Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Rick Pitino’s firing is nothing more than kibble to satisfy our not so robust appetite for change

This is how many million bucks you can make every year by taking advantage of a ridiculously naive system.

I get pissed off at cheaters, so I tend to ignore them.  Changing them is too hard.

College basketball is filled with different degrees of cheaters, and Rick Pitino was neither the best nor the worst of them.  He’s just the guy who most recently got caught.

We are now supposed to rage against the depravity of coaches who work with shoe companies to funnel cash to the families of athletes.  I get it.  I’m mad too.

Cheaters get the material things that many covet but can’t afford, while those who operate in the best interest of the student-athletes within the rules get fired because they can’t compete with the cheaters.

This isn’t unique to college hoops – or even college athletics.  Wall Street is filled with similarly motivated thieves, who pay for their estates on Long Island with money filched one way or another from the retirement funds of trusting middle class dupes.

The banking system is never going to change because the rewards for bad actors are immense while the consequences are virtually nonexistent, and the same is true for college basketball.  Coaches are paid millions to lead young men onto the basketball court to compete against similar groups of students. Continue reading →

Three irrefutable reasons Tom Crean should not take the interim job at Louisville

This is the face Tom Crean should use to tell Louisville “No!” should they facetime him to offer him the job.

Helping people is what I enjoy best, and today my efforts are to help former Indiana basketball coach Tom Crean compile his list of reasons not to pick up the phone if the University of Louisville calls.

I also want Louisville fans to wrap their arms around a few facts as they build expectations as to who might be the program’s fifth coach since World War II..

Before we begin our little adventure in explaining why Crean would never take the job, it’s important to understand the difference between interim and permanent.  If at the end of this season Tom Crean is offered the permanent Louisville job, he might crawl over broken glass to accept it or he might not.  It will depend upon how the NCAA sanctions shake out, and who is hired into the president and athletic director positions.

Louisville is a college basketball blue blood, and there is plenty of good down there.  Unfortunately, none of the positive attributes outweigh the current day negatives as a shrewd and detail-oriented coach like Crean evaluates his next move.

Here is a quick look at five reasons Tom Crean should not to accept the position as interim men’s basketball coach at the University of Louisville:

3 – He’s already being paid ay Indiana.  Why grab a mop to clean up this mess when IU is still cutting you checks for combing the beach with a metal detector, or whatever else Crean might be doing to fill his days?  Crean wants to coach again, but he needs to be very careful about his next step.  Mopping does not need to be a part of his responsibilities, so why welcome it?

2 – No idea to whom you will answer.  Never take a job without a clear idea of who your boss will be.  That’s one of the great rules of evaluating a job offer.  I was once interviewed by phone by three different executives of a media company.  I asked each, “Who will I report to?”  Each answered, “Me!”  Adios, muchachos!  Until the permanent university president and athletic director are named, this job is toxic.  The chances of the interim coach becoming permanent are minuscule when two different people will make that call.

1 – The NCAA may lower the boom.  I cannot fathom the NCAA assessing the death penalty to a basketball program like Louisville, but the sanctions will be severe for the second major violation in a very short period of time.  The penalties will like be debilitating for a significant period of time.  While this is also a great reason for avoiding the permanent job, it’s no less crucial now as players are likely to run from the campus like it’s burning as the NCAA flexes its muscles with scholarship limits, postseason bans, and recruiting restrictions.

Usually, these lists are five or 10 items long.  No need for more than three here.

Let’s hope Lakers tampering leads to former Pacers Paul George playing somewhere other than LA

If the NBA values justice, what is depicted in this image will never become reality.

Did the Los Angeles Lakers communicate with Paul George or his agent Aaron Mintz in a way that measures up to the NBA’s standard for tampering?

I have no idea, but the Pacers believe so.

Here is what we do know:

  • Somehow or another Mintz and his client came to the conclusion that George would leave the Pacers for the Lakers when his contract expires in 2018.
  • The rest of the NBA learned that George planned to leave for the Lakers, and the result for the Pacers was an evisceration of his trade value.

