It’s March Madness, the Kentucky Wildcats are the number 1 team in the country, so here’s your annual story about John Calipari coming back to be an NBA coach. This time it isn’t just teams hunting him down, a “source” claims Calipari desperately wants to give it another shot at coaching the Nets.
via NorthJersey.com’s Steve Popper:
It’s simple to follow the trail of where it went wrong, but one NBA front office official looked at the situation and believed there is a way back — and one that could happen.
The one name that could return the Nets to all of those things they thought they could be, that they seemed primed to be, is currently guiding the best college basketball team in the nation, a coach who crashed and burned with the Nets once already. The Nets can be saved by John Calipari.
“He desperately wants it,” the front office official said. “He won’t say it out loud. The NBA is the only place he’s ever failed and it drives him nuts. He’s not the same guy he was then. He came to the NBA and he wasn’t ready. He’s ready now.”
If it seems like grasping at straws, a big name to save the day, maybe it is. But NBA sources point to ties that are already in place. In the Nets’ struggles, the one person who has held the trust of Prokhorov is the man behind the marketing, the tireless Brett Yormark. While the product on the court has struggled, the branding of the Nets has been a blueprint for other franchises. While Calipari may have left some rifts when he was fired by the Nets, he remained close with Yormark.
