STF Q&A: Author David Scott with Kentucky Coach John Calipari

 

The title of this post is long for a reason. Without writer David Scott, our questions for Coach Cal would have no doubt remained unanswered. David collaborated with Coach Calipari to write the best-selling business tome Bounce Back: Overcoming Setbacks to Succeed in Business and in Life, and the two have known each other since Calipari's days at UMass. We asked David about his experiences working with Coach Cal, and he was kind enough to ask Coach to answer some of the questions for us, as well. You can read Marco's earlier interview with David Scott here.

John Calipari has had phenomenal success as the head coach at UMass and Memphis, taking each team to the Final Four. He was given a dream job when the University of Kentucky hired him in March of 2009. Like anyone, he has faced his share of professional adversity, as well. He has parried NCAA inquiries in his previous coaching stops. The New Jersey Nets thought he was a genius when they hired him in 1996, then a failure when they fired him in 1999.

We communicated with Coach Calipari via an email exchange with David Scott. Both men talked to us about the book's central idea: how one deals with setbacks - on the court, at work, at home - can lead to long-term success.

---

Storming the Floor: Fans tend to form opinions about public figures based on what they see on television. Do you think a book like this will give us a more complete view of who Coach Calipari is?

David Scott: I hope it does. But I know how things work. Most people have already put either the black hat or the white hat on Coach Calipari. That's the way it is when you have the success he's had and arrive at the pinnacle of your profession. But I've been on the "Bounce Back" book tour with him. I've been "from Pikeville to Paducah," as he likes to say, and this book is resonating. It's NOT a sports book. It's a self-help/advice book and Coach Calipari is brutally honest about the setbacks he has faced in his life and how he's overcome them.

I think what also is giving a more complete view of him is the way he is using social media. Nearly a million followers on Twitter, which is just ridiculous for a non-professional athlete or entertainer; 60,000-plus on Facebook and a website, CoachCal.com, that I'm fairly sure is going to change the way college coaches use their sites. Coach Calipari is so far ahead of the curve on all this stuff, it's remarkable. The story of how he has leveraged all these new media opportunities is worth its own interview.

STF: Coach Calipari could easily have written an autobiography or a book of coaching tips. What made him want to go in the direction of giving life advice instead?

David Scott: I'll let Coach answer that one.

Coach Calipari: After a few years at Memphis, I started getting calls from coaches at all levels. They wanted to know what I did after the Nets fired me. How I handled certain things? What I did to stay visible? Who I reached out to? I asked those same questions when I was going through it and I wished I'd had this book then.

You won't believe this, but it's true - I took a legal pad out to my back patio in Memphis and sat there and hand wrote almost 300 pages over a few days. I had it typed up, sent it out to a few of my closest friends and asked them if they thought there was a book in it. They told me two things: You can't write and yes, there's something there. So I hired a writer (David, who I had known since our UMass days) and we got one of the greatest agents in New York, David Black, and things went from there.

STF: What qualifies a basketball coach to give this kind of advice?

David Scott: What qualifies any non-psychologist/psychiatrist, mental health professional to write these kind of books? Yet the shelves are lined with similar titles from coaches, entertainers and any number of common folks. And believe me, I read a ton of them in preparing to write Bounce Back with Coach Calipari.

The thing that really qualifies Coach, I think, is how public both of his major setbacks were. The Nets firing was pretty nasty if you'll recall - the New York media had a field day, which is part and parcel of the job. And the Kansas loss in the title game, well, let's just say that wasn't exactly something he could run and hide from. And you know what? He was able to handle that loss - and get praise for the way he did so - because of the Nets firing. And before the STF readers start bombarding me with emails starting, "Yeah, but he had xx million dollars," - understand that the raw emotion, the feeling of failure, the dejection is all the same whether you're white collar, blue collar or no collar (I borrowed that from Coach).

When you lose a job or you go through a divorce or any similar setback, you lose your identity. You begin to question yourself on everything - it is raw and painful and money can't erase that.

