Where’s Ricky?
Pitino is gone, but much of him remains at Louisville after scandal
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — There is a place inside KFC Yum! Center where Rick Pitino, the University of Louisville and Adidas are presented as whole. It is in the gift shop, above the cash register, on a game night in January. One color photograph displays Pitino in a black suit with a white pocket square. Next to the image is a large Adidas logo. Apparel is peddled beneath the marketing tandem of multi-millionaire coach and multi-billion dollar corporation despite the FBI allegation that the company and coach’s staff conspired to channel $100,000 to the family of Brian Bowen, a five-star recruit, last summer. Pitino is no longer the coach, having been fired “for cause” by the university’s board in October, but commerce continues under his imprimatur. A black hoodie emblazoned “LOUISVILLE LOYAL” goes for $53.00. Pitino, in exile, has filed one lawsuit against the school, which paid him $4 million annually, for breach of contract, and another against Adidas, which paid him $1.5 million annually, for deliberately damaging his reputation. The cash register’s ring echoes near tipoff.
“It is weiiirrrdddd around here,” says Tim Coury, a regular who takes his aisle seat six rows behind the home bench. “Really weird how it has all fallen.”
Coury considers the tumult down Derby way as Louisville takes on Pitt. He is the mustachioed owner of Porcini, an Italian restaurant in town, and goes back with Pitino. The two almost partnered on a restaurant in Lexington when Pitino was the coach at the University of Kentucky, but that deal never came to be. They kept in touch and eventually wound up linked for life after a night at Porcini in July 2003. Following closing, Coury informed Pitino, a married father of five, and Karen Sypher, a divorcée and mother of three, of a self-locking door on the side that they could exit through when done for the night. Once Coury left, Pitino and Sypher engaged in a sexual tryst. Six years later, Sypher attempted to extort Pitino. An eight-day trial led to a seven-year sentence in prison for Sypher after she lied to the FBI. Last summer, her sentence ended. Two months later, Pitino lost his job. Coury shakes his head.
“I mean, it’s crazy,” Coury says. “It is crazy. I don’t pass any judgment.”
Coury keeps photos of famous patrons, from the late Muhammad Ali to Paul Hornung, on a brick wall at Porcini. Pitino appears in one, and broadcaster Dick Vitale’s face is framed in another. Vitale wrote: “Tim, Porcini’s is awesome baby!” It is dated 12/12/03, the eve of Pitino’s 400th career victory. It was over No. 1 Florida, then coached by Pitino’s protégé, Billy Donovan, six months after Pitino and Sypher scandalized the eatery. Coury reflects on all that is left in Pitino’s wake: a national title, a horse in the Derby, recruiting wars and NCAA probation for hooker parties in a dormitory dedicated to Pitino’s brother-in-law, who was killed on 9/11. Coury watches Pitino’s former player, David Padgett, stalk the sideline in his stead.
“We were friends, like all of us guys,” Coury says. “We had some great travel together, golf, restaurants, you name it. It’s totally different now.”
Pitino’s specter remains in the arena. In the rafters, the banner honoring the 2013 NCAA champions hangs opposite one that recognizes his induction in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In the lobby trophy case, net cords, a basketball emblazoned with an Adidas logo and quotes from Pitino — “Those who work the hardest are the last to surrender” — commemorate his 16 seasons. Outside the locker room is a photo of Pitino alongside President Obama at the White House.
Reminders of the FBI’s corruption probe are also in place. One advertisement bills the Galt House Hotel as the “official hotel of the KFC Yum! Center.” In court documents, Pitino contends that he was shocked to learn Bowen’s parents moved into the hotel, where extendedstay, suite apartments are believed to be in the general price range of $2,500 to $4,000 per month. By Pitino’s account, he ordered his assistant coaches to see how the family afforded it. His program was already on probation for enticing prospects with prostitutes. Once celebrated by former Providence athletic director John Marinatto as being “more organized than crime” while coach of the Friars, Pitino is still free. He is not one of the 10 men — four college assistants, two Adidas employees, a middleman, a financier, a runner and an AAU coach — arrested in a September sweep regarding corruption in college basketball. He maintains his innocence, offering up a polygraph test that he took and interviews with a private investigator as proof. Louisville now solicits tips from fans at home games. On an LED board that lines the upper level, a query is rotating.
