Kentucky’s John Calipari pushes for summer college basketball, scoffs at

LEXINGTON, Ky. — John Calipari had already stayed longer than expected. He was the featured guest on a panel about how to lead and succeed at the highest level in sports last week at the Central Bank Center, and after several classic, rambling Calipari anecdotes, he was barreling through his allotted time. The moderator made a gentle, futile attempt to silence the most ungovernable mouth in college basketball: OK, I think we’re about out of time. Calipari grinned and shook his head.

“You understand,” he said, “I leave when I feel like leaving.”

And to paraphrase Leonardo DiCaprio’s famous line from “The Wolf of Wall Street:” He’s not bleepin’ leaving. Not any time soon, at least.

Over the last 18 months, Calipari has watched three legendary coaching contemporaries call it a career. North Carolina’s Roy Williams, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Villanova’s Jay Wright all retired, leaving Calipari as arguably the face (and voice) of the sport. But their departures also raise the question of how much longer Kentucky’s 63-year-old coach wants to keep doing this. There are many theories, all of which make him laugh.

“I’m having a ball,” he said that day on the panel. “I don’t have a timeline. But I’ll know. You know when? When I can’t help kids anymore.”

Entering his 31st season as a college head coach and Year 14 at Kentucky, a job he used to say no mortal man could handle for more than a decade, it’s clear Calipari is not yet out of energy or ideas. He’s still recruiting aggressively, as far ahead as the 2025 class, still scheduling games way out — a