There was a time when people used to call John Calipari a guy who couldn’t actually coach. You know, that snake oil salesman that relied solely on his abilities as a recruiter to get past the other premier coaches in the country. People honestly wanted the critics to think that was the case, as if his early UMass teams were a work of fiction, or that he hasn’t done a great job of convincing the top recruits on the planet to play unselfish basketball. Really, it has been a glorious time if you hated the Kentucky Wildcats or John Calipari related basketball — I guess.
While that particular time in the realm of college hoops hasn’t exactly passed it has been replaced by people on the far opposing corner. The new, “John Calipari is revolutionizing college basketball with the platoon” people. They will point to the Kentucky platoon system, implemented by Calipari, and let you know of the neat things he is doing. The waves upon waves of McDonald’s All-Americans that come out fresh; and how his players will be well rested because of it. That the idea of having two separate top-five teams on the same exact team — but being nearly treated as separate teams — is the future of the amateur hoops.
Well, um, yeah. Kind of, sort of — at least I think.
What Kentucky is doing is insane. The idea that they might have two of the top-five or so teams in the entire country in one program might actually be a true statement. The rest it will provide on players’ legs during the Madness that is March will be such a positive side-effect of having so much talent on one roster that there will unlikely be a fresher team in the NCAA Tournament. All of that, all of that and so much more is the truest of true statements.
Revolutionizing college basketball? I think not.
Here’s the deal. There will come a time in the season — and most certainly in the NCAA Tournament — that John Calipari will have to abandon the Kentucky platoon system. Not because it doesn’t work, but because logic will eventually get in the way of practicing the perfect theoretical way to play basketball with 10 legitimate college basketball studs.
Between foul trouble, certain game situations, hot or cold hands, a player regressing or progressing, etc., Kentucky at some point or another will do something different than just sub five guys out for another fresher five. There is really no way for it to practically work that way. Not for an entire season, and certainly not forever.
When it does happen, unfortunately, people will go bonkers. They will call the system a failure, that Calipari was in over his head and is certainly not the revolutionary that some called him when this platoon system first became public knowledge. And whenever it happens that the Kentucky platoon system needs to be put to the wayside for a few moments to win a game, and the people who are always ready to pounce on all things Big Blue Nation and John Calipari do just that, they should all feel ashamed. Ashamed for being uneducated about basketball, ashamed for lacking any sense of objectivity, and shamed for being weird enough to not know that good coaches adapt to any given situation — including going away from their flagship strategy plan.
Kentucky has won all six of its games by at least 19 points. That is a huge, just jaw dropping number to be walloping opponents by. But they aren’t winning those games just because of the platoon system — because, really, it isn’t even a system. It is a luxury that Kentucky currently has. To have an abundance of players that deserve to have floor time. A thing that no other program on the planet Earth has to fall back on.
So, via weird and possibly backwards (or not at all) transitive property, Calipari’s system can’t be revolutionary because no other team can feasibly pull it off. Not to mention that Calipari himself won’t be able to do such things going forward. It is odd, if not outright something that will never happen again, that Kentucky has so many upperclassmen on their roster. Most of those McDonald’s All-Americans that make the Kentucky platoon luxury a possibility do not stay around long enough to see what the freshmen spring lunches taste like, nevertheless afford someone like Calipari the roster to tinker with something as appealing as running out so many guys who once wore a McDonald’s uniform that you would swear a hamburger was sponsoring the program.
We should all just enjoy this Kentucky platoon system/luxury/abnormality thing for as long as it is an actual, tangible thing. It might last a few more games, the entire regular season or even into the Big Dance itself, but it is definitely not a thingamabob that is as everlasting as Christopher Walken impressions or YouTube clips of Marty Jannetty dominating the tag team division. It is just a thing. A beautiful, wonderful and — at the moment — luminescent thing.
So, please, let’s stop wasting our time on analyzing this thing to the point of nausea. Like all good things, this thing will eventually come to an end — until it becomes practical again. This thing, for only Kentucky this season, that might happen a few different times over before it fades away into the horizon, is certainly more a thing than a system — whatever this Kentucky platoon thing is, though, I just don’t know.
Hooray, things! I think?
*Section Photo credit to Jonathan Daniel, Getty Images; Featured Photo (above) credit to Kevin Jairaj, USA Today Sports