STF: How did Coach get his players at UMass to believe that they could compete at a Final Four level?

David Scott: I've been around a lot of college coaches in 20 years on the national scene. I've seen it done in different ways by different guys to varying levels of success. What sets Coach Calipari apart in my opinion is his ability to both motivate and get the most out of every player. His coaching ability gets short shrift far too often. Look at his numbers - they're ridiculous. This last four-year stretch will never be duplicated by anyone. (If they vacate the Final Four, it will be a huge injustice, but those games were won and I don't care what the NCAA says.)

STF: David, I know you were in San Antonio when Memphis played for the championship. How long after the loss did you and Coach start talking about turning that experience into a book? Was it an important part of that particular "bounce back"?

David Scott: This may be a dirty little secret, but the book was already in the works well before that. In fact, we had just gotten the deal when that game was played. It started out as a book based on the Nets firing. In truth, that loss helped us have more material! The book became better because of that loss, although I couldn't see that at the time

STF: Coach Cal built a Final Four program at UMass, resurrected a Final Four program at Memphis, and is now tasked with running a program that expects to be in the Final Four. Do you adapt to the situation, or try to impose your will on it?

David Scott: Again, I'll let Coach Calipari answer that.

Coach Calipari: I'm doing it the same way I did at UMass and Memphis, to be honest. Now, I haven't had to sell tickets here - Rupp is sold out forever I think! But all the touring and meeting with community leaders and reaching out to the fans? Same stuff I did in Amherst and in Memphis. It's just that now I have the power of all this social media. There's no question UK is just different - everything is magnified.

STF: The book talks about being "coachable", or willing to listen to others. I think Coach Calipari surprised many hoops experts when he adopted the DDM offense created by relatively unknown JC coach Vance Walberg a few years back. Is it important for coaches to also be "coachable"?

David Scott: Again, I'll defer to the Coach.

Coach Calipari: It is. Before practice started here, I went and spent a couple of days with Larry Brown in Charlotte. I always throw things off him and a bunch of guys, but that trip in particular really got me focused on things.

He's incredible - there's not much he hasn't seen, but even he is still willing to be "coachable" as you call it. When I first ran the Dribble Drive by him, he was like, 'What are you doing? Taking an offense from a junior college coach?' But over the years, he has come to appreciate it and has helped me adapt it.

STF: Coach Cal's "Kitchen Cabinet" of personal friends/advisors is pretty diverse. Is it important to stray outside of your comfort zone (basketball, in this case) when seeking advice?

David Scott: It really is. If your Kitchen Cabinet has too many of the same "types" you run the risk of having a one-sided response to everything. We also suggest that you need both men and women, both young and old.

STF: Fans and pundits have had some fairly rough things to say about you over the years. How do you, personally, deal with that sort of thing?

Coach Calipari: I worry about the customer, not the competition. The customer, for me, is my players, my staff, our fans and the University. If the world gets me mad, then I'm the loser. I don't read the local papers, don't get on a computer and at most I'll check out USA Today when we're on the road or if it's laying around.

The arrows that are shot at me now are going through bazooka holes. It's like I tell my team - we will create our own happiness. All that outside stuff is not worth paying attention to.

STF: I'm going to be honest here. I usually have to go through at least a brief period of despair and self-pity before I steel myself to "bounce back". Is that counterproductive?

David Scott: No. In fact, in the book we have a great career coach, Bobbie LaPorte, who tells us that it's okay to "grieve" for a little bit. It's when that grieving lingers and prevents you from moving forward is when it becomes dangerous.

STF: One of the first points made in the book is that you need to deal with the pain of those around you before you heal your own. How do you get out of your own headspace (as mentioned above) long enough to do that?

David Scott: Coach goes into that a bit in the book. He said it was easier after the Kansas loss because he had been through it in New Jersey and he knew how much his family, friends and staff would be hurting. To me, personally, it's almost better to put the concern on others for a while because it distracts you from feeling sorry for yourself. You need to show that things are going to be okay. Hopefully you have people around you who can understand that and then they become your support group.

