On Gillespie: The End Justifies the Mean.

The end justifies the mean

Some players love him, some leave him, but Gillispie's aim is to make them better

By Jerry Tipton
February 22, 2008
JTIPTON@HERALD-LEADER.COM

After making the team as a walk-on in September, Dusty Mills waited for an opportune moment to introduce himself to Kentucky Coach Billy Gillispie. The time seemed right two days into his short-lived UK career.

Mills approached Gillispie, who sat at the scorer's table in the Joe Craft Center gym as the other players headed for the locker room.

"Hi, Coach Gillispie," Mills remembered saying. "I know I never introduced myself. My name is Dusty ..."

Gillispie cut off the freshman.

"I know your name," the UK coach said. "Your name is Ollie."

His new teammates had nicknamed Mills for the player/team manager in the movie Hoosiers.

"If I need to know anything else, I'll look you up in the phone book," Gillispie added. "Have a nice day."

End of conversation.

Mills walked away disappointed.

This week, Mills became the third player to leave Gillispie's first Kentucky team. He cited the new coach's style as why he stopped his teammates from seeking his reinstatement. Alex Legion gave the same reason to explain why he left. The departures call into question Gillispie's demanding style, which he says benefits individual players and the team in the long term.

Mills had hoped to develop a relationship with Gillispie like the open-door access he enjoyed with his high school coach.

"But immediately, off the bat, I realized he was really unapproachable," said Mills, who acknowledged this week he had been dismissed from the team. "He has more basketball knowledge than any person I've ever met in my life. But I just feel like he has -- I don't know if it's no people skills or bad socially or however the heck you want to word it. But he doesn't seem to be very good with people."

Earlier this season, Gillispie's approach drove away Legion, a heralded freshman who transferred to Illinois after one semester.

"I just don't really work well in his style of coaching," Legion said in picking his words carefully. "His overall way of doing things. He's obviously had some success. But it isn't for everyone. I'll just leave it at that."

Gillispie declined to speak specifically about the players who've left UK's team either voluntarily (Legion, walk-on Kerry Benson) or otherwise (Mills). The UK coach acknowledged his demanding style. He said the long-range benefits outweigh any hurt feelings. More than once, he noted his personal attachment and affection for the players.

"You don't have the relationships like we have -- the love relationships that last forever -- without being approachable," Gillispie said.

The UK coach's methods, which prompt words such as "demeaning" and "negativity" from detractors, cause others to sing his praise. Josh Johnston found the experience as a walk-on for Gillispie's last UTEP team so rewarding he followed the coach to Texas A&M and walked on there. He described a Billy G. who bore little resemblance to the man who dismissed Mills from UK's team with a terse "You're done" shortly after Kentucky's flight from Vanderbilt touched down at 2 a.m. last week.

"I just felt he was sincere and genuine," said Johnston, now an assistant coach at the College of Eastern Utah. "He was not a guy to just talk to you on the court. He was a guy who actually cared about you. ... Nobody cares more about kids on a Billy Gillispie team than Billy Gillispie."

Supporters and critics agree that Gillispie can be difficult.

Acie Law IV wanted to transfer from Texas A&M more than once, even during his award-winning senior year of 2006-07. He stayed because his parents wouldn't let him quit.

"He's continually riding you to do more," Law said. "After a while, you say, 'I've had enough of this.'

"Once I matured a little bit and got used to it, I look at coach as a father figure. I love him to death. If I have a problem with anything, not just dealing with basketball, I wouldn't hesitate to pick up the phone and ask him about it."

The two speak regularly and usually end the conversations by expressing their love for each other, Law said.

That wasn't the Gillispie encountered by Legion, Mills and, perhaps, Benson, who left the UK team during the first semester. Mills said Gillispie's coaching style led Benson to quit. Benson could not be reached for comment. His coach at Pleasure Ridge Park High School, Dale Mabrey, said Benson did not have a problem with Gillispie, but was tired of basketball.

"He just said he didn't know if he wanted to continue to play basketball," Mabrey said. "He had nothing bad or negative to say about the coaches. He liked them, and they liked him. Maybe it was a case where I didn't prepare him right so that he would've realized that when you get to that level, it's basketball 24 hours a day.

