After a 1-5 start, John Calipari knew he had to make some changes. The first was to send Cam’Ron Fletcher home to help the first year get in a good mood and send a message to his staff about what is and is not acceptable in Kentucky. The second asks three players to intensify and help manage the attitude of the team or, as Calipari said, the “non-negotiable”.
“I just told them I’ll have fun with that,” Calipari said this morning. “I will enjoy it. We appointed three guys to be leaders to end all attitudes and negotiable, how you accept training. I’m not dealing with any of that. Players will face off. So this is off my plate. Trying to give them more control over how we are playing offensively and less about me.
Calipari wouldn’t specify who the three players are, but reading between the lines, Davion Mintz, Olivier Sarr and Keion Brooks is a good guess.
“I will let it play and let it play like it does and you have to have older guys. You had to have guys who had the experience of that to give you some kind of suggestion, but all you have to do is forget to lead and worry about playing better. We care about being more committed to our team. But these three, and for the reason why I did three, I want them to support each other and basically lead this team. ”
When asked, neither Mintz nor Lance Ware would reveal who the leaders are, but they said everyone is on board with the new plan.
“The coach pulled a couple of guys into the office and talked about how to get rid of the stress of having to deal with the non-negotiable ones,” Mintz said. “This should be the responsibility of the boys he has selected and everyone participates. Everyone agreed and jumped on board. That ‘s what it is. “
“We know who these three are in the locker room and that’s where he’ll stay,” Ware said. “They’ll take care of things, the little attitudes that most people have, especially when you come to Kentucky and you’re close to other great players, you have to learn what you can do and what you can’t. Not everything is acceptable for you to do in high school. I know that sometimes in high school I would do some things I would never do here. Just things like that. Just try to keep everyone under control, so that we don’t have small problems that we can easily avoid. “
What are “non-negotiable”?
“Controlling your attitude,” Mintz said. “By controlling, can I make this work another person? He said something like, don’t think less about yourself in terms of who you are as a person, but at the same time, think less about yourself when it comes time to help another person. Many of these things are non-negotiable. When he speaks, he tries to teach us, he’s been here for 30 years now and his resume speaks for itself. It’s time to listen, so these things are not negotiable right there. “
So why does a man who earns more than $ 9 million a year ask players to take on one of his job responsibilities? Calipari has long preached the importance of teams being led by players, recalling today how last year’s squad only met once he was kicked out of the Arkansas game. Also, this year’s team has not been able to deal with its growth problems with a normal non-conference schedule and Calipari can say that its frustrations affect the players.
“If you think I’m happy with this record, you’re crazy. You know me well enough. But I won’t let that change the way I approach it, as that’s what I can do for these young people. And the only way to do the work I do every year is to have a ball of it. And I always have fun training. And if I’m not having fun, how will I do my job for these kids? So I told them that. I want to have fun. Some of these things that frustrate coaches, it’s your job to get rid of them so I can have fun and train that way, which is how you want me to train. ”
“The most important thing for me is that I want to have fun doing this,” he repeated later. “This is the secret sauce of what we do. Yes, I am aggressive and I make them responsible and with a high level, but I have a ball. And I think they can feel it. Right now, there has been a level of frustration because of things that can’t normally be negotiated in this program. “