“Questions about compliance?” it reads. “Contact @Cards Compliance.”
On court, the Cardinals compete. They are fresh off taking a beating. Three days earlier, Louisville trekked 76 miles east on Interstate 64 and fell, 90-61, against Kentucky, the Cardinals’ blood rival in the Bluegrass State. One lawyer sat in the first row by the Cardinals’ bench wearing a blue T-shirt emblazoned with a bracket pitting the FBI against Louisville with the FBI advancing. Four Kentucky students dressed in blue jackets they bought at Goodwill. They painted FBI in yellow letters on the back. They wore shades and earpieces. One held up a “Pitino Knew” sign.
All of that is in the rearview as the Cardinals go on a 17-0 run at the KFC Yum! Center. Pitt cannot keep pace, and Louisville fans are on Panthers coach Kevin Stallings. At one point, he yells at the crowd, “At least we didn’t pay our players $100,000.” The Cardinals win, 77-51, and Padgett insists his team must maintain focus. In the locker room, where deflections, a favorite Pitino statistic, are still tallied on a white board, sophomore guard Ryan McMahon mentions a trying practice in between the Kentucky collapse and the victory over Pitt. He felt it was a return to Pitino-level intensity. He smiles. “It felt like the old man was back here,” he
says.
“Are you a night owl?” reads a poster on the front door to Billy Minardi Hall. Campus housing is in need of student staffers who are able to work the graveyard shift — 12 a.m.-8 a.m. — as community night assistants during the spring semester. The pay is $9.25 an hour for a minimum of 16 hours per week. It is a two-story building made of red bricks. Of the 38 residents, 30 or so are members of the Louisville men’s basketball program. Showerheads are higher to accommodate tall players. Cement ornamentations on the exterior alternate “UofL” and basketballs. Residents enter with a key card, and there is a sign-in sheet for visitors. A security guard sits at a front desk. Parking is by permit. A sign notes 24-hour enforcement.
A lack of vigilance on site is what landed Pitino’s program on probation. In a 2017 report, NCAA investigators fingered Andre McGee, a former point guard who played four years under Pitino and then served another four as a program assistant and director of basketball operations, as a facilitator of stripteases and prostitution inside. According to Pitino, McGee, considered to be an extension of the coach and “watchdog,” orchestrated the parties without Pitino’s knowledge or approval “in the twilight in that dormitory, through a side door.” Escorts performed
You ever see the Bad News Bears? He’ll be that guy that would go coach any team,” Anderson says. “He don’t care who it is, saying, ‘Give me a coaching job, I can make this team better.’ I’ll never see him retiring. DEREK ANDERSON, ON RICK PITINO
fellatio on teens interested in playing for Pitino. The NCAA’s Committee on Infractions found prospects were treated to dances or oral sex. The investigators tallied six players in 2011, five in 2012, three in 2013 and two in 2014. McGee, who did not cooperate with the probe, was found to have provided prospects with $40-50, in singles, to throw at strippers. He also handed a condom to a 17-year-old recruit. The NCAA cited Pitino for “failure to monitor,” which is a Level 1 violation.
“Was poor judgment used? Without question,” Pitino says. “We preached treating women with dignity and playing with everything that you have for the name on the front of the jersey.”
