For a faction of Rick Pitino’s former players, the ones with whom he had become closest across numerous stops in his collegiate coaching career, the overwhelming sentiment on Oct. 16, 2017, when Louisville’s athletic board voted to fire him “for cause” in the wake of an FBI investigation into fraud and corruption across the sport, was one of genuine worry.
Basketball was everything for Pitino — the reason he got out of bed in the morning, the reason he stayed in excellent shape, the reason he willingly worked such long hours even then, 40 years after his career began, and his 70th birthday neared. Aside from his family, according to numerous former players, there was nothing Pitino loved more than being in the gym and coaching, same as he’d done for decades. But the decision by Louisville’s brass to forcibly remove him, which Pitino ultimately acknowledged was the proper choice, slammed shut a door that seemed perpetually open for someone of his ilk.
“That’s why a lot of us, man, when he left Louisville with the things that went down, we were really concerned for him,” said Larry O’Bannon, a member of Pitino’s first recruiting class for the Cardinals, during an interview with FOX Sports. “Concerned for his health because Coach is just a fanatic, man, with how he knows his basketball. That’s his purpose, that’s what drives him, that’s what wakes him up, that’s what motivates him, that’s what keeps him going.
“And so it’s not surprising to see what he’s done at St. John’s, man. It does not surprise me because if you know Coach, man, you know Coach eats, sleeps and breathes basketball.”
To better understand the way Pitino is wired, and to grasp why so many of the people he subjected to that intensity are giddily watching the comeback he’s authored at Iona and St. John’s, which begins its NCAA Tournament run on Thursday evening, FOX Sports spoke with 15 of Pitino’s former players across his Hall-of-Fame career. The interviews ranged from his time as an assistant coach under Jim Boeheim at Syracuse (1976-78) through his current tenure with the Red Storm (2023-present), along with the handful of collegiate stops he made in between: at Boston University from 1978-83, at Providence College from 1985-87, at Kentucky from 1989-97, at Louisville from 2001-17 and at Iona from 2020-23.
This is the third in a three-part series titled Postcards of Pitino. We conclude with The Comeback, which began when Pitino returned to college basketball in 2020 after a brief stint coaching professionally in Greece. He spent three years at Iona before taking over St. John’s in a triumphant return to the Big East in 2023.
[Postcards of Pitino: Part 1 | Part 2]
Editor’s note: The following accounts were edited for length, clarity and flow.
From: Dylan van Eyck, F, Iona (2019-22)
Career stats: 6.4 points and 4.8 rebounds per game in 78 appearances
Years with Pitino: 2
Me being a European player, I knew his name and that he had a history in Europe. I didn’t know much about his college days. But I knew him as the Panathinaikos coach, I knew him as the Greek national team coach. And I’ve watched a lot of games with his Panathinaikos team when they were playing. You can see his passion, you can see his love for the game and how much he puts into it. He’s known as a coach who requires you to do a lot, but it’s only because he wants the best out of his team and his players.
I’ve had Serbian coaches, I’ve had Eastern European coaches, I’ve had all different types of coaches — but none of them are like Coach P. I don’t think I’ve ever been yelled at like that before. He has his own way of saying things and doing things. Every practice he wears a microphone that’s connected to all the speakers in the gym. So he doesn’t have to scream, but he still screams a lot.
I was his captain for two years, and I felt like I had a very good personal relationship with him. So he knew a lot of personal things about me. Sometimes when he gets mad at you, he kind of uses those personal things in his yelling. Not necessarily in a bad way, but just to make sure that you really know when you pissed him off with a bad pass or a bad turnover or one of the things he hates the most is a bad defensive moment. He told me one time that if I throw a pass like that again, the only thing I’ll ever achieve in my life is playing basketball in a country that no one has ever heard of. But he never went out of line or anything crazy disrespectful where you thought he went too far. He knew how to strike a balance.
My first year I was a captain with Isaiah Ross and then my second year I was with Elijah Joiner. He let us be coaches on the court. He would listen to us in timeouts. We would have our own opinions. Whenever there were things off the court, he would consult with us right away. He really let us be player-coaches, which I think helped me a lot in developing my basketball IQ. And in my pro career, I’ve still been somewhat of a leader as well on each and every team, either a captain or a co-captain. So the way that he taught me how to be a leader on the court, what he expected from me was responsibility, accountability, and that was always why me and Elijah usually were the ones that got it the worst in some kind of way. Because as his captain, he just expects more from us because he knew what we could achieve. He developed an extra-personal relationship with us to help us become better at leading.
