On a recent morning, John Calipari, the men’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky, bounded out of the Omni Berkshire Place hotel, in midtown Manhattan, hoping to make a 7 A.M. Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. His graying hair was slicked impeccably back; he wore a navy suit. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” he said to the driver who was waiting for him in a black S.U.V.
Cal, as he’s known among friends, was in New York for a basketball game—his team had defeated Michigan State the night before, at Madison Square Garden—but he was also using the trip to promote his latest book, “Success Is the Only Option: The Art of Coaching Extreme Talent.” It’s a self-help guide to winning “on and off the court,” which he co-wrote with Michael Sokolove. In seven seasons, the Kentucky Wildcats have reached four Final Fours, and won more than two hundred games. In 2014, Calipari, who’s fifty-seven, signed a seven-year, $52.5 million extension with the University of Kentucky, making him the nation’s second-highest-paid college-basketball coach. (A year later, the school sweetened the deal by extending it a single season for an additional eight million dollars.) But the book is “not really a sports book,” he said. He’s often asked, by business executives as well as fellow-coaches, how he gets “all these talented kids from different backgrounds to come together,” he explained. “This is my answer.”
In Calipari’s time at Kentucky, twenty-eight of his players have been drafted into the N.B.A. He was one of the first college coaches to publicly welcome “one-and-done” players, who have no interest in staying in college more than one season. (In 2005, the N.B.A. instituted a rule that players must be nineteen years old and one year out of high school before they can be drafted into the league.) He sees the success his players have gone on to have as a retort to critics who believe his tactics undermine college basketball’s amateurism model. “I’ve got a responsibility to these families—they’re trusting me with their sons,” Calipari told me. “In many cases, this is their one way to give that child the American Dream.”
After Mass, Calipari returned to the hotel lobby, where he settled into a chair across from Eric Lindsey, Kentucky’s top public-relations officer, to eat a sausage-and-egg sandwich and prep for an interview with Ed Henry, on Fox News. They were joined by Calipari’s old friend Jerry Haffey, who, like Cal, grew up in modest surroundings and is now worth millions.
“What do I do if they ask about Trump?” Calipari asked.
“Talk about how his job is now to bring people together, especially in areas where he’s weak, which is what you do, and what the book is about,” Lindsey suggested.
“I’m not weak in any area,” Calipari said, smiling. This was Calipari’s first visit to Fox since he appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor,” in 2014. Some of O’Reilly’s questions during that appearance seemed racially loaded—in one uncomfortable exchange, O’Reilly, referring to Kentucky’s mostly black players, asked, “How do you keep them away from temptation with the hustlers everywhere?”
“Who?” Calipari responded. He later added, “People say they don’t want to go to school—that’s a bunch of crap. They do want to go to school, but their genius is basketball.”
It’s a back-and-forth that Calipari hasn’t forgotten. “I’ll tell you what, though,” he told me. “I’m never intimidated, but there I was scared shitless.”
This time, Calipari’s Fox experience was free of fireworks. (When he was asked about Trump, he kept to his talking points.) Afterward, he asked Lindsey, “Where we going next?” The answer: ESPN, and then downtown to the New York Stock Exchange, where he was booked to appear on CNBC. “Why didn’t they get me an interview with Charlie Rose?” he asked. “I like doing interviews with Charlie, and he’d do it.”
Back on the road, Calipari called Tameka Johnson, the mother of Quade Green, a crafty point guard from Philadelphia. “I’m really excited to be coaching him,” he told her. He hung up and informed Lindsey that Green had committed to Kentucky. “And they say I have to buy players—why would I need to buy players when all mine go to the N.B.A.?”
The S.U.V. rumbled downtown, crawling across the financial district’s cobblestone streets. Calipari fielded another call, from the University of Arizona’s basketball coach, Sean Miller. A few minutes later, he was on CNBC, being asked what advice he’d give Donald Trump. He talked about bringing players together, working in a reference to how many of his had made it to the N.B.A. “Again, I’m just a basketball coach,” he began, before noting that the important thing is to “bring people together.” As he made his way up a set of stairs after the interview, he walked with a noticeable limp—the result, he said, of hip-replacement surgery.
“The guy who started on third base and gets home and acts like he hit a homer—that guy doesn’t impress me,” Calipari said as we walked to a bodega to buy gum. We were on the way to Sports Illustrated. Calipari’s grandparents left Italy in the early twentieth century and came through Ellis Island. Outside the S.I. office, Haffey offered Calipari some pizza, which he’d set on the hood of the S.U.V. Cal scarfed down one slice, then reached for another, only to have it blown to the ground by a crisp gust of New York wind. “Five-second rule,” he said.
It was time to file back into the car for one last hit, this one with CNNMoney. In the station’s offices, Calipari passed a large portrait of the anchor Don Lemon and stopped to snap a picture. “My wife is a huge fan,” he said. Carl Bernstein walked by, and Calipari introduced himself and asked for a photo. Then, in a dark studio, Calipari, who is just a basketball coach whose parents never went to college, was asked to share his views on race relations in the United States and on the country’s President-elect.
“I can’t wait to get on the plane and sleep,” he said to Lindsey afterward. He climbed back into the S.U.V. and made his way toward Teterboro Airport. A private jet was waiting.