It is an all-male domain at Minardi Hall. Pitino refers to it as “a very special dormitory.” His brother-in-law was killed on 9/11 after reporting to his office at Cantor Fitzgerald. It was eight months after Pitino was hired by Louisville and days after Pitino played golf with Minardi at Pebble Beach. Pitino left the recruiting trail that autumn to look for Minardi, then listed as a missing person, at city hospitals. He spoke at a memorial service held at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Mt. Kisco, N.Y. Many of Pitino’s men were in attendance among the 2,000 mourners. Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy, Holy Cross coach Ralph Willard, NBA vice president Stu Jackson and Donovan. Some stood outside on Main St. Pitino helped raise the funds for the dormitory, and recruited Minardi’s widow and three kids to the Derby City. They lived five houses down from each other. The dorm opened in 2003. One of Minardi’s sons, Robert, enrolled at Louisville and resided there while a student.
“That dormitory represented his name,” Pitino says. “It meant the world to me.”
The building still stands, but the national championship banner is now down because of the sex parties. Greg Postel, the university president, maintained in an appeal that leveling blame on Pitino was “unfair,” but Louisville landed on probation three months prior to the FBI’s Adidas allegations. Pitino was fired prior to the university making its appeal to the committee, and he downplays the punishment.
“They interviewed over 100 people and found the same result: that I had no knowledge of the reprehensible things that were going on in that dormitory,” Pitino says. “I was found not to have monitored a particular staff member, not lack of institutional control, which is the big hit by the NCAA. I was hit with a five-game suspension, which isn’t much.”
The Cardinals still played a Billy Minardi Classic game this season. It was the 16th annual contest, and likely the last. Seton Hall visited with coach Kevin Willard, a Pitino acolyte who used to serve as a ball boy when Pitino coached the Knicks. Willard later joined Pitino’s staff with the Celtics, working for $14,000 as an advance scout in 1997. When Pitino quit the Boston job in 2000, Willard followed him south. Willard learned what it meant to draw Pitino’s ire when Willard was pulled over for a DUI in 2004. It came at the end of a night out with the coaching staff. Five hours after his arrest, Willard reported to Pitino’s house and entered the kitchen at 8 a.m.
“Don’t worry, Kevy boy,” Pitino’s wife, Joanne, said.
To the right, Pitino stared from a sofa, where he watched game film.
“We’re going to get through this,” Pitino said.
For 22 of the next 30 days, Willard ran 10 miles per day, as ordered by Pitino. Two years later, Willard became the head coach at Iona College. When he took his Gaels back to Louisville, Pitino gifted him a gold Rolex watch and a 67-36 defeat.
“He kicked my ass every time,” Willard says, “and he made a point to make sure he let me know about it, every time.”
Willard emerged the victor in Pitino’s absence. Seton Hall beat Louisville, 79-77, to win the Minardi game on Dec. 3, and his name was linked alongside his mentor’s once more in February. A Yahoo! report revealed findings from the FBI. In the loan ledger of Andy Miller, the former NBA agent whose office was raided by investigators, Willard’s former assistant coach, Dwayne Morton, and former player, Isaiah Whitehead, are listed. Morton’s name is next to $9,500 and Whitehead’s name appears next to $26,136 in one part and $37,657 in another. The report spurred Seton Hall to hire Jackson Lewis, a Manhattan law firm, to conduct a full review.
“I like where my program is at,” Willard says.
Seven folding chairs form a semi-circle just inside the 3-point arc at Harrods Creek Baptist Church’s gymnasium in Prospect, Ky. Derek Anderson, a former shooting guard under Pitino on Kentucky’s 1996 national championship team, puts trainees through drill work on site. His program is called “Stamina,” and he talks about a recent addition to his stable. The newest colt is Brian Bowen, the Louisville recruit at the center of the FBI probe. Admitted to Louisville and living in Minardi Hall as a student for now, Bowen is banned from playing for the Cardinals due to the allegations of illicit payments made to his family. Anderson, who played 11 seasons in the NBA, details the workouts he conducts with Bowen to keep him game ready.