But I also appreciated that he isn’t just a basketball coach sometimes. Sometimes, he’s like a life coach. We would have sessions where he would teach us about how to use a credit card or how to apply for loans. He wouldn’t just be a basketball coach. He also made sure he would kind of prepare players for life after basketball, life after college. And now as a professional, ending up in all different kinds of situations, you look back at the way he was a coach on and off the court, that is something I think I appreciate the most. That doesn’t just happen in college.
I’m still in very good contact with him. I think we text about once or twice a month, just checking up. He doesn’t have the time to watch my games, but he checks out the stats. His friends, the people that he introduced me to during my college career, they also check up on me. So if you’re a player and you give him everything you have during those years with him, he really treats you like family for the rest of your career and the rest of your life.
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From: Berrick JeanLouis, G, Iona (2020-23)
Career stats: 6 points and 3.8 rebounds per game in 97 appearances
Years with Pitino: 3
I remember the first time I heard from him was right when Covid hit, and our JUCO season got shut down. I was waiting for my Division I offers, and I was hearing from a bunch of schools. I was about to commit to Wichita State when I’m on Twitter randomly and I see Rick Pitino got hired at Iona, or was about to get hired at Iona. And then the next day, I get a call from him, he’s like, ‘This is Rick Pitino.’ I’m like, ‘What the heck?’ I pick it up and he basically says that he wants to recruit me and that I’m a great athlete and he wants me to play for him, and that my style fits him perfectly. After I hung up the phone, my high school coach and my JUCO coach were both like, ‘You have to go there immediately. No other option. No choice.’ So I just went.
I knew he always had good teams, and obviously I knew of the allegations at Louisville, the allegations they were saying about him and why he got fired. But I never really knew much about him because I was always younger. The two things I knew were 1) that he could develop players very well and 2) he was a very good coach. I remember both my coaches, they always tried to kind of coach like him, too, or always mentioned him or how his teams used to play.
The very first time I got there, I was like, ‘OK, this man is crazy.’ But then as you get to know him better and you play for him, he talks to you like that and he yells to encourage you to play harder. It felt like he was trying to make you mad so that you would play harder. And it always works. I don’t know how it does, but it’s like you’re mad at him but you’re going to take it out on the other team. Before we start the season, he basically tells us that when we’re between the basketball lines, we’re all animals. We have to be beasts and be different. We have to treat it like it’s life or death, basically. And when we’re off the court, he’s all nice and friendly. He’s crazy, but he’s not crazy as a person. He’s actually a great person.
The first thing that he helped me improve was basically my defense. He knew I was super athletic and he knew that I was a good on-ball defender, which I didn’t really believe. I thought I was just an athlete. I wanted to run, jump and dunk and score. But he twisted that and basically said, ‘You’re too athletic to be getting beat one on one defensively. And you should be able to stay in front of the ball, full court, against anybody.’ So, basically, he challenged me to defend the ball full court and just give it my all.
And he improved my shooting ability. We worked on my shooting every morning at 7 a.m. and attempted who knows how many shots. He would show up, all the coaches, everybody, and we would shoot for an hour. Every single person had different times and groups by your position. So he will take all the point guards and shooting guards together, all the small forwards together, and all the bigs together. And with every group, what we do in the offense, he would implant drills for things that we would do in the game like back-door cuts, corner shooting, going down the lane and passing. At the end of it, we’d all play one-on-one against each other. I remember we came out after the lockdown ended and I felt like I was a way better player than before. It was like I played completely different. And that was just from two months with him, just doing our drills in the morning and no practices. The development was just crazy.
My best times were at Iona. Everybody loved us. Everybody came out to support our games. Teachers were greeting us. Teachers were giving us scouting reports as if they were Rick Pitino. It was a good time to be at Iona. We were winning, everybody was happy, it was fun. It was a way different atmosphere with him at Iona. I don’t know what it was like before, but I know with him, it was an amazing experience. He basically made the school feel like it was a high-major program, to be honest. We wanted to go there for him.
I was scrolling on Instagram recently, and I saw the clip of him giving the St. John’s players a speech in the locker room. And I commented on the video ‘PTSD.’ It really gave me PTSD for how he was screaming at them, telling them that they’re soft and they’re like children. It just gave me PTSD of how he used to talk to us and how he would encourage us to play and how the team always came out after he gave that speech and played super hard. What I learned from him is that he’s basically never wrong. Everything he says or every play he draws, if he says, ‘Do this, do that, it will work,’ and then it always worked for us. If we did not take his word and we would do something opposite, it never worked. He’s like a wizard at that. He’s a basketball genius, basically.
