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Starbucks as much. I bought a blender. I make myself a healthy drink. And then we go to a morning meeting. Ten we go to our practices in the morning. Tat takes us up to noon. Ten I have a serious workout at noon. Ten in the afternoon, I go over practice schedules. I do some business, ofce work, from 1:30 to 2:30. And then we get ready. Each day I give the players 15 minutes of a diferent topic, unrelated to basketball. And then we do basketball." What Terry Rozier was talking about, would that be part of the 15 minutes? "Yes." I see the scene as Mr. Chips or something like that. (He laughs.) "When we go out together socially, the players, it's just laid-back time. It's, 'Let's talk. Where are you at with your life and what are you doing and who's your girlfriend? Is it serious?' Tose types of discussions." Tat must be fun for you. "It is fun. I worry about them the same way I worry about my children. I worry a lot about Chane Behanan (recently reinstated to the team from suspension). I do worry about him. And on a Friday or Saturday night, I hope he's at the right party. Just like you did with your children. You're looking at your watch, although you don't know what time your players are getting home sometimes. You know what time your children are getting home. It's the same type of concern. It's really no diferent." You've mentioned Pitbull a few times. Who is Pitbull? Is he a DJ? "Armando Christian Pérez. You've never listened to Pit. . . . You HAVE listened to Pitbull; you just don't know you have." I'm a classical-music guy, so I don't think I've listened to Pitbull. "Yea, you have. You have listened to him, though. I have him in my iPod." Kamenish: I've never heard of him either. "You've never heard of Pitbull? You both have. You just don't know it." You've tossed his name out in a press conference, and I didn't want to interrupt to ask. (Pitino plays a Pitbull song on his iPhone. As the song blares, Kamenish notices from Pitino's ofce window Cardinals forward Montrezl Harrell with a girlfriend. "Tat's Patrick Ewing's daughter," Pitino says. Ten he cues up another Pitbull song.) Do the players think you're hip? "(Pitbull's) more of the Miami scene. He's a Cuban-American, and he's a rapper. Maybe the biggest one today." (He selects yet another Pitbull song.) OK, you've answered my question on him. "I just want to make sure you know who he is. . . . He's coming to a game this year." Are you going to sing with him? Are you going to wear your famous white suit? "Not to that game. My son and I met him backstage, and he was the most regular guy. Just a great guy. He was so over-the-top nice." 46 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 12.13 You said that you had a job in college as a night watchman. Horse trainer Nick Zito told me he once sliced bread in a bakery in Queens, where he grew up. And people had these regular jobs when they started out, and I just wondered if you got something out of it. "I just looked to earn money. I worked as a caddie. I worked as a night watchman. I worked as an elevator operator. So it was just to make money. No internship at that point in time." Ten you played college ball at Massachusetts and were a pretty good player. But at some point along the way, one of those days, you decided you wanted to coach. How did that happen? "I signed a professional contract to play in Italy. And in Madison Square Garden we lost in triple overtime to Jacksonville in the NIT. Hawaii won in the opening round; we lost in the 9 o'clock game. We were back in the hotel, and Howard Garfnkel, who ran a fvestar camp and ran a recruiting service, said to me, 'You're wasting your time going overseas to play. You'll play fve to seven years. You'll come back and nobody will remember you. Why don't you go into coaching?' I said, 'Yeah, but I still want to play.' Joking around, I said to him, 'You see that guy (then-Hawaii head coach Bruce O'Neil) over there?' Tis is when Hawaii Five-O was on TV and very popular in the mid-'70s. I said, 'Get me a job with that man, and I'll stop playing.'" So you ended up getting a job in Hawaii. "I talked to (O'Neil) and asked how you get into coaching, and he said you start as a graduate assistant and work your way up. So I had (future Hall of Fame coaches) Hubie Brown and Chuck Daly write a recommendation for me. I'd worked with them at the fve-star camp." (But O'Neil didn't have any openings on his staf. Pitino was about to go to Italy when O'Neil called and said his graduate assistant had decided to go to law school. He had an opening.) "I said, 'Can you give me 24 hours?' He said, 'Not any more than that.' Tis was a Saturday and he needed somebody by the following Friday. I called him back the next day and decided to take it. I was named a full-time assistant about three months later." So was that it? You never wanted to do anything but basketball once you got into coaching? "Once I got into basketball, it consumed my life. I'm into a lot of things, but I spend no time with those other things. Outside of owning Toroughbreds, we own car dealerships, Papa John's (franchises), Dunkin' Donuts, Outback Steakhouses. But I'm an absentee owner." What's your best advice for young people? "You have to be realistic about your skills and talents. Sometimes people chase a passion — my ballplayers, for instance — and they really should put their skills and ambition into something that's attainable. I don't try to tell them you can't be a pro. But know when it's time to get on with it. Not to be going from Luxembourg to France. Let's get on with your life now and use your education to be a success somewhere else. "You measure yourself by your players' success — and not just basketball success. I had a young man named Will Scott, who started with Goldman Sachs and is now at a boutique frm. And Brad Gianiny (2003-'07) was a walk-on, and he's doing very well on Wall Street. Luke Hancock and I just had a discussion about that. I said, 'Luke, you can go overseas and play, try to make it with a pro team, or you can network this town and you'll get yourself a fne job and maybe be a Junior Bridgeman someday.'"