“I do all the NBA stuff: footwork, jab step, spin,” Anderson says. “I teach you to hold people’s hands, spin this way, ball fake, hold them, because it is talent on talent when we play. Every movement matters. You gotta get an advantage.”
Bowen is betwixt and between on this December night. He pays $70 per hour for Anderson’s instruction because the government alleges that his father, also Brian, accepted a bribe of $19,500 from Adidas in September. It was the first of four installments that were to add up to $100,000. Prosecutors maintain that the scheme involved funneling money from a third-party — Adidas — to Bowen’s family to ensure that Louisville gained a thoroughbred for a title run. Bowen committed to Louisville in early June. Adidas executives Jim Gatto and Merl Code discussed the timing of the cash exchanges on a wiretap, per the federal complaint, and the monetary motive was clear. Louisville and Adidas, a $7.9 billion corporation, had inked a 10-year contract extension worth $160 million in August. Fifty thousand dollars were to be routed to the Bowens in 2017 and the other $50,000 was to be given in 2018. In a text message, Pitino wrote to Willard’s father, Ralph, also a former Pitino assistant, after Bowen signed: “Never spent a penny. Most athletic talent I’ve had since 96 UK.”
Bowen goes by “Tugs,” and at 6-foot-7, is easy to track on court. His hair is bleached blonde on the top, à la Giants wideout Odell Beckham Jr. Bowen hails from Saginaw, Mich., but played his final two seasons of high school basketball at La Lumiere School in La Porte, Ind. While honing his game in Hoosier country, he continued to suit up for Dorian’s Pride, an AAU team managed by Christian Dawkins and named for Dawkins’ late brother, who died at the free throw line after suffering a series of heart attacks caused by a rare birth defect in 2009. Bowen drew interest from elite programs such as Michigan State and Arizona, but remained uncommitted late in his senior year, when most elite prospects were already signed.
Enter Dawkins, a hustler with his initials sewn into the cuffs on his shirts and a rotation of three cell phones in his hands. Dawkins had served as a runner for NBA agent Andy Miller, and on May 23, 2017, around 9:30 p.m., Dawkins sent a text message to Pitino. Dawkins re-introduced himself, saying that he had been a point of contact for Jaylen Johnson, a former Pitino player at Louisville. Dawkins inquired about Pitino’s interest in Bowen, who was the last blue-chip prospect on the board. Pitino had one scholarship remaining and responded, “We would love to have him.”
Mutual interest escalated quickly. Bowen made an unofficial visit to Louisville with his parents and Dawkins a few days later. By June 1, Bowen committed to Pitino. The next day, Dawkins sent another text message to Pitino.
“Coach... do me a favor,” Dawkins wrote, per court documents. “Call big brian. Everything is good. The Nike guys, Wes, everyone is hating that tugs chose Louisville. We are 100% good. But I just want him to hear from u.”
Pitino had long done battle with Kentucky, his former employer, for recruits. John Calipari, the Wildcats head coach, was a one-time Pitino wannabe, but now the two battled for similar prospects with Calipari regularly getting his man. One of Calipari’s greatest assets on the grassroots circuit has been William Wesley, an influential figure with Nike ties and a moniker, “Worldwide Wes.” Pitino responded to Dawkins with a thumbs-up emoji and a request for Big Brian’s phone number.
Dawkins provided the number to Pitino, but it was Dawkins’s digits that federal investigators eventually acquired a court order to wiretap in June, a few weeks after the Bowen commitment was made. Another wiretap recorded James Gatto, the head of global marketing for basketball at Adidas, and conversations about “off the books” payments were picked up. Investigators brought their findings to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and prosecutors assert that Gatto and Code, another Adidas employee, conspired with Munish Sood, a financial advisor, and Dawkins to “illicitly funnel” $100,000 from Adidas to Bowen’s family. In the complaint, prosecutors charge that the deal ensured that Bowen would retain Dawkins and Sood as advisers when Bowen reached the NBA. A July 10 phone conversation connected Code, Sood and an undercover FBI agent, who recorded the call. Code, who previously oversaw Elite Youth Basketball with Nike, discussed the economics of high-stakes recruiting.
