Despite the college basketball season being over for over two months, Kentucky head coach John Calipari took to Twitter to take a shot at the Duke Basketball program.
I really don’t know where to begin, and I never thought that this situation would come up on June 25, 2019, but here we are.
Unsolicited, Kentucky head coach John Calipari took what looks to be a shot at Mike Krzyzewski and the rest of the Duke Basketball program on Tuesday night, specifically at Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett.
Calipari started his series of tweets by saying that Kentucky is beginning its offseason workouts and how the players and coaches have to find ways to make all the talent they have gel, and so on and so forth.
That’s all well and good, but then he followed up that tweet with the following:
We don’t promote two guys and push everyone else to the curb. This is about all these kids becoming their best version. As this team succeeds, we all become our best version. BIG TEAM, BETTER ME. And yes, we trademarked that.
— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) June 25, 2019
There’s so many ways you can go with this tweet, it’s actually hilarious.
First, for a head coach of a major program to subtweet 18-year old kids who just had their dreams come true less than a week ago at the NBA Draft is very unprofessional.
Second, these two players embarrassed you, your players, and your program on national television in the first game of the season by 34 points! And don’t forget, Kentucky was the favorite coming into that game, being ranked No. 2 ahead of Duke at No. 4, and lost by 34 points.
Also, the 34 point margin came while the starting five sat for a good portion of the end of that game.
As for the rest of the season, yes, Duke ultimately fell short of its National Championship goal, but at least the Blue Devils won its conference tournament, unlike a certain team in the SEC, who didn’t even make the championship game after losing in the semifinals.
And on “promoting two guys”, sorry Coach Calipari, maybe stop watching ESPN, who primarily promoted Zion Williamson over the other three freshmen stars Duke had this season, and look on social media where many were calling Tre Jones Duke’s most important player prior to Williamson’s injury.
How about one of “everyone else”, Cam Reddish, that was a Top-10 pick in the NBA Draft? A slot before your first pick this year.
Three Duke players before one Kentucky player.
To make this even better, Calipari and the Wildcats recruited both Williamson and Barrett before the duo would pledge their allegiance to the elite school in Durham.
Even if Calipari wanted to turn this into a NBA Draft conversation, Coach K still has him beat because Krzyzewski bumped his total this year to 28 lottery picks while Kentucky has 26 lottery picks and Calipari has 25.
If John Calipari wants to remain angry because Zion Williamson and RJ Barrett were arguably the two best and most talked about players in the country this year that’s fine but two things will stick out when people talk about the Duke duo and Coach Calipari; it’s that he couldn’t recruit them to Lexington and they beat him 118-84.