I play overseas in Greece now, and everything he taught me, I use it here. The coaches use me the same way that he used me. And it’s gotten me jobs, so it’s all worked out well for me. One thing he’s going to do is get you paid. He’s definitely going to get you paid.
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From: Quinn Slazinski, F, Iona (2021-23)
Career stats: 8.3 points and 3.3 rebounds per game in 107 appearances
Years with Pitino: 2
Before transferring to Iona, I spent two years at Louisville and I would just hear endless stories on Rick. It was what people talked about nonstop. I mean, they built statues of him. It was a very different type of love they had for him. So a couple of my Louisville friends reached out and said, ‘Hey, Iona is trying to recruit you. Rick Pitino is the coach there now.’ Before I went into the phone call with him, immediately in my head I was like, ‘I would never play for him.’ I would tell anyone I knew that committed to him, I’d be like, ‘You guys are f—ing crazy. I would never play for him in a million years with the way he talks to his players. That’s no fun.’
So long story short, I take the phone call and Rick Pitino’s conversation with me was a lot different from the other coaches. He used the word ‘pro.’ That was the first time a coach of a college ever referred to me as, ‘Hey, I think you can be a pro.’ He was the first one. To hear Rick Pitino say, ‘I think you can be a professional basketball player, and I can get you there. This is how we’re going to do it,’ was eye-opening. That was the one thing about Pitino that you really can’t teach in coaching — his ability to motivate, which I think is the No. 1 attribute of any successful coach. I remember after that phone call, immediately I was so motivated. I wanted to call him again and see when we could start.
I remember the first time we put our shoes on and come together as a group — we all got to school maybe a day before the first session — and he brings two people out there, gives the offensive player the ball and goes, ‘OK, after three dribbles around this cone, we’re live.’ And I remember all of us looking at each other like, ‘Are we live? Are we competing right now?’ At Louisville, it’s the entry day, it’s the theatrics. He was like, ‘We’re competing.’ That was the one thing with Pitino. These practices are playoff games. If it’s a drill, we’re not just going to drill it with a pad. We’re going to do it one on one, there’s going to be a winner and there’s going to be a loser. And that’s what he would teach: It’s important to be a winner. It is very important. It solves problems. It creates happiness. And that’s what he taught us in these practices in the summer. Everything is a war. And not that he isn’t loud enough already, but he would wear a microphone. So when he screams, ‘Quinn!’ and it’s from the surround sound and you’re just spinning like 360 degrees trying to figure out where is he, where is he, where is he?
The one thing he really prioritizes is skill development, and that’s what I did not have at Louisville. Rick Pitino would wake up at 6 a.m. and train three kids at a time in the same position, and he’s running the workouts every single day, from every day in the summer to every day before the season. Not like, ‘Hey, I was the coach for the Knicks and now I’m coaching this small s—.’ No, he was at every single player development running the workout, pushing you. And these workouts aren’t just like, ‘Hey, let’s get up some shots.’ I mean, we would be running a full-court layup drill to start so you can’t even breathe. And then we’re doing full-court 3s. And then we’ll do a one-on-one segment, no water, like continuously going. And that’s what I appreciated about him. It wasn’t just like a strength coach doing it for show. No, if you want to be a better basketball player, we’re going to play basketball a lot and then we’re going to compete.
Now this is a positive and kind of one of the negatives of playing with Pitino, and it’s that if shoot around was at 10 a.m. and the game is at 3 p.m., we’re in a full sweat by 10:07 a.m. We compete every shootaround. We’re competing every play. It sucks, right? You’re thinking, ‘I’ve gotta play later tonight and he’s making me pick up full court.’ But he made it so that we played things live so many times and did it the whole week, we competed for a couple hours a day sometimes, that it just really made it that much easier in the game.
College coaching is sometimes a big power trip for some people. And I continue this by saying Pitino is the complete opposite. So I’m seeing a lot of coaches that would really degrade their players, right? Make them feel like they’re nothing. Pitino would yell — sometimes with a swear word in between — but he would yell reinforcement, positive reinforcement. He would always put you up to the test of being a dog. I thought you were built like this. More of a, ‘I know who you are, I handpicked you, I know you’ve got something special in you and I’m going to bring it out of you,’ kind of thing.
