Title/Author:
“Pitino: My Story” by Rick
Pitino with Seth Kaufman
Tags:
Basketball, college,
professional, memoir, Kentucky, Louisville, Providence, Knicks, Celtics, coaching
Publish
date:
September
4, 2018
Length:
280 pages
Rating:
4 of 5
stars (very good)
Review:
When Rick Pitino was fired as the coach of the Louisville Cardinals in
2017, it was considered to be just the beginning of the exposure of a major
scandal involving shoe companies and college basketball. Add this problem to
Pitino’s earlier scandal involving one of his staff members allegedly hiring
prostitutes to engage in sex with potential recruits and it is easy to dismiss
Pitino as a scandal-ridden coach despite his excellent record and national
titles at both Kentucky and Louisville.
Pitino tells his side of the story and more about his coaching career in
this captivating memoir.
While the book starts off about with discussion of his firing, it follows
Pitino’s coaching career from an assistant coach with the NBA’s New York Knicks
and continuing through head coaching jobs in college in Providence, Kentucky
and Louisville with stops in New York (again) and Boston to coach those
professional teams. With the Celtics, he
was also the general manager, a move he regretted as he believed he couldn’t
have done both jobs properly.
No matter the stop, Pitino shares his coaching stories with reverence for
players and staff at each one. It seems
like he had regrets any time he left a job for another one, with the possible
exception of the Celtics. His success,
however, in every place (except, of course, Boston), is well known as well. Pitino seems to be most proud of what he
accomplished at Providence, where he took a program with very little success to
the Final Four in 1987 out of the powerful Big East conference. He also talks
about a player whom he made work to earn his way to the starting lineup, Billy
Donovan. Donovan not only became a star on that Providence team but coached the
University of Florida to consecutive national titles.
Of course, Pitino talks about the scandals and also gives the reader a good
explanation of how shoe company money has infiltrated basketball. This is true not only at the college level,
but also in the grassroots/amateur level as money is paid to coaches, teams and
schools for player to exclusively wear their brand of shoes and gear. Pitino
admits to taking this money at Louisville, but in the context that all schools do
this to some degree and that the money eventually DOES help the schools. While plausible, this explanation can leave
the reader asking just what he is trying to say about this issue. Pitino also spends much time questioning the
investigation process done by the Department of Justice, often repeating a
phrase that an investigator used by calling himself and the Louisville athletic
director “collateral damage.”
One other aspect of this investigation and his subsequent firing from
Louisville that is interesting is his claims of a partisan board of directors
at Louisville did not dismiss him fairly.
While he implicates the governor of Kentucky in this because he made the
appointments for this board, the partisanship is not Democrat versus Republican,
but instead the University of Kentucky versus Louisville University. Because
Pitino claims that the board was loaded with either graduates or partisans toward
Kentucky, he didn’t stand a chance because of the fierce rivalry between the
two schools. While it makes for great
reading and one can be swayed by the persuasiveness of the writing, it does
have an air of unbelievability.
The other major scandal that affected Pitino was one that was the topic
of a book in which a woman claimed a staff member on Pitino’s staff was luring
recruits by offering sex by prostitutes, some of whom were underage. On this
topic, his beliefs about what really happened seem to contradict. On the one hand, he questioned the woman’s
allegations, could not possibly believe his employee could engage in such
illegal behavior and provided many other people who said that this activity
never took place at the dormitory where these parties allegedly took place. Then,
later in the book, he took responsibility for hiring this employee and that if
this did happen, he has to take some of the responsibility. This took me by surprise because if it did
happen, and he provides plenty of information that would seem to make the whole
story a fabrication, why would he take a fall for this?
Because this book presents only Pitino’s side of the story, the context
has to be taken into account as unbalanced.
It is refreshing to hear this side as there has been plenty written
about the accusations and investigation.
In the end, this book will probably not sway the reader one way or the
other if his or her mind has already been made up. But if a reader wants to read this side of
the story or just learn more about Pitino’s coaching career, then this is a
good book to pick up as it is a quick and mostly entertaining read.
I wish to thank Diversion Books for providing a copy of the book via
NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Book Format
Read:
E-book (Kindle)
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