TRANSCRIPT: John Calipari on the need for a new practice facility

Earlier today, John Calipari went in-depth on the program’s need for a new practice facility. Clearly, his comments about Kentucky being a basketball school are what people are running with — especially at the football facility — but in the interest of context, here’s a full transcript of the 12-minute segment.

Q: Tell me about this practice facility that I hear you have some interest in.

Look, I’ve got a president [Eli Capilouto] that I work for who, first of all, said, ‘Students first.’ And then, what did he do? [‘He built a bunch of dorms’] What else did he do? [‘Student Center’] And what else did he build? He built all the places they eat and how they eat. This guy — the other thing I see, University FOR Kentucky. Not University of Kentucky. University for Kentucky. So now, I’ve been going West Kentucky, I’ve spent a lot of time in East Kentucky and going northern and stuff but this basketball program is the University for Kentucky, and what that is 20 years ahead. It includes the history of this program. Where do you find the history of this program? Where? Do you go in a book and read it? How about, the history, where people from East and West can come and there’s the history of this program?

Now, if you’re 24 or 25, what is your history? The last 10, 12 years. Interactive. How about players are interviewed about their experiences here and their recollection of our time and you can walk into this — it’s not a Hall of Fame — but an area where you walk in and it’s interactive. And, you want to take pictures, real-life pictures of Anthony Davis. This state deserves that. This basketball program has been what it’s been for 100 years. It ain’t changing. But that’s part of it.

Now, the rest of it, the facility, the gyms, the sports science in there, how you eat, the nutritionists, all of it, should be 20 years ahead. And we can do that. I would tell you that everybody should be behind this. Our administration, look, I’m telling you, when you say, our baseball facility might be the nicest in the country. And I’m happy about that. Our football facility, we spent $200 million. Soccer? We’ve got an unbelievable [facility]. I’ve been there, watched the soccer. You’re talking now, the track? I loved it.

At the end of the day, when I walked in here 13 years ago, things weren’t, you know, forget about where the basketball program was, but to bring everything together so we could build all this stuff, and now, I would say, the administration should be like, ‘We’re doing this.’ How about the state? If this is the University for Kentucky and it’s the basketball program, which everybody, that’s what it is, how about the state says, ‘We’re in. We’re going to invest.’ I’ll tell you right now. Anthony Davis gave $350,000 on a text to me. ‘I want to do this. Tell me what I do.’ Do you know what our former players would do? They’ve just got to see it. What is it? It’s the next challenge that we all have.

Q: So are you planning to bang the drum and raise the funds, essentially, for that?

What it has to be is the importance of everybody saying, ‘Well, wait a minute. We need all that stuff. And let’s go with it.’ When we did the locker room at Rupp Arena, any negative people, we left out. Anybody that had — we did that facility in nine months. We dug up the ground. And it wasn’t state-funded, university-funded. We went in and said, we’re doing this. And the only people involved were the ones who said yes, we’re doing it. We have the nicest locker room in the entire country, in the NBA or college. That’s how it got done. Now, I’m saying, yes, we have all these wonderful facilities. Now it’s time, this is what it is. Let’s go.

Q: And you’re thinking of a combined-use space? A museum-type thing?

I think yeah. This is my mindset, what I’m saying. I’m not saying just a gym — but it has to be bigger and not leak like the one we’ve got. But it’s gotta be bigger because that’s what they are now. People should come in and see this and say, ‘Whoa.’ But this is Kentucky Basketball. The gold standard in the country. This university, this state, basketball. So now, it’s time to say, this is what we want to do. I think again, yeah, I’ll push the needle. Let’s go.

But I would say, what our president has done, he knows the impact it’s had. You know we have our biggest class ever. Why is that? Because of what you did for them. Now, if we all want basketball to keep going like we’re doing, they can say, you’re doing recruiting, this that or the other, this stuff flips real quick. I think it’s the next challenge we have and then it becomes — I’m telling you, why wouldn’t the state come in and say, ‘We’re in. We’ll earmark it.’ Because this is the basketball program for the University for Kentucky. And everybody can enjoy this and come and see this and be on campus and look at what this is. Again, I think you would have people give to it. That’s one thing people in this state will give to: men’s Basketball. Oh, they’ll give.