Obviously it’s not how you say it, it’s what you’re trying to say. So sometimes it would look bad, right? ‘Wake the f— up! Wake the f— up! That was a terrible move!’ But it’s more so about doing it again and doing it better, not him saying, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ There wasn’t one time in my career with Pitino that I had a lack of confidence. Now, it was incredibly hard. I’d say about 85% of players would struggle with that type of coaching. It’s not a knock on the player, and it’s not a knock on Pitino. It’s just that he can coach a very specific player. And a lot of people say they want to be coached hard until they spend a couple months with Ricky P. He was continuously taking violent action to win games because he knew it was the most important thing.
The thing about Pitino is he’s going to give the best advice for you. He’s not going to lie to you. I remember a kid came up to him, we were recruiting him, and he said, ‘Well this school in the SEC offered me $500,000.’ And Pitino was recruiting him hard, he was a great player, we really wanted him. And he goes, ‘Son, you need to go to that school.’
He just understands deals from the outside. It’s never personal with him. So that was like the main thing he’s taught me that really changed my life: Nothing in this world is personal. It’s all a reflection on just business movement, so you have to be able to separate the two. And I was able to do that at a mature level, tell him about that, and that’s what led me to West Virginia for my final year of eligibility, which ended up having a life-changing effect. And now I get to play with all the NBA pre-draft workouts and be in the G-league this year. That was because of the year I had at West Virginia. He understood that there’s a game within the game and everyone needs to do what’s best for them. He was completely understanding. It was perfect.
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From: Daniss Jenkins, G, Iona and St. John’s (2022-24)
Career stats: 12.3 points and 3.6 assists per game in 118 appearances
Years with Pitino: 2
When I took my visit to Iona, I obviously knew of Rick Pitino, but I had to do my own little research on the Terry Roziers and Donovan Mitchells and the Peyton Sivas. I wanted to go watch how they played for him at Louisville because I wanted to get a feel of how he coached his guards. So when I went there on my visit, I did a workout. And once I did my workout, that was all I needed. He didn’t need to tell me anything else. He didn’t need to tell me about my minutes, about my role or how he would coach me, about my future. I was like, ‘If I do work with him for these next two years, I know I’ll be ready to be a professional basketball player.’
It was just the way that his drive and his passion and his attention to details came across in the workouts. I knew that I love being pushed. I love being pushed in that type of way because I’m very competitive. And I just know in this game that you’ve gotta constantly put the work in, and then that will reward you. So for me, it was about the work ethic and how much he would push me every single day like that. It was kind of like we were the same person, and he was just the coach.
My first preseason with Coach P. was definitely up and down. It’s so funny because some people think that me and him just clicked right away, and it’s not like that because you have to definitely get used to him, get used to his coaching. And you’ve got to understand that he says things at a different level. When you’re young or when you first start playing for him, you don’t really understand it. But he’s just doing everything he can to win. He always said, like, ‘We’re gonna be prepared. The opponent is not going to surprise you. They’re not going to ever surprise us with anything. We’re going to scout every little thing about them.’ And that’s exactly what we did. We were ready for everything.
At that time, for me, it was more so about me understanding my reads and what I’m looking for in the pick and roll. He knew we weren’t at the level we were supposed to be at that time. Even though I was making good plays, he was like, ‘No, I want you to make the great play. That’s not going to be open against a good team.’ And at that time, I didn’t really understand it as much because I’m like, ‘My big man is wide open. I’m going to try to get him the ball.’ But once I really understood what he was saying, it just made it so much easier for me. That’s what the pro level is all about, it’s just all about making the read. And he was really prepping me on that.
I knew him being at Iona was special in the preseason, like when we did our open scrimmage. It was almost sold out. Even though the building is not that big — it’s small — it can get loud. So the fans came out and they showed out. Coach had his people in the stands, and then you just had the people around New Rochelle and the city of New York. And they just showed love. They showed a lot of love because they love basketball. That was a part of it for me, too, being in New York, being able to play basketball and be the best version of myself. I couldn’t turn that down.
It was definitely harder to build the culture at St. John’s. And this is all the truth. Because at Iona, everybody knows that in order to move up, we have to win. We’re at a mid-major. Individuals don’t get success if we lose. Scouts are not looking at a losing team in a mid-major conference. So that’s why we all were able to stay together and just bond together. It was never about the individual goal. And I just think sometimes at a big-time school in a power conference, everybody had that mindset of, ‘I’m playing for Rick Pitino, I’m in the Big East, I’m in New York.’ So it was kind of like all the individual goals didn’t meet up with the team goals. To me, that was the biggest difference. Sometimes we weren’t even hanging out as much, you know? The bond that we were supposed to have, we were just missing that early on in the season.
