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Coaching from the Inside Out
May 2014
On Sale: April 22, 2014
277 pages ISBN: 1594205736 EAN: 9781594205736 Kindle: B00DMCPO9K Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
In Players First, John Calipari relates for the first
time anywhere his experiences over his first four years
coaching the Kentucky Wildcats, college basketball’s most
fabled program, from the doldrums to a national
championship, drawing lessons about leadership, character,
and the path to personal and collective victory. At its core, Calipari’s coaching philosophy centers on
keeping his focus on the players—what they need to get the
best out of themselves and one another. He is beloved by his
players for being utterly honest with them and making
promises that he always keeps, no matter what. He knows that
in this age, they come to Kentucky to prepare for the NBA;
every year he gets players who in a previous era would have
gone directly into the pros from high school but now have to
play college basketball for one year. Calipari has fought
against this system, but he has to play within it, and so he
does, better than anyone. The result is an extraordinary leadership challenge: every
year Coach Cal gets a handful of eighteen-year-old kids who
have been in a bubble for the previous four years at least,
filled with hype about their own greatness, and they come to
Kentucky feeling sure that they will play for their coach
only for seven months before they go on to greater glory.
Every year, he has to reinvent his team. After his 2012 NCAA
championship, it was particularly dramatic; he lost his
first six players in the first round, meaning that someone
who couldn’t even start for Kentucky was a first-round draft
pick. The overall record at Kentucky, and for his career, puts
Calipari in the pantheon of the greatest coaches in the
history of the game. Bold, funny, and truthful, like Coach
Calipari himself, Players First is truly the first
deep reckoning with the meaning of his experiences and the
gifts of insight they offer.
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