2 Potential Future Destinations in NBA for Kentucky Wildcats Coach John Calipari
Throughout Kentucky's quest for perfection, the question of whether or not John Calipari will spurn the Wildcats for a second chance in the NBA persisted.
Was a 40-0 season more or less likely to keep Calipari in Lexington? We will never know.
What you can be certain of is the Wildcats' inability to cut down the nets this year only causes the whispers surrounding Calipari to grow louder.
As we learned last year, the NBA offseason is when these rumors reach their highest decibel. Shortly after Calipari signed a seven-year, $52 million extension to stay at Kentucky, Adrian Wojnarowski and Brett Dawson of Yahoo Sports reported he had also engaged in serious negotiations with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
If Calipari truly wants another opportunity on the game's highest stage, all he has to do for now is quietly lay the groundwork, which it appears he is doing. Steve Popper of The Record cites an NBA source who says Kentucky's head coach wants his shot at redemption.
"He desperately wants it," the front office official said, according to Popper. "He won't say it out loud. The NBA is the only place he's ever failed, and it drives him nuts. He's not the same guy he was then. He came to the NBA, and he wasn't ready. He's ready now."
Calipari is king in Kentucky. However, if the desire to atone for his most grand failure is in fact large enough for him to relinquish his reign, two NBA teams jump out above the rest.
The opportunity to coach LeBron James was something Calipari unknowingly passed up when he opted not to accept Cleveland's reported seven-year, $60 million-plus offer, according to Wojnarowski and Dawson. Yet there is still a chance this partnership comes to fruition.
The future of current Cavaliers head coach David Blatt seems directly tied to how the team does in the playoffs. According to Spotrac, his four-year deal is worth $20 million, which makes it unlikely he is fired after just one season.
However, two seasons with limited playoff success could certainly be enough to spell the end of Blatt's tenure in Cleveland and open the door for Calipari.
The second team is Brooklyn. If Calipari is as haunted by his stint with the then-New Jersey Nets, as the front office official quoted above suggests, what better place to right the wrong?
Like Blatt, Lionel Hollins is in his first year of a four-year contract with the Nets, but ESPN.com's Marc Stein and Ohm Youngmisuk reported in January that he was already under evaluation after a pair of particularly bad road losses.
The Nets have played better as of late, but if they fail to maintain sustained improvement and success, there could be an opening down the line for Calipari—with "the Nets [figuring] to have about $60 million in cap space in the summer of 2016, coinciding with a free agent market loaded with talent," as Popper notes.
ESPN.com's Ian O'Connor also points out that Calipari is close friends with Nets CEO Brett Yormark. In addition to having organizational support this time around, the silver-tongued coach has also cultivated relationships with many of the league's premier players. Combine these factors with being able to use the allure of New York and there's no telling how much talent he could bring to Brooklyn.
As great as it is to be worshiped in Lexington, even that cannot compete with how satisfying it would be for Calipari to come full circle by bringing an NBA championship to the only team he has failed with as head coach.
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