Q: Did that ever surprise you when you got here, where do you find Kentucky history? I know at one point there was a museum and it got shut down, but that a program like this, there’s not some grand hall where you can see it all?

You’ve got to be intentional. You’ve got to say, we’re doing this. And the reason is this is a basketball school. It’s always been that. Alabama is a football school. So is Georgia. They are. This is a basketball — no disrespect. Our football team, I hope they win games, ten games, and go to bowls. At the end of the day, that makes my job easier and it makes the job of all of us easier. but this is a basketball school. And so, we need to keep moving in that direction and doing what we’re doing.

And I think people knowing it’s not just, well he needs a gym, fix the roof. That’s not what I’m — if you know me well enough when I’m saying we need something, I’m talking like the locker room at Rupp Arena. I went in — I’ll tell you this story. They showed me the locker room. It smelled like urine. Pee. That’s what it smelled like. You know why it smelled like pee in there? The circus was in there the week before. Do you know what elephants do? They pee. And how about a giraffe? Do you ever see a giraffe pee? It’s five minutes. So now all of a sudden, you figure out the entire building had heating and cooling, one unit that heated everything, including the locker room. So, if it was 90 degrees in that arena, it was 90 degrees, 105, you know what pee does at 105? And I went in and said, ‘We can’t do this.’ And then we got together and said, ‘Hey.’ I went to Joe Craft, the Healey family.

You know what they built when they built this with the money that we raised? They built new locker rooms, they built 6,000 square feet of storage space, they built a new area for the media. All that stuff. They built new areas. The biggest thing we did? The heating and cooling is in our locker room for our locker room. So if you want this to smell like urine and be 115, our locker room will be 71 degrees. And it’s self-contained. Now, when people go in, they say there’s not a better locker room. How many years ago did we do it? [‘Seven? Eight?’]

Here’s the thing with this. I would want — that locker room will be fine for another ten years. I want this, whatever we do, 20 years. Everybody’s still talking and still, you know, building it the right way. And we can do it. And we can raise the money. But you’ve got to get started. You’ve got to get champions for men’s basketball, for the basketball program. Who are the champions? Can’t be just me. It’s gotta be throughout. When the university stands and says, we need to do this, this will get done right away.

Q: You don’t sound like a man that’s ready to walk out the door, then. Because that’s not going to be done next week or next year.

I hope it’s done within a year, two years. I do. I’m just that guy. We all come together and — [‘Where would it go?’] I don’t know yet. I have an idea where I’d like it to go because I’d like it to be the centerpiece of the campus. In the centerpiece of the campus. We have an unbelievable library, where it sits and all that. There are areas where you can say, wow. It’s that space. But, you know what? That would be people coming together and saying how do we do this? Where do we do it?

You’ve got to get architects involved to say, ‘Here’s the vision.’ I’ll tell you, when we did the locker room, we did it on a board. I did it on a whiteboard. And we ended up, here’s what I want this thing to look like and the architects went and drew it up and bang. It literally got done in 8-9 months. Again, the way we did it with the funding and all that stuff, it’ll move. Like I said, I believe people know. People know the importance of basketball to our state. The University for Kentucky. And tying this all together and making this — I’m not saying $200 million. That’s not what I’m saying. You can do this and make it done right.

They’re doing archives. Jim Host was doing archives where they’re doing all these interviews with former players so they have the archives. It could be right in this building. You want to go listen to the interviews. You could do sit-down interviews with Anthony [Davis], with John Wall, with DeMarcus [Cousins], all these. There’s 50 of them. Where you could visually see them talking about their experience and you go to the wall and press their picture and they talk about what they wanted to do here. Again, they will give to something like that. These kids will.