Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Question: If there is anything such as getting used to this, getting pulled in every direction, how much better equipped are you at handling this now?John Calipari: If you’re not fired once and you’re like 35 and think you poop ice cream and you get this job, I want to stay in town just to watch it. First of all, you’ve got to be willing to say no, and I’m not good at that anyway. At my age I’m not good at it. You’ve got to say no. There are people that are going to be mad that you’re saying no because their thing is the only thing in the universe that matters and you’re not doing it, you’re not speaking at it. You’ve got to be able to say no and walk and not have any effect. You can’t be into the websites, the chat rooms, the talk radio; ignore the papers. Just don’t deal with it. The issue becomes, you’ll hear sometimes, and you’ve got to get better at even telling people, ‘Don’t even talk about it because then you’re making me have to deal with it.’ You just have to walk. This thing never leaves you, where if you’re at another school and they’re in another season, they’re not worried (about you). It’s never that way here. This is 24/7. They’re telling me the other guys that coached here would get out of town. The season ends and they’d go for months. I’m starting to see why they did. I can see why a guy would say, ‘I’m out of here. You will see me in a month,’ because this is one of those things. The flipside, I’m enjoying the crap out of it. It doesn’t bother me. I’m loving it. If you don’t have fun with this, you can’t do this. I know we’re not going to be as good. I joke (that) I need good neighbors this year because when we lose our first couple, someone is going to have to take those “for sale” signs out of my front yard. They do it before I get home. Everybody is going to have the answers and you’ve got the old ladies watching the third game tape again and telling you that you should be doing this, this and this. I’ll probably laugh about it and say the same thing I said a year ago: Enjoy the ride. Forget about the day-to-day stuff. That’s what I deal with. Just enjoy the scope of this ride of what you’re going to see this year. It’s going to be different than last year. That should be the fun part of it. But again, here it’s a little different than that. If a team is getting better and better and better, and you see it, you’ve got to get enjoyment. I think, and we’ll see if I’m wrong, I think we’re talking about a small minority. When I call people crazy, there’s a difference between being crazy and nuts. The people that are crazy are just crazy in love and have so much affection for this program and the players. The nuts think you should win every game, have no idea that there are other programs and they’re just nuts. I won’t ever deal with them. They’ll call, ‘Bye, I’ve got to go. Bye, next caller.’ I’m not dealing with that. That’s how I deal with that. Think about it, if I was 35 trying to do this thing where I had never been fired, never had stuff come at me, never had a bad article written about me and I got this job. This is the greatest thing about what you guys do: You guys will kill me in some way or say something on the radio and do something, and somebody will say, ‘Oh, it isn’t that bad. Just don’t worry about it.’ And I’ll say, ‘Put your name in there instead of mine and then tell me what you think of it now.’ ‘Oh, that’s just awful.’ It’s OK if it’s me. Question: What has Rock Oliver meant since he’s been here?Calipari: For all the weight program, what he’s done is he takes no crap. See, as a coach, what you want is you want stuff taken off your plate. If you’re adding things to my plate as my assistant in some way or somewhere around me, you’ve got to go here because I don’t have time. Our academic piece with Mike Stone and those guys, unbelievable. The job that DeWayne (Peevy) and John (Hayden) do, especially DeWayne because DeWayne is shoulder-to-shoulder (with me). I’ve never been around a guy as good as him at what he does, because you know what he does? He takes it off me. I don’t have to deal with it. He deals with it. And he knows that’s his job. So with Ray, part of weights is you’ve got to get mean with them and you’ve got to get nasty with them sometimes. I can’t be that guy and be him and be the academic guy. I’ve done that when I was at UMass and probably when I was at Memphis. I had to do everything. You can’t do that here – or you die. They’ll say, ‘Oh, my god, look at him. What’s wrong with him? He’s sick. Look at him.’ You can’t do it. So Ray, he is with Joker. He oversees everything. But there will be times that needs something needs shaken up a little bit, get him over here; someone misses something or didn’t do something. He pins them against the wall and I say, ‘Hey, you have a good day?’ I don’t have to do it. It has to be done, but it’s not for me. Question: When you look at what Brandon Knight’s decision to sign a financial aid agreement and not a letter of intent, do you think that’s something that more kids will do that?Calipari: I think I’ve had other players do it, or we had players that were like, ‘Cal, if you get hit by a bus? What is something happens? We want to be there playing for you.’ What we did was, if something happened to me, they were no longer bound by the national letter of intent. It’s exactly the same thing. Well, we won’t even sign it, so if something happens, I’m not coming. That may aggravate the ivory tower, ‘Well, that’s not how this is supposed to be,’ but is that how it is? It’s the way it is. What he did, would I suggest it at this point? Yeah. Tyreke Evans, if Derrick Rose came back, Tyreke was not coming. He told me. He said, ‘Coach, I’m not going to come if he’s there. He’s so good and I’m going to be compared to him? No. And he’ll be there with me? No. If he’s gone, I’m coming.’ That’s how they do it. … I think (Knight) did the smart thing. His dad said it from day one and I said, ‘I’m fine with that. I trust you.’ Now, if I didn’t trust him, I would say no. And the reality of it is I probably wouldn’t go that far to recruit him if I didn’t trust him. The kids that I’ve done it with, they’ve all followed through. They said they were coming.