John Calipari Calls Out Coach K For ‘Copying’ Kentucky’s One-And-Done Approach When He Was At Duke

 

The Wildcats coach did not mince words with the Duke legend.

John Calipari called out former Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski during his weekly radio show Monday night. The Kentucky coach said he went on Coach K’s podcast and accused him of copying his approach to recruiting one-and-done talent in the later years of his Hall-of-Fame career.

“[Krzyzewski] said something about playing young players,” Calipari said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve always done it. You copied us, and then you started playing young players.’ He said, ‘Oh, I’ve been recruiting those guys, and they just happened to start leaving early.’ OK.”

Calipari has been tabbed the “king of one-and-done” during his 15-year stint with Kentucky and found success grooming future NBA Draft picks during nine seasons with Memphis before that. Kentucky has signed 13 top-five recruiting classes since Calipari arrived in Lexington in 2009. During that span, no coach has produced more No. 1 overall picks (three), top-10 picks (15), lottery picks (23), first-round picks (35) and total NBA Draft picks (47) than Calipari.

Krzyzewski coached 26 one-and-done players during his career at Duke. Corey Maggette (1998-99) and Luol Deng (2003-04) were his first; the other 24 started their careers in 2010 or later. Krzyzewski coached an average of 2.0 one-and-dones per year from 2011-14 and an average of 2.9 per year from 2015-22.

Shortly before the NBA passed the “one-and-done” rule, requiring players to be at least 19-years old before entering the draft, Krzyzewski said he’d never recruit a player who intended on being in college for just one season.

“I would never recruit a kid who said, ‘I’m just coming for a year.’ I never have,” Krzyzewski said in 2005, via The Fayetteville Observer. “For our school, we can’t do that. A kid says, ‘I’m going to come and use you for a year’ — that’s not what we should do.”

Krzyzewski had changed his tune by 2014 when the team landed five-star recruits Jahlil Okafor and Tyus Jones. Both spent a single season in college before going in the first round of the 2015 NBA Draft.

“If you’re placed in that position where one or two of the best players in the United States are great kids who want to come to your school, you’d have to be an idiot to say no,” Krzyzewski said of Okafor and Jones in 2014, via The Fayetteville Observer.

Three-time NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas criticized Duke in September, claiming Duke was “trash” before the one-and-done rule and that Krzyzewski leveraged his position in USA Basketball to attract top recruits.