Eric Musselman considers Coach Cal 'a friend, a mentor' -- despite stealing DR national team job

Before the Muss Bus set up shop in Fayetteville, it spent some time in the Dominican Republic, Eric Musselman coaching the DR national team from 2010-11 — among a dozen-plus other stops and opportunities. He remembers Coach Cal calling him and asking for intel on some Dominican players Muss had been with, not knowing he was still under contract with the team.

In short, he was delivering the news Musselman was getting canned, Calipari taking over, effective immediately.

“‘I got a contract in my email inbox!’” Muss said at the time.

That was over a decade ago. And they knew each other in coaching circles well before that. Their relationship runs deep — and it’s a positive one with plenty of mutual respect there.

“A long history,” Musselman said ahead of his team’s matchup vs. Kentucky on Saturday. “He had a group of coaches come to Memphis, it was like a coaching clinic seminar, closed door with just a small group of coaches. And then obviously the international stuff is where I got an opportunity to spend a lot of time with him. Obviously, he took my job with the Dominican Republic — I never got a chance to coach Karl-Anthony Towns, but somehow he was on the Dominican team that next year after I left [laughs]. He was there and I was coaching Venezuela.

“Most of those tournaments you eat in the same spot, you’re in the same hotel, there’s a flag for the country that you represent. I don’t know about Cal’s Spanish, mine’s probably a little better than his. But we kind of gravitated to eat together at certain meals.”

Fast forward to now and the two are SEC rivals, both considered among the top coaches in college basketball. The on-court battles have been a blast, but Musselman appreciates Calipari’s efforts outside the lines for the game of basketball in general.

“I think he’s a guy that — super important, the coaching profession, to him. I mean, we all want to win and compete and get after it, but I do think in the SEC coaches meetings and things like that, everything he talks about is always for the betterment of the profession,” Muss said of Cal. “I think he’s super creative, his ideas about trying to create some type of summer league like the NBA has. To do that in August? Super creative. And his winning goes without saying.”

Calipari may have taken Musselman’s job to steal Karl-Anthony Towns way back when, but they consider themselves coaching friends all these years later.

“Tremendous respect,” Muss said. “I look at him as a friend and mentor, somebody that you seek advice from when you need it. I love how his team is playing this year.”