Continue reading →

Grant Gelon is upset he is no longer a Hoosier, but the anger is misplaced

Grant Gelon learned that some dreams don’t always come true, but can lead to other dreams that might.

“We don’t see you fitting into our plans here.”

That’s what IU basketball coach Archie Miller told Grant Gelon a few months ago, according to the NW Indiana Times.  It was an honest, direct, and unpleasant assessment to hear.

Gelon was unhappy at that moment with Miller, and remains so.  Indiana offered to make good on its promise to honor the full scholarship until Gelon earned his degree, but Gelon wants to play basketball, so he recently enrolled at State Fair Community College.

The really unpleasant truth is that the responsibility for Gelon’s disappointment lies at the feet of former coach Tom Crean for offering Gelon the scholarship in the first place. Continue reading →

When Paul George returns to Indy December 13th, silence should greet him

Paul George should be treated like any other OKC Thunder on December 13 because that is all he is.  Next year, Thunder fans can do the same when the Lakers come to town.

Paul George looked so forward to bolting Indianapolis that he let his destination be known when free agency allowed in the summer of 2018..

The Lakers are where he wants to play, and the Lakers have crept quite close to tampering in letting it be known they covet him.  It’s a marriage made in purple and gold mediocrity.

Bringing Pacers management into the circle of trust as George came to the determination that he would return home was classy.  Leaving the Pacers in the dark as they tried to woo him like a soon-to-be jilted husband begs his too-hot wife to try counseling would have been cruel.

The Pacers deserved the opportunity to get value back for their prized all-star.  When George’s camp leaked that he planned to sign with the Lakers, it contradicted his empathetic appearance and eviscerated the Pacers opportunity to command more than 60-cents on the dollar in return.

Nothing against Victor Oladipo and Domas Sabonis, but the Pacers would have gotten more if not for the George leak that he’s headed home to LA. Continue reading →

Former IU coach Tom Crean is the Rube Goldberg of basketball

To succeed as a coach, Tom Crean needs to understand more about people than he does about basketball.

Basketball according to former Indiana coach Tom Crean – Winning Basketball = LB/7 + 3s(7)

Simple concepts allow students to understand.  Reducing the complicated into basic easy to understand bites of information is the key to allowing people to understand them.

Basketball is an easy sport.  On offense, create open shots and make them.  Defensively, limit open shots and rebound misses.  Easy.

Former IU basketball coach Tom Crean became a former coach because he was very adept at needlessly complicating the simple.  The result was confusion on the court, and a confused team is never going to be confident. Continue reading →

Big 10 commish Jim Delany gets paid – and in a couple of years, he’ll get honest

Jim Delany is a smart guy, and he’s paid like one to run a conference filled with athletes paid nothing.

Big 10 commissioner Jim Delany is in the process of receiving a $20 million bonus for his work leading the conference’s athletic departments to unprecedented profitability.

That’s a lot of cash – even for a visionary who saw the road to massive earnings through launching the Big Ten Network.

During a time when the debate regarding student-athletes deserving some of that cash rages, and control of the right to unilaterally exploit the images of current and former athletes are being decided in court, that $20 million does not provide the best look for the Big 10 or college athletics. Continue reading →

Blame physics for the misery of watching the Brickyard 400

Even cars bursting into flames didn’t energize the “crowd” for the Brickyard 400.

It’s not like NASCAR and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway are conspiring to bore us every July.  They don’t want the Brickyard 400 to suck any more than we do.

But it does, and watching it rewards only our ability to endure tedium.

Six hours and nine minutes.  That’s how long it took yesterday’s Brickyard 400 from green flag to checkers.  That’s a long time for any car to traverse 400 miles.  Going a steady 80 mph on the interstate, I can get through 400 miles in an hour and nine minutes less.

Okay, there was a 1:47 rain delay, but still. Continue reading →