To me, that’s the difference between my team and the team that’s killing it at St. John’s this year. They’ve been locked in since the summer. And they all have no type of egos. And they just want to win. They know the only goal is to win, because that’s what Coach P. preaches every single day. I really think he’s mastered the psychology of basketball and of humans. Being able to motivate them and get them to do exactly what he needs them to do. To me, that’s what makes him special. He makes you want to prove him wrong. So that was my message to my teammates when I was at St. John’s: ‘Let’s just go prove him wrong.’
I always tell people — especially being pro now — I look back at college and we were so lucky, man. We were so blessed because of the opportunities that we had. We went to the New York Stock Exchange. We did a lot of different stuff that most people wouldn’t be able to do, all because we were in New York, playing for Rick Pitino at St. John’s. Everybody loved us. They loved New York, and we were New York’s team. So it just brought a whole lot of attention. And especially when you’re winning, it’s the right type of attention. That’s what Coach P. always told us: ‘If you lose, you bring the wrong type of attention.’ But he was like, ‘When you win, you want that type of attention.’
It was just exciting to see us bring St. John’s back. I’ve never experienced nothing like that.
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From: Joel Soriano, C, St. John’s (2021-24)
Career stats: 10.3 points and 8.5 rebounds per game in 140 appearances
Years with Pitino: 1
During that time after Coach Mike Anderson was fired, it was a lot of emotions. But really it was just getting to know some of the candidates that they were mentioning. So I was just researching, reading Coach Pitino’s story and seeing what he had done in basketball, seeing how he changes programs and what he brings to the table. It was really shocking. And then once I got to meet him in person, that’s when everything really kind of opened up.
We both wanted to win, so we came to that conclusion pretty fast. And then we just tried to figure out what my future might look like because I was only going to be there for a year. So it was just outlining the next step to becoming a professional, just going down step by step what I need to work on with my game, what are some positives I have, the negatives. And really just him saying how hard he was going to push me. He was going to ask for a lot out of me. He liked my game as a post scorer, rebounder, very physical down low. He wanted to work on my outside shooting, my motor, my body and just getting ready for the NBA level, the pro level. I believed in the plan.
I was impressed by just how dialed in he is. He’s very detail-oriented. His work ethic is unique, it’s one of a kind. The way he prepares himself for a game is one of a kind as well. I’ve never seen a coach prepare like that. He really knows what the other team is running and how they operate to a ‘T.’ Him and the coaching staff spend a lot of time just watching our film, watching the other team’s film, just trying to get better. They’re trying to improve every day. He’s very passionate. One of the most passionate coaches that I’ve ever been around.
Probably after a loss it would be a little tougher than any other day. Sometimes we’d be playing with no water break, probably got to sneak in some water. If you get a turnover or have a mistake on the court, or you’re tired or something, he would send you on the treadmill for like two minutes. But for the most part, yeah, it’s intense, man. He’s an intense guy. At the beginning, I was not used to it. But as the year went on, I finally got used to it.
I feel like during the time you’re with him, man, you don’t really appreciate what he’s trying to do for you. Obviously he’s trying to win now, but I feel like he builds his players for life. Nothing is easy. He says, ‘Nothing will ever be given to you. You have to work for everything.’ And I feel like he tries to implement that every day in practice. I mean, maybe sometimes you look at it like, ‘Damn, this motherf—– is on me every day.’ It’s like a gnat on your back-type s—. But in reality, he’s preparing you for life, bro. You’re going to go through adversity in life, you’re going to go through bad times, you’re going to go through whatever bumps you have in life.
I think he just builds you as men. Trying to build you as much as possible through basketball, which I respect him for. The more time I’ve been away from the program, and now that I’ve gotten to the next level, I really learned to appreciate some of the life lessons that he has taught me. I appreciate that and give a lot of thanks to him, too.
It would mean a lot to see Coach Pitino back in the Final Four. He’s a great coach, man. And that whole scandal thing that went on with him at Louisville, it’s kinda sad to see that because of how much he gives to the game. But I think they are gonna go to the Final Four this year, to be honest with you. I don’t really see a team that’s more well put together than them. If he does get back there, I know it’s going to be a crazy, crazy feeling. Hopefully I get to catch a game or hopefully I’m able to go to one of those games and see it live in person.
Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.
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