Not A Great Week For Kentucky’s John Calipari

LEXINGTON, KY - NOVEMBER 22: John Calipari the head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats gives instructions to Wenyen Gabriel #32 in the game against the IPFW Mastodons at Rupp Arena on November 22, 2017 in Lexington, Kentucky. | Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Questions about his salary and criticism from a former player made this past week a drag for Cal

It hasn’t been a great week for John Calipari. First he faced some questions about not taking a pay cut like a lot of coaches have during the pandemic. The reason he hasn’t is apparently because he isn’t paid by Kentucky but rather by JMI, the unversity’s marketing partner.

Or at least not entirely. He does get $400,000 from UK which would probably be very helpful to the people who aren’t getting paid $8.2 millions like Calipari is, which presumably doesn’t count all of his secondary income streams.

Then one of his former players, Wenyen Gabriel, again expressed his unhappiness with his former coach.

Last year, he took to Twitter to advise Jaden McDaniels not to choose Kentucky.

This year, Calipari publicly wished another former player, Bam Adebayo a happy birthday and Gabriel had more comments, first wondering where his birthday wishes were and second, explicitly stating his unhappiness about Calipari, saying this: “I didn’t like playing for him in college. Then he cut me off after the Jaden situation, so now it is what it is...Before I came to Kentucky, I was a top 15 recruit. When I left I went undrafted…”

Calipari has apparently now cut off contact with his former player.

He’s not alone - lots of players are unhappy with how their college careers worked out - but not too many take it to this level.