“This is kind of one of those instances where we needed to step up and help one of our flagship schools in Louisville, you know, secure a five-star caliber kid,” Code said. “Obviously that helps, you know, our potential business.”
There is video that the government offers as evidence in the case, as well. On July 27, Pitino’s assistant coach, Jordan Fair, was in a Vegas hotel room with Dawkins, the undercover agent and Jonathan Brad Augustine, who is an AAU coach from Florida. Prior to the meeting, FBI agents positioned video cameras inside the room. The undercover recorded it, as well. Talk turned to a prospect in the class of 2019 and a similar financial arrangement regarding the recruit, Adidas and Louisville. Augustine hyped up Pitino, portraying the coach as a Master of the Universe in the Adidas world.
“No one swings a bigger d--- than Pitino,” Augustine said, per the complaint.
Pitino always liked to regale friends with stories from the recruiting trail. There were calls from Larry Pearlstein, an old friend who went by “Scout,” and had scoops in New York.
There were private planes and letters written to prospects. He pitched woo all over the country, made 30 calls a day, sold himself and the programs he represented, from Hawaii to Syracuse to Boston University to Providence to Kentucky and finally Louisville. Anderson was not a Pitino signee out of high school. He went to Ohio State and transferred to Kentucky for its up-tempo style of play.
“Rick gets the most out of you or you will leave,” Anderson says.
Anderson relates Pitino’s teachings to his pupils. He remembers a book that Pitino assigned the 1996 champions to read. It was “The Precious Present,” a story about the value of living in the moment amidst chaotic times. When news broke about Pitino’s program being linked to the FBI probe, Anderson sent his former coach a text message. Bowen is readying to transfer to South Carolina for the spring semester, and Anderson cannot envision Pitino as a retiree in South Florida.
“You ever see the Bad News Bears? He’ll be that guy that would go coach any team,” Anderson says. “He don’t care who it is, saying, ‘Give me a coaching job, I can make this team better.’ I’ll never see him retiring. He’ll be the one in the stands saying, ‘Hey man, tell them to run this play. Tell them!’” “I am the security guard,” says Linda Christie, an elderly woman at The Daniel Pitino Shelter in Owensboro, Ky. She wears a deputy’s gold badge pinned to her sweater and monitors the halls on a winter morning when temperatures are dropping down to single digits. A white flag waves in the wind by the door. It means that all are welcome to come in from the cold prior to 7 p.m. Those in need will be fed and housed for the night, either on site or at St. Stephen’s, a separate shelter. “I also clean the bathrooms. I’m the best one they got because I clean them clean.”
Christie is a relatively new addition to the two-story, 65-bed facility. The cornerstone was laid in 1959, and the brick building originally served as the Walnut Street Baptist Church until the sanctuary burned in 1992. The shelter’s board of directors entered into negotiations for the building in the fall of 1993 and took possession of the property in April of 1994. Pitino was still the coach at Kentucky then. He donated money and headlined fundraisers. The walls of the hallways double as a family photo gallery. There are images of his children volunteering. Jamal Mashburn, a Cardinal Hayes product who played for Pitino at Kentucky, is featured with each of his arms around a blonde-haired woman wearing a skin-tight dress with Budweiser logo. A few frames over, Pitino, coaches from the sideline on the cover of a gala program. It is dated July 1997, two months after Pitino departed from Kentucky, which he considered “Camelot,” to be coach and president of the Celtics. He went out on top then. The title of the event reads: “Pitino: My Way.”
