Kentucky Basketball: Rick Pitino Deserves Kentucky Fans' Respect, Not Hate

Almost everyone has that person or thing from your past that you thought you loved more than anything in the world, and then it was lost. Sometimes it is lost because of Father Time and death. Sometimes it is not lost, but instead taken from you. And in relationships, sometimes it is lost because multiple parties have allowed it through their actions, be it neglecting one another or just not caring enough anymore.

And sometimes it is lost due to betrayal, or at least the perception thereof.

Usually, when you think of loss you think of loss to yourself as an individual. The parent that is no longer there, the lover that left you for another or the job that you didn't get or were fired from. It's something that hurts you and you alone, and can often stick with you for the rest of your life. But in sports, it's normally different.

To sports fans, losses are usually in one category and one category only: wins and losses of games. Did you beat your rival or not? And though it often upsets us when our team loses, we usually get over it pretty quickly and move on with the truly important things in our lives. Of course, I still wish that Christian Laettner would not have hit that shot in the 1992 Elite Eight, but I don't get emotional about it anymore. And most Kentucky fans are the same way.

Again, that is usually what happens with loss in sports.

But the majority of Kentucky fans have been suffering from a different kind of loss for the past 10 years. If you notice, I kept betrayal separate from the other kinds of loss because it is the one type of loss that is wholly inflicted upon you by someone that you loved and trusted. It's the one that hurts the most, and it is usually never forgotten. 

And for 10 years now, one man has had the anger of nearly the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky directed at him over a betrayal that was possibly unprecedented in all of sports. Of course, that man I speak of is Rick Pitino.

Honestly, before LeBron James made "The Decision" and became the most hated man (but still, oddly, one of the most loved as well) in all of sports, I struggled to think of any sports moment in my entire life that caused as many people to instantly hate someone they once loved as when Rick Pitino decided to become the head coach at Kentucky's in-state rival, Louisville. 

And I'm not talking casual fan hate—of the "I hate Team-X" variety—that we all say from time to time. I'm talking a palpable hate that you can literally see on Kentucky fans' faces and hear in their voices when Pitino is talked about. To this day he is still called Traitor Rick, Benedict Pitino and any number of other names that cannot be printed.

I will never forget being at that first Kentucky-Louisville game after Pitino took his talents to Louisville. The booing was unlike anything I had ever heard and have yet to hear since. There were offensive signs everywhere, people were almost foaming at the mouth as they shouted invective after invective towards him and the basketball game was truly a secondary piece of the whole experience. That day was all about most of the crowd of 24,000-plus showing hatred to one man.

And truth be told, I think some anger was justified.

Imagine for a minute that Coach K became the coach at North Carolina, or that Nick Saban left Alabama and ended up coaching at Auburn. (Speaking of Saban, he did a similar thing by coaching at Alabama after LSU.  Not quite on the level of going from UK to Louisville, but a close analogy. And he is loathed by LSU fans.) And for the sake of argument, let's say that there was a gap of time between the job switch. And during that gap the former team, here Duke and Alabama, had begun slipping in the fans' eyes from dynastic levels of success to the early stages of falling off the top of the mountain a little bit.

I think you could see why fans might be a bit perturbed to then see their former coach at their rival.

And I get it: I really do. As someone who was off of the Tubby Smith train very early, I could already see the cracks forming in the program's foundation in 2001. I saw that Kentucky was in danger of losing its status as the premier program in the country, which they undoubtedly were under Pitino, and to make matters worse, the architect of that great 1990s run was now the coach at Louisville.

I was not only a little upset, but was worried as hell.  Any Kentucky fan that says they weren't worried Louisville would surpass Kentucky is either lying, doesn't have much of a memory or was delusional.

Why the Louisville job? That was the most frustrating part of the whole thing for most people.  Many don't remember it now—Kentucky fans sure do, but Louisville wasn't the only good job open at the time, and Pitino was wanted by everyone that had an opening. Michigan wanted Pitino bad. UCLA and Indiana were rumored to have interest in firing their coaches to bring Pitino in, as were several schools in the northeast, such as St. John's.

All were very attractive and high profile jobs that he likely could have had at the snap of a finger. 

So why choose Kentucky's rival? Why commit that unnecessary sin?

