conversations with the Kings on and off for several weeks, but owner Vivek Ranadive didn’t have the minority ownership support to authorize that kind of an investment, sources told Yahoo Sports.
One minority owner with the Kings, who was part of multiple calls with Calipari, told confidants, “He kept saying it wasn’t about the money, but he kept talking about the money.”
Coach Cal has since shut down any and all rumors concerning his departure from Kentucky.
I am not negotiating with ANYBODY. My total focus is on this team and winning the next game.
— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) January 11, 2016
Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov also shut down any coach Cal rumors in a press conference following the firing of Lionel Hollins and the reassignment of Billy King. He says he’d much rather have the coach and general manager be separate.
Prokhorov says he would rather have a general manager and a coach, as opposed to someone holding both jobs. #Nets
Calipari rumors dying.
— rob (@R0BaTO) January 11, 2016
Coach Cal coming to the Nets is dying and there appears to be no future residence for him in Brooklyn.