He no longer owns a home in the commonwealth of Kentucky. He uprooted immediately after he was fired, and his lawsuit against the University of Louisville identifies him as “an adult citizen of Florida.” He lives in a waterfront house on Indian Creek Island in Miami, where the neighborhood is known as “Billionaire Bunker.” His departure from the commonwealth was sudden. Considered a carpetbagger by some when he took the University of Kentucky job after leading the Knicks to the playoffs in 1989, he was welcomed as a savior by many more. When he visited the construction site for his house, he learned that a disc jockey purloined soil from his yard and tried to reward a caller with the handful of dirt for a souvenir.
Marketing was always a part of the job Pitino accepted. He eventually won over the Wildcats fans by winning a national title, losing the championship game the next season and leaving a team that won another title in 1998 after he left for the Celtics. When he exited Boston in 2000, he cited all the negativity surrounding the fabled NBA franchise, re-energized in Florida and took over at Louisville. UK fans labeled him a turncoat. Now 65, there is no sign of a third act in horse country.
“We did not see Rick this Christmas, but Father Bradley brought down a carload of presents and things that Rick had sent for the children and the shelter,” says Cheryl Moore, a former resident who now serves as a childcare advocate.
Rev. Edward Bradley is a long-time confidante of the Pitino family. He sat by the bench at games, and was a co-founder of the shelter. It is named for Pitino’s late son, who died when he was the Providence coach on March 8, 1987. Daniel was six months old when he suffered congenital heart failure. Pitino went on to lead the Friars to the first of his seven Final Fours. There is a photo of Daniel Paul Pitino wrapped in a blue blanket on the wall, next to framed images of family members who have died over the years. A passage from the gospel of Matthew is quoted:
Let the children come to me, and do not stop
them because the kingdom of heaven belongs
to such as these
Three of Pitino’s former players — Tony Delk, Walter McCarty and Ron Mercer — are slated to headline the shelter’s big fundraiser in June. For now, Christie patrols the halls as the homeless come in from the cold. She eyes a photo of Pitino.
“He’s about as rich as Trump,” she says. “He’s got enough money to last him a lifetime.”
There are echoes of past chants in the Garden on a February night. It is the start of the Big 10 tournament, the first time the conference has held its postseason championship in midtown, but there is a familiar name on the sideline. It is Pitino’s son, Richard, the only one of Rick’s five living children to chase the profession. He leads his Minnesota Gophers against last-place Rutgers in the late game, and nothing is going right, not in the game, not in the season. Rutgers races past the depleted Gophers. A heckler lets loose on the son of the former Knicks coach after halftime. Daddy has a better hairline, Richard! Your whole life is a fraud, Richard!
Richard is accustomed to taunts. Early in the season, he took his team back to Providence, where he went to school. While there, Richard rented a car — “Paid for it out of my own money so Minnesota can’t give me crap about it,” he says — and drove over to campus. He went down memory lane.
“I’m kind of a vagabond,” Richard says, “but Providence College is always really, really special to me.”
Time passes; times change. When Richard emerged from the locker room that night, a Providence senior named Chris McCormack, whose parents were students at the school in 1987, stood on a chair by Minnesota’s bench. He held up a sign that read: “PITINO PAID ME TO BE HERE.”
The Gophers were ranked at the time, and they won that contest. They rose to No. 12 in the nation at one point, but the season soon unraveled. Star senior Reggie Lynch was expelled from school for sexual assault. Amir Coffey, another double-figure scorer, missed much of the season with a shoulder injury.
They run on fumes against Rutgers. The upper deck of the Garden is empty. Pitino punches his fist in there when his players make mistakes, and he jumps up to display frustration. His father is not in attendance, but he maintains a presence. Where’s daddy, Richard?
The Gophers fall. It is their 11th loss in 12 games. Their season is over. One fan makes eye contact with Richard as he leaves the court and shouts down at him. His father used to hear it all from an angry Knicks fanbase in the 80s before the wins came. The hecklers keep Pitino’s name alive.
What would daddy say, Little Richard?
Where’s Ricky?