Pitino Nearly Called for Traveling

Tracking the Rick Pitino story is like trying to catch a rabbit.

Two weeks ago, Pitino was the Boston Celtics’ coach.

Then, poof, he was gone.

Then he was snooping around UCLA.

Poof, gone.

This week, Pitino appeared set to become the next coach at Nevada Las Vegas.

It was a done deal, then it wasn’t.

Pitino has since retreated to his Miami home, looking to cool his fur.

His answering machine conveyed that he wouldn’t be available for comment until Feb. 1.

Fat chance.

Wednesday, UNLV Athletic Director Charles Cavagnaro was combing the thickets of South Florida, cornering Pitino to officially gauge his interest in becoming the Rebels’ coach.

Who knows what today will bring?

The problem with Pitino is that his heart ticks a thousand beats a minute and he is at constant war with his internal clock.

The same frenetic energy and impatience that made him a preeminent college coach, and an NBA bust, have not served him well in the days since he resigned himself to failure in Boston.

He had time on his side there but refused to milk the job clock.

Too eager to jump back into the fray after his Celtic fiasco, Pitino ended up in damage control.

When news leaked that UCLA Athletic Director Peter Dalis had conversations with Pitino, UCLA Coach Steve Lavin called Pitino “an opportunist.”

When it appeared Pitino was headed to UNLV, the Rebels’ interim coach, Max Good, who has done a commendable job in the wake of Bill Bayno’s firing, fired the salvo that “some spirit and faith has been violated here.”

Pitino had to phone Lavin and Good to smooth things over, but the bottom line was that all this was unnecessary.

What is Pitino’s hurry? The UNLV job is still going to be open in two months. By waiting, he could have quietly and thoroughly researched the depths of UNLV’s NCAA sanctions while letting several other major possible coaching opportunities--Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, UCLA--play themselves out.

Somebody finally got to Pitino this week, told him to lay low, and it was well-heeded advice.

We think that somebody could have been Memphis Coach John Calipari, another successful college coach who went to the NBA to get rich before beating a path back to college.

“He and I talked,” Calipari said of Pitino. “I was in the same boat. Some people came after me on jobs. But I’m telling you, mentally, I was not ready.”

After leading Massachusetts to a 35-2 season and the Final Four in 1996, losing in the national semifinals to Pitino’s Kentucky Wildcats, Calipari made the NBA jump to the New Jersey Nets.

Although Calipari, unlike Pitino in Boston, turned the Nets into a playoff team, he was fired after a 3-17 start in 1998-99.

Instead of returning immediately to college, Calipari spent a year as an assistant with the Philadelphia 76ers and waited for the right job to open.

Calipari found it in Memphis.

“You better research it,” he said. “Don’t think I didn’t spend a month or two looking into every nook and cranny making sure I had every chance of winning here, or I wouldn’t have come here.”

After a 4-8 start, Memphis has won four consecutive games and is poised to become a national contender.

Calipari’s advice to Pitino?

“The only thing I said to him was, ‘You’re going to bounce back, you’re going to have a great job, and you’re going to have a great life, it’s just a matter of where.’ ”

Calipari has been where Pitino is headed.

The two are virtual coaching clones. It was Pitino, a Massachusetts graduate, who led the search committee that brought Calipari to Massachusetts in 1988.

Both coaches probably knew they were better suited for the college game but couldn’t turn down the lure of NBA riches.

“We can B.S. each other, but that’s part of the reason I went to New Jersey,” Calipari said.

How come some guys were meant to coach in college? Why is it assumed that Pitino, a failure in the NBA, will thrive wherever he ends up?

Calipari says it’s not about coaching, it’s about environment.

“You don’t keep the same team together nine years,” he said of the college game. “Every year your team in college changes, so the coach has a bigger impact. In the Western Conference of the NBA right now, you better be real good or you’re losing. I don’t care. That’s the way it is.

“It’s about the talent you have on your team. Am I telling you Mike Krzyzewski or Roy Williams would go to the NBA and lose? Yeah, if they went to New Jersey. Or Washington.”

