Failing to Land Pitino, the Nets Get Calipari

Failing to get Rick Pitino to become their next coach, the New Jersey Nets took the next best thing--Massachusetts coach and Pitino clone John Calipari.

Calipari and the Nets reached a tentative agreement Wednesday night on a five-year contract, team President Michael Rowe said Thursday.

The Nets, long one of the league’s worst teams and intent on reshaping their image, are to announce the hiring at a news conference today.

The agreement, worth a reported $15 million, comes only a week after Pitino rejected a $25-million offer to become the Nets’ coach, general manager and part-owner.

It also comes only two days after scandal rocked the Massachusetts program that Calipari built into a national power and led to the Final Four last season.

Marcus Camby, the school’s best player, admitted accepting improper gifts as a college player from an agent, an action that could lead to the program being put on probation.

Calipari, 37, denied the problem influenced his decision to join the NBA.

“As a matter of fact, if I felt that there was something we’d have to fight, I would never leave the university,” Calipari told WBZ-TV in Boston on Wednesday night.

Calipari owed his Massachusetts job to Pitino, a Massachusetts graduate who championed Calipari’s cause on the 1988 search committee.

Calipari did not receive partial ownership, a lucrative perk the Nets offered to Pitino. However, he will have a large say in personnel matters.

Calipari held initial talks with Rowe last Friday night in Providence, R.I., discussing the coaching position, team philosophy and the stability of the Nets’ ownership, Rowe said.

“I don’t know if I’m surprised he was available,” Rowe said. “I’m pleased he was available.”

Craig Fenech, Calipari’s agent, said Calipari was intrigued by the challenge of coaching the Nets, a team that posted records of 30-52 and missed the playoffs the last two years under the recently fired Butch Beard.

“Everybody wants to test themselves at the highest level,” said Fenech, who also spoke with Philadelphia about the 76ers’ vacant coaching job. “He knew someday he would, but he didn’t know if it would be this year, next year, or when. We just knew it eventually would.”

Under Calipari, the Minutemen have gone 193-71 and won five consecutive Atlantic 10 regular-season and conference championships. Last season, Massachusetts went 35-2, losing to Pitino’s Kentucky Wildcats in the NCAA semifinals.