Pitino, Rick

Rick Pitino, (born September 18, 1952, New York, New York, U.S.), American basketball coach who was the first head coach to win a men’s National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I national championship with two different schools (the University of Kentucky in 1996 and the University of Louisville in 2013). However, his 2013 title was later vacated by Louisville after an NCAA investigation into improper benefits for athletes.

Pitino played basketball at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and became a graduate assistant coach at the University of Hawaii soon after his graduation in 1974. He served two seasons as an assistant coach at Syracuse University (1976–78) before getting his first head-coaching job, at Boston University in 1978 at age 25. That team had won a combined 17 games in the two seasons before Pitino took over, a total he matched in his first campaign in Boston, where he installed an intense, pressing defense that would be the signature style of play for all his subsequent teams. In 1982–83 he led the school to its first appearance in the NCAA tournament in 24 years and then left at the end of the season to become an assistant coach with the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Pitino became the head coach at Providence College in 1985. In his second season of leading the program, he guided the Friars on a Cinderella run to the NCAA tournament that ended in a loss in the national semifinals. The distinction of this Final Four appearance helped land Pitino the head-coaching position with the Knicks in 1987. There, during the 1988–89 season, he again oversaw a second-year breakthrough, and the Knicks went on to win their first division title in 18 years. However, Pitino clashed with the Knicks’ front office, and in 1989 when he was offered a chance to coach the storied University of Kentucky basketball program, he returned to the college game.

During Pitino’s first two years at the school, Kentucky was under NCAA sanctions that had originated with the previous coaching regime, but he nevertheless led the Wildcats to a Final Four appearance in the second NCAA tournament for which the team was eligible under him. He later guided Kentucky to an NCAA title in 1996 and into the national championship game again the following year (a loss). In 1997 he became the head coach and director of basketball operations for the NBA’s Boston Celtics, signing what was then the most lucrative coaching contract in league history. His time with the Celtics was largely disastrous; the team never posted a winning record during his tenure. He resigned during the 2000–01 season.

Coming off his first professional failure, Pitino returned to the college ranks and took the University of Louisville head-coaching position in 2001. He guided the school to appearances in the Final Four in 2005 and 2012. Louisville won a school-record 35 games in 2012–13, and in the postseason Pitino won his second career NCAA championship. Louisville continued to be one of the top-performing college basketball teams in the country following its 2013 title, but the program was rocked by scandal in 2015 when a former escort alleged that from 2010 to 2014 a former Louisville basketball staff member paid various escorts to dance for and have sex with players and recruits. While Pitino denied any knowledge of the practice, an NCAA investigation was launched, and in February 2016 the school announced a self-imposed postseason ban for the 2015–16 season. In June 2017 he was suspended by the NCAA for the first five Atlantic Coast Conference games of Louisville’s 2017–18 season. In September 2017, federal authorities disclosed a wide-ranging “pay for play” scandal that involved a number of NCAA basketball programs. It was alleged that an executive at the sports-apparel company Adidas (the company that sponsored the Louisville athletics department) paid the family of a basketball recruit $100,000 to persuade him to play at Louisville. While Pitino was not specifically named in the allegations, he was soon thereafter placed on administrative leave by the university and was fired “with cause” the following month. (Pitino and the university continued to deny most of the allegations after his firing.) In February 2018 the NCAA announced that Louisville’s 2013 championship and 2012 Final Four appearance had been vacated. In December of that year Pitino became the head coach of the professional Greek basketball team Panathinaikos. In 2019 the team won the Greek Cup Championship, but later that year Pitino stepped down as coach.

Pitino was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013.