Calipari says there are more places to win in college than the pros.

“If you’re not in one of those top six situations, it’s like having a small business,” he said of the NBA. “You’re 30 days from bankruptcy. One injury to the Nets and you’re done.”

But it is also about coaching, and power, and influence.

Pitino’s 1996 national title team at Kentucky won with menacing full-court pressure defense, a style much easier to sell over 38 games than an 82-game NBA season.

Chauncey Billups of the Minnesota Timberwolves, who played briefly for the Celtics in 1997-98 before being traded, said Pitino didn’t have the right temperament for the pro game.

“He’s a great college coach,” Billups told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “Because in college you only play two times a week. You can practice and you can teach. You can scream and yell at guys too, because they want to make it to the NBA so bad, they’re going to listen to you.”

MORE ON CAL

Calipari acknowledges he got too excited with his rebuilding plan and tried to turn Memphis into a national program before it was ready.

Eager to impose his will on a program coming off a 15-16 season and a coaching scandal--Tic Price’s tryst with a female student--Calipari returned from his Pitino-esque NBA experience and put his team through a gauntlet.

The result was nonconference losses to Temple, Stanford, Utah, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Miami.

“I was stupid, my ego got in the way, and we had too tough a schedule,” Calipari said. “We had six top-25 opponents in our first eight games. That’s stupid. This team’s had two losing seasons. Who do I think I am?”

Memphis’ Dec. 30 victory over Kansas State kick-started a four-game winning streak that has the Tigers on track to challenge this season in a watered-down Conference USA.

Memphis, 2-1 in conference play, hosts Saint Louis tonight in an ESPN game.

You think the league title isn’t up for grabs?

For the first time since 1997, Conference USA has no school ranked in either poll. Cincinnati was the nation’s best team last season until center Kenyon Martin suffered a broken leg in the conference tournament, but the Bearcats are only respectable now, DePaul is shaky at best and once-powerful Louisville is reeling.

Memphis may be a national player as soon as next season, when Calipari welcomes prized recruit DaJaun Wagner from Camden (N.J.) High.

Wagner scored 100 points Tuesday in a 157-67 victory over Gloucester Township Technical School.

This was a big improvement from last week, when Wagner scored merely 52 points in a game.

LOOSE ENDS

Details, details. UNLV reportedly could offer Pitino a package worth $1.5 to $2 million a season. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, UNLV can only offer about $150,000 in base salary, but Pitino could make up the difference with perks such as speaking engagements, a shoe deal, television and radio show revenue, attendance bonuses and summer camps.

This should be comforting to pins-and-needles Lavin, knowing UCLA probably could not put that kind of package together for Pitino.

More on Lavin. He said recently he’s on the hot seat “24-7.” Actually, that might be an acceptable record after a 4-4 start.

Temple Coach John Chaney turns 69 on Sunday but it probably feels like 89 in this up-and-down season. The Owls started 4-0, lost seven in a row, won six in a row, and were pounded by St Joseph’s on Tuesday.

You probably wouldn’t have put St. Joseph’s on your list of “Top Five NBA Coaching Hotbeds,” but Atlantic 10 Conference media director Ray Cella notes that Jim O’Brien, who took over the Celtics in the wake of Pitino’s resignation, is the seventh St. Joseph’s alum to become an NBA head coach. O’Brien joins Jack Ramsay, Jim Lynam, Matt Guokas, Paul Westhead, Jack McKinney and George Senesky. The No. 1 college for producing NBA coaches? Indiana, with 10. Illinois and St. Joseph’s are tied for second.

St Joseph’s 14-3 start is the best since the 1985-86 squad opened 14-3 and finished 26-6.

Follow up to Iowa State’s four-overtime loss to Missouri: The Cyclones have lost four Big 12 Conference games the last two seasons. All were in overtime, on the road. The four-overtime game, however, was not the longest in school history. Iowa State played a five-overtime game against Colorado in 1960.