John Calipari is like most college basketball coaches in at least one way: He began his career as a player.
Well, technically. In 1978, after a blue-collar upbringing on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, the man who would come to unironically refer to his program's fans as the "big blue mist" began his college career at UNC-Wilmington. He wasn't a star. Playing time was scant. In 1980, he transferred to Clarion (Pa.) State, a Division II program in a 7,000-person town 100 miles northeast of his hometown. Calipari played point guard there and led his team in free throw percentage and assists. Unlike most coaches, the most important thing he would do during his college playing career was choose a major that suited his interests.
That major? Marketing.
The rest, as they say, is history.
On Friday, Calipari will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. The distinction is merely the latest accomplishment in 35-year history of unlikely, unconventional and most of all ingeniously marketed success -- a trajectory that began in total obscurity and has since lifted Calipari to the most prominent, and most polarized, position in his sport.
It is that position, and what Calipari has molded it into, that sealed his HOF induction. Since leaving Memphis to take over at Kentucky in the spring of 2009, Calipari has turned the job of basketball coach into a cross between preacher and pitchman. He has redefined the art of the college hoops sale. When Kentucky's coach finds an angle he likes -- a one-off like "Succeed and Proceed," a narrative about the composition of his team, or an ethos like "players first" -- he hammers it home past the point of cognitive resistance. No public statement, from his tweets to 1.3 million Twitter followers to the blog posts on his personal website to answers at news conferences, is ever off-message. Rapper Drake hoists airballs in Wildcats layup lines. Jay-Z gets fined by the NBA for entering Kentucky's locker room after a game.
By sheer force of will, and without losing touch with the lifelong die-hards in the process, Calipari has turned a college athletics program in a conservative Appalachian state into one of the hippest teams in American sports.
It helps, of course, that he has restored it into one of the very best. You can't have that much style without just as much substance, after all, and in just six seasons, Kentucky has won 190 games, lost 38, been to four Final Fours and won one national title.
That title came in 2012, featured current NBA megastar Anthony Davis, and did more than bestow upon a uniquely mad fanbase its first national title since the 1990s. It also validated Calipari's grand theory of post-NBA-age-limit success -- a theory that has come to define college basketball far beyond the Commonwealth state lines.
How's this for a sale: In 2010, Calipari's first UK draft day included a record five first-round picks -- among them John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Patrick Patterson and Eric Bledsoe. During the draft, Calipari told an ESPN reporter it was the "biggest day in the history of Kentucky's program." That drew criticism from the program's old guard: UK legend Dan Issel called it "the dumbest thing I've ever heard." Calipari knew exactly what he was doing. By emphasizing his ability to turn elite prospects into NBA draft picks more quickly than any other coach -- and insisting that his No. 1 goal was to create "generational wealth" for the families of his players -- Calipari was able to lure class after class of the nation's best talent to Lexington. Kentucky landed the No. 1 groups in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013. It has never ranked lower than No. 2 in any class-based recruiting rankings since Calipari arrived. During his tenure, NBA teams have selected 19 Wildcats in the first round -- 13 in the lottery, six in the top five and three No. 1 overall. Kentucky's 25 total draft picks in the last six seasons is one more than the next two schools, Duke and Kansas, combined.
In the meantime, Calipari has gradually shaken off the (inaccurate) idea that he lacked the strategic substance required to guarantee his product in full. At Memphis, his adoption of the Vance Wahlberg's unconventional dribble-drive motion offense had widespread tactical impact, even as Calipari has continually adapted his system to his players. He has always been a better man-manager than most realized; now, his ability to coax feted freshmen into shared offense and connected defense is on constant display. Before their dreams of a 40-0 season were dashed by Wisconsin in April's Final Four, the 2014-15 Wildcats -- a balanced and unselfish team that happened to have nine or 10 NBA players on its roster -- were a living greatest-hits reel of Calipari's stylistic successes.
The man's detractors often point to his most ignominious distinction: He is the only coach in history to have Final Four appearances vacated at two separate schools. Calipari supporters point out that the coach was absolved of any guilt in both situations. But the impression formed of a slickster who will say and do anything to get ahead -- first at UMass, then Memphis -- still clings to the heel of his loafers.
Calipari has also drawn ire for cutting too hard against the NCAA's traditional grain, for scoffing at the idea that every college basketball player must pretend to be interested in a four-year degree. But as the climate around the NCAA's amateurism ideal has shifted, decades-old heresies -- that, you know, the generators of college sports' immense value deserve to be duly compensated for it -- now reads as pure common sense.
When the few traditionalists still blanch, the coach will remind people that he doesn't control the NBA's age limit. He doesn't even like it. He thinks the NBA should change it! But, hey, until they do ...
There is always a sale to be made, always an argument with some unnamed detractors to be won, always a new way to frame some seemingly straightforward piece of information. The sale is always calculated. The brand is always out front. The meaning is always in there, one or two or three levels deep. It's not called the wheel. It's called The Carousel.
And it works, because it's also usually right.
That combination of talk and walk propelled an unknown with a marketing degree to the head-coaching position at UMass, to an NBA front office, and to Memphis, where a dormant program soon became a national powerhouse. The blend of quality basketball and quality branding took him past administrative skepticism to the top of the college hoops mountain, to those Big Blue Madness stages, to the fireworks and light shows and political-convention teleprompters.
Now, that understanding that has brought John Calipari, finally, to the National Basketball Hall of Fame.
A great salesman is nothing without a great product. And vice versa.