John Calipari – photo by Walter Cornett
Kentucky's John Calipari leans back in the black leather chair jammed into his makeshift office — a temporary home while his main one in the Joe Craft Center undergoes an overhaul — and shakes his head after another request from a friend arrives in a text:
Could you call Drake for me?
“I can't,” he says to everyone in the room. “I just called Drake, and I called Future for Aaron Harrison.”
For the past seven years, the game's most charismatic figure and pioneer of the one-and-done craze has owned the most powerful phone in college basketball.
With one call, he can reach your favorite hip-hop star. In August, he used that phone to call young NBA stars, former Kentucky football standout Jared Lorenzen and other popular figures who have ties to the Lexington area to invite them to play in the inaugural Coach Cal Celebrity Softball Game.
Walter Cornett, of Glendale, Kentucky, is the owner and operator of Walter's Wildcat World. He founded WildcatWorld.com in 1998 making it one of the oldest Kentucky basketball fan sites in operation today.
