Appearing at Harrah’s Tunica, Kentucky-bound former University of
Memphis basketball coach John Calipari heard himself praised by emcee
Dave Woloshin and by Calipari’s youthful coaching successor, Josh
Pastner, a former Calipari aide, for what they said was a high proportion of graduating seniors
among his scholar athletes.

Well, fine, but how does that fact stack up against the prevalence
of “one-and-done” stars like Derrick Rose and Tyreke Evans, who sparked
the Tigers’ 2008 and 2009 NCAA tournament contenders, respectively?
Which is to say, the high graduation rate was based only on seniors and
not on the totality of the players in Calipari’s program.

The guest of honor Monday night, former National Basketball
Association great and current TNT commentator Charles Barkley, said
something which we regard as more salient. Speaking against the current
de facto compact between the NBA and the NCAA, which requires that a
full year must pass from the time of a prospective player’s high school
graduation date and his eligibility to play in the NBA, Barkley opined
that the bar should be raised to at least two years. That idea was
consistent both with his belief that the additional year of college
play better equips a player for the rigors of pro play and with a more
expansive theme of Barkley’s.

Acknowledging that which anybody with the remotest knowledge of the
NBA knows — that pro basketball is primarily a black man’s game
— Barkley argued strongly, as he said he does in his speeches to
high schools, that African Americans should think of themselves as
something other than potential athletes or entertainers. That idea is
hardly novel with Barkley, but it’s underscored by the fact of its
being said by an undisputed Hall of Famer. Barkley has also said that
he prizes his current media job at TNT more than he does his years of
basketball glory. Why? Because it gives him a bully pulpit to discuss
the whole range of important life lessons.

As do most Memphians, we hope that Josh Pastner is able to recruit
and coach to a level consistent with the bold declaration sported by a
prominent Poplar Avenue billboard, which touted the Tiger basketball
program during the recent NCAA tournament: “Local Pride/National
Power.”

The last we looked, the billboard was still there, but its message
has become grimly ironic, given that Calipari is taking with him to the
University of Kentucky the cream of the recruiting crop that might have
kept Memphis playing next year at the same exalted level as it has for
the last few.

It’s good to be realistic about these things, including the
possibility that the ambitious young Pastner may not be with us long:
If he loses consistently, he’ll be fired. If he wins, he may be
plucked, as Calipari was, by some other basketball program.

Barkley is right, both in his insistence on the virtue of staying
the course and in his advocacy of looking beyond the impermanence of
athletic glory. After all, Coach Calipari helped teach us that last
life lesson quite recently.