STF: Coach also talks a little about feeling on top of the world when the Nets hired him. Should one always stay mentally prepared to bounce back, even when things seem great?

David Scott: One of the big lessons of Bounce Back is that no one goes through life unscathed. There is always something that sets you back and often times there are many somethings. You will not just have one bounce back in life and the key, as Coach Calipari points out, is to learn from each one and get stronger from each one.

STF: What's the purpose of the Bounce Back page on the website?

David Scott: We want to give people who read the book a chance to share their stories with visitors to the site and build a community of Bounce Backers who can help each other and then help friends and family. Some of the stories have been really incredible and inspiring.

A lot of the ones we receive we aren't able to publish because of the private nature, but those stories are the ones that Coach Calipari reads and says, "Yep, we're making a difference." He said himself that he's been able to touch about 100 lives of players, directly, through coaching. But with this book, he can literally reach hundreds of thousands.

That's actually been the encouraging thing - the book's weekly numbers have held consistent, so it bears out that the message is spreading. Starting out on the Wall Street Journal best-seller list helped and then we made the extended list at the New York Times. It's really been well-received, you just don't ordinarily get a lot of write-ups on these kind of books so we've had to go grassroots a bit. We've had professors contact us about using it in business schools and teachers who want to share it with students. I think it will have staying power. 

STF: David, as a writer, you started this as a book about the coach of the Memphis Tigers. During that time, Memphis went through some difficulties and your subject moved to Kentucky. Did the subject matter of the book impact how you dealt with the mood swings of the project?

David Scott: Probably, but moreso it was Coach who kept me even and level. I kept a journal for much of the writing process (yeah, I know, I'm a loser) and one of the entries from last Winter when I was really in the thick of writing and almost in complete isolation, starts off, "He began to Coach me - whether he knew it or not. I so looked forward to his morning calls and then his late night follow-ups. No matter how overwhelmed I felt, no matter how crappy I felt my writing was, he never stopped asking for my absolute best each day."

I won't say I was going through my own bounce back, but it was a pivotal time in my life - I was going through a break-up, I had the most important project of my life weighing on me and there was uncertainity of what my next move would be when the book was finished.

I don't think Coach even knows this, but I was sort of a guinea pig for what he was putting forth. And you know what? The stuff worked. I got out of bed every day and said, "I have to make the most of this day." I started working out, lost 20 pounds and truly, I bounced back within the writing of "Bounce Back." That's corny and probably seems melodramatic, but it's true.

I've talked to a lot of buddies who have done books with coaches or athletes and every one of them is amazed when I tell them how involved Coach Calipari was in the ENTIRE process. He line-edited up until the final corrections on our "must-go-out-the-door day." Honestly. We re-worked an entire chapter after Kentucky's own Kenny Perry lost the Masters in such crushing fashion.

Coach Calipari has this incredible ability to take whatever information you present him, assess it and then come up with a plan that would have taken the normal person weeks to come up with. And he's right 95 percent of the time. "I was wrong once," he reminded me often, "I think it was 1987!" But seriously, he just wouldn't accept anything but my best effort. Best of all, we never argued, never really had any disagreements over content or structure or anything. It's a huge reason why I was willing to pick up and move down to Lexington, KY from Boston and run his website.

I've just purchased a home in Boston, but I know that being around this program, this season, is essential for the success of the website and I'm grateful Coach has entrusted me with running it and being by his side. I wish more people could see the side of him that I've been allowed to see. He is so loyal, so caring for those around him. The media perception put forth by a certain few is so wrong and so unfair. Coach would never say that, but I will. There are media people with agendas against him and if you pay attention you know exactly who and what I'm talking about.

Lastly, I just need to say that I've been here less than two months and every day I continue to be blown away by the importance of this program to the state of Kentucky. It's just incredible, it really is. Back home, my friends and family want me to compare it to Red Sox Nation and I just laugh. Compared to Big Blue Nation, the Red Sox fans have a normal, run of the mill affection for their team. Everything surrounding this program matters monumentally.