And that in and of itself was the tipping point that turned his return to college basketball from a Kentucky fan saying something along the lines of "Damn, he's going to be tough to beat when they get rolling" to "F*** you, Rick."

But Kentucky fans are nuts and would have hated him anyways, right? Well, contrary to popular belief, I don't think Kentucky fans would have. As most Kentucky fans will tell you when Pitino went to Boston, he went with the unneeded but probably appreciated blessing of pretty much all of Big Blue Nation. Pitino had done his job and taken the Kentucky program from being banned on television to back-to-back title game appearances and their first championship in 18 years. 

Yes, as a fan, I would have liked for Pitino to have stayed and try to help Kentucky catch UCLA for the most all-time national titles. But as a person that loved my coach and was grateful for what he had done for the program, I was happy to see him fulfill a dream of coaching the best franchise in NBA history, the Boston Celtics. Add in that they were going to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million and the decision was a no-brainer to Pitino. And Kentucky fans agreed.

But when he came back to the college game, he went to Louisville. And at that point, he was dead to Kentucky.

Looking back though, and after 10 years of unmitigated hatred having been exhausted, I think it is high time that the Kentucky fan base makes peace with Pitino and the situation as a whole.  And it is time that Kentucky fans show Pitino the respect he earned while coaching here and stop with all of the hatred.

This cannot be glossed over: Rick Pitino saved the Kentucky program.

As a Kentucky fan, he saved our program.

Before Pitino came on the scene, Kentucky was an absolute mess. The Eddie Sutton years (how is he in the Hall of Fame?) left the Kentucky program on probation, off of television completely and in the college basketball gutter. The NCAA hammered Kentucky with everything short of the death penalty, and nobody in their right mind should have wanted this job.

The talent on hand was severely lacking and recruiting was nearly impossible with the stain of Sutton on the program.  As a young boy when all of this went down, I remember crying for days over the Kentucky's Shame cover.

But amidst all of that turmoil and drama, and against all odds, Rick Pitino came in and performed one of the greatest coaching jobs in the history of sports.

Within five years, Pitino had Kentucky back in the Final Four. In 1996, Pitino created maybe the best team in college basketball history en route to a national title. All told, Pitino went to three Final Fours, won his title, had some of the most dominating teams in Kentucky history and laid the foundation for Kentucky's 1998 title with most of his holdovers having starring roles.

And all of this happened within 10 years of not even being allowed on television.

For all of this, I am forever grateful.

Sure, there have been moments where Pitino has gotten into it with Kentucky fans. He has gotten caught up in the rivalry and said some things he surely regrets saying. But he has also on numerous occasions stated that he never should have left Kentucky, that it was his Camelot and he blew it. He knows what he had and what he will never be able to fully get at Louisville, and the man knows he made some mistakes with how he handled things in the past.

And in hindsight, it really made sense to go to Louisville from a professional standpoint. Yes, it's easy to say that Pitino could have had any number of other jobs, and he likely could have. But at the time, the only other job close to the level of the Louisville job that was actually open was Michigan. And the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry notwithstanding, 99 percent of coaches would take the Louisville job over the Michigan one. It's just better. More history, more support, easier recruiting ... all of it. And I'm not really selfish enough to have expected Pitino to put loyalty to Kentucky over doing what was best for him professionally. It's just not fair.

Could he have handled things differently and made the move easier to take for Kentucky fans?

Maybe, but I doubt it.

With some missteps made, Pitino has generally remained very complimentary to Kentucky's program and fans, and on several occasions has been overly lavishing with his praise for his former team.

I will always remember how fondly he spoke of Kentucky at Bill Keightley's funeral a few years ago. It was a very moving speech, and anyone who saw it saw how much Pitino still loved Kentucky and missed his time here.

Ten years is a very long time people. While I think the anger shown to Pitino has always been over the top, I've never really begrudged anyone for harboring it. But it is time to move on. It's time to let bygones be bygones and accept what has happened. It's time to let go.

Kentucky fans felt betrayed a decade ago when Rick Pitino took the job at Louisville, and betrayal is the hardest thing for most of us to ever forgive. But I think the betrayal was more of a perception on the part of what Kentucky think happened as opposed to Pitino's intent. And I think that makes all of the difference.

Pitino didn't mean to hurt anyone. It's time Kentucky fans stop trying to hurt him.