LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Rick Pitino's conversation with Gov. Andy Beshear ran 30 minutes and covered considerably more ground than his remarks about Louisville. A few things that stood out.
He once threatened to quit to keep Richie Farmer from quitting.
Farmer, the beloved guard from Clay County, walked away from the Kentucky program during Pitino's tenure, homesick, worn down by a coach who was, by his own admission, harder on players then than he is now. Pitino called Farmer's family back to his house and tried a different approach.
"I said, 'Rich, I can't understand these people from Kentucky, the way they speak. I'm gonna quit too,'" Pitino recalled. "He said, 'What do you mean you're gonna quit?' I said, 'You go back to Clay County, I'll go back to New York City.'"
Farmer eventually talked him out of it, which, of course, was the point. Years later, Farmer asked if Pitino would really have left.
"I said, 'Of course not. But I had to get you to stay.'"
His son Richard saved a Final Four trip, and made sure Pitino knew it.
Pitino was running a matchup zone in an Elite Eight game when Richard, then a grad assistant, kept telling him to get out of it. Pitino kept telling him to stand down.
"He said, 'You don't come out of this, we're not going to a Final Four,'" Pitino said. "Okay. Time out. We're gonna go man to man."
They won. Richard grabbed his father by the neck.
"He said, 'You can thank me later.'"
He can't coach today's players the way he used to. And he's made peace with that.
"I could never coach the team today at St. John's the way I coached that '96 team," Pitino said. "Couldn't do it. The players today couldn't handle it. The parents pamper them."
He's not complaining — or at least he says he isn't. His point is adaptation, the same theme that runs through his whole career. He pressed full court. He played matchup zone. He rebuilt programs on probation. Now he adjusts to a generation raised differently.
"At 73 years of age, I'm called upon to change," he said. "And you'll see it as a leader — you have to adjust, because the young generation is changing."
He loved the Bad Bunny halftime show. And he has standing to say so.
When the Super Bowl halftime show came up, Pitino didn't hedge. He was the Puerto Rican national team coach for a stretch of his career, and he said the performance — delivered almost entirely in Spanish — moved him.
"The Latino community is so proud," he said. "It wasn't about speaking English. He took us through what they went through in the storm, sitting up on poles — the culture. I thought it was great."
Sitting across from a governor with presidential talk swirling, he made his politics plain.
Pitino told Beshear he's voted for Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and both Bushes. He called himself an independent who votes for the person, not the party. And then, unprompted, he offered something that lands differently when you know who's in the room.
"We are like two different countries right now, and I don't like that," he said. "We need to come together. Difference of opinions are great. But in leading people, you've got to motivate them to be the best they can possibly be."
He looked across the table at the governor.
"I'm hoping big things for you in the future," Pitino said.
Beshear's response: "Certainly doing my best."
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