Kentucky Basketball: What to Make of John Calipari's Platoon Experiment

Who knew that John Calipari, coach of the Kentucky Wildcats, was such an altruist? He must have been reading Karl Marx on the beaches in the Bahamas.

All kidding aside, Calipari is attempting to change the game of college basketball by creating two NBA-style platoons that will share equal playing time and, in theory, showcase more talent over the course of a 40-minute game. Can it work and will it draw the attention of scouts and future recruits to Lexington?

No matter how you slice it, the Wildcats are a weapon of mass destruction. The arsenal looks more like a circus freak show, and that is only meant in the kindest of terms. P.T. Barnum (who, let’s face it, would have been an awesome recruiter) would be standing in a puddle of his own drool pitching this Kentucky Road Show.

Calipari, a veritable Barnum in his own right, isn’t just throwing the kitchen sink at opposing schools—he’s throwing the kitchen at them.

He writes on Coach Cal.com, "They know that if this turns out the way they think it could, it becomes a watershed moment for college basketball. There will be no going back. No player will ever worry about who else is in the program or who may stay. They will know we have their best interests at heart."

One must admire his moxie and his audacity, but for this to be a watershed moment, as he so eloquently put it, everyone would have the capacity for this recipe. Calipari is the executive chef of this restaurant and there aren’t enough ingredients in the American pantry for the other DI programs.

It’s something ESPN’s Jay Bilas said may be possible, at least for this pack of ’Cats. He said on Kentucky Sports Radio, "You just don’t do that. [Calipari] can legitimately platoon and not take a drop off at all. They relate to each other really well, and they seem like really good guys, and that can’t help but make you a little bit better.”

Maybe the principle could work, but in order to do so most coaches would be mixing A's and B's and C's to make a platoon better suited for digging ditches than waging war. Calipari is in the unique—and beautifully constructed—position of signing the best physical geniuses this country offers. He may be a case study of one: statistically irrelevant but damn fun to watch.

A two-platoon system shreds minutes and doubles the effort. Calipari wants to ask his players to spend two minutes of effort for every one minute on the floor. It makes sense, in theory. Calipari told The Courier-Journal:

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I also think that when you two-platoon and you have guys playing 20 minutes, which is plenty of time; the reality of it is three or four more minutes a half (in a normal rotation). Just play harder. You get more done, you're more efficient. So playing 20 minutes a game, everybody had their time. And I think every guy shined.

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What if Aaron Harrison puts up 15 in the first half? Will he sit out the second? Will he play five on, five off? Who takes the final shot?

This could work perfectly in a world devoid of ego and rife with altruism. Will Alex Poythress (a junior, which qualifies as a graduate student these days) or the next McDonald’s High-Flyin’ French Fry echo the sentiment of the world’s favorite Vulcan: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

That’s hard for any 18-year-old to swallow.

Now take the same 18-year-old and tell him it’s about the future. Try telling him he’ll be fresher for the NBA, if he’s even an NBA talent. Try telling him to save for retirement, a lifetime a way. He’s looking at his buddy from AAU playing for Basketball U, 36 minutes a night, scoring 22 points per game and getting his name called out on Sports Center’s Top 10.

It may sound petty, but these things are important to the minds of the young. They feel they deserve attention, especially if they see said attention raining down on another.

But, as Calipari says, he’s back for the kids. Had so many of them not chosen to return, who knows if Calipari would have returned as well. So he told The Courier-Journal:

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Again, when you have players coming back, they did not come back so that it was good for me; they did not come back so that it was good for the program; they came back because it was good for them and their careers and they knew they needed more developing and coaching. That was by me. That's what they wanted. So that made it a tough deal to say, 'I'm just going to leave these guys here.' … So what would move me to stay was these kids need me here. That's what I'm doing.

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The real challenge will be showcasing the talents to their satisfaction. This appears a recipe for discord. Can they get the requisite exposure they deem fitting for a shot at the NBA?

Eammon Brennan of ESPN.com writes:

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So yeah, as of mid-August, that's what I'm most excited to see in 2014-15: a real, legitimate five-in-five-out platoon, a team so big and talented that its coach can split it into two discrete groups and still almost always have the five best players on the court. 

Too much size? Too many players? Why untie a knot when you can slice it in half?

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This will be the most intriguing storyline to watch in 2014-2015. Can Calipari pull this off, or will he revert (by virtue of talent, discontent, injuries) to five to seven players with one true starting lineup with the supporting cast?

Ultimately it may come down to satisfaction, whether the players feel they're getting the attention they deserve and not just lab rats in a social experiment the likes of which we have never seen.