"The day he quit, he was supposed to be in the starting lineup in practice, and supposed to start the next game. Go figure."

Mills declined teammate Ramel Bradley's offer to lead a team-wide appeal to Gillispie for the walk-on's reinstatement.

"I told my teammate, 'Don't make a distraction out of me; don't try to pull me back,' " said Mills, who added that he didn't want to be part of a program headed by a man who "tries to make you feel smaller than him."

UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart saw nothing in Mills' dismissal or Legion's transfer to warrant his attention into "personnel decisions." He said he was "very comfortable" with how Gillispie is instilling toughness, discipline and competitiveness into Kentucky basketball. UK needs those qualities to win championships in all sports, he said.

"He's no more demanding than many of the successful coaches I've been around," said Barnhart, who noted football's Rich Brooks and baseball's John Cohen as examples at UK. "The great ones demand greatness because he knows where we want to go.

"Some young people can handle that and some people can't handle that."

When Kentucky played Florida International in late December, FIU Coach Sergio Rouco voluntarily defended Gillispie, his friend and former boss, by saying the UK players had to adjust from a "mild-mannered man" (Tubby Smith) to "Baby Saddam." The intended compliment drew laughter from reporters at the post-game news conference. For what it's worth, none of the holdover players from last season have left. Also none speak ill of Gillispie.

Legion cited Gillispie's personality and style as reasons he left. Neither playing time nor his mother influenced his decision, he said.

"I just felt I couldn't develop as a player," said Legion, who averaged 17.5 minutes in six games.

Legion acknowledged how Law ultimately benefited by staying with the program. But it wasn't enough for the Parade All-American to stay.

"Like I said, Coach Gillispie has his way," Legion said. "As a freshman, I just don't see that. I can't see going four years doing that."

Legion refused to speak specifically about his experiences at Kentucky. The player's mother spoke of a negative environment that her son kept from her until Thanksgiving.

"Three or four hours, nothing but negativity," Annette Legion said. "Just told you're nothing. ...

"My son kept a secret I didn't know. He said, for two months Billy talked about him, demeaned him and privately told him to go home and take your mother with you."

Many fans blamed Annette Legion for her son's transfer. But she said the decision was her son's.

"I had nothing to do with it," Legion's mother said. "My son tried to handle it as a young man, but it was over-bearing. He felt he was bullied long enough."

Gillispie did not want to talk about Legion or Mills. But he acknowledged his demanding style is intended to make players uncomfortable. He's trying to push players to greater levels of achievement, the UK coach said.

"My responsibility as a coach to each individual is to motivate them," Gillispie said. "If Joe Crawford is not an NBA Draft choice, I'll take that personal. If a guy such as Patrick (Patterson) comes to you as a sure first-round draft choice, if after one year, he's not a lottery pick, if he stays two years and he's not top-five, I take it personally.

"I'm going to help these guys to understand. Sometimes it may not be really comfortable to achieve at the very highest level. But I can see what exactly the top level of each player is and what the top level of the team is. Sometimes people want to get in a comfort zone and we have to motivate them to get out of it."

Gillispie likened himself to the character played by Sean Connery in the movie The Untouchables. When Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) tries to add the tough Chicago cop to fight organized crime, Connery has a question:

What are you prepared to do?

"He kept asking that question," Gillispie said. "I really believe that's relevant to what we do as basketball players. What are you prepared to do? ... Everybody wants to be an NBA player. But what are you prepared to do to make yourself become one of those guys.

"That's just my whole philosophy, basically."

When asked whether the cliche "tough love" described his coaching philosophy, Gillispie said, "There's a ton of love, I know that much."

Legion acknowledged that the coach patted players on the back. It was usually to point out areas of improvement, he said.

"He's going to tell you you've done a good job sometimes," the former UK player said. "But he's not going to baby you."

Gillispie compliments players. "But," Legion added, "it wasn't one of his strong points."

Johnston admitted that he initially had doubt. As a walk-on at UTEP, he assumed this was the way Division I players and coaches interacted. When the season began and the games became much easier than the practices, he embraced Gillispie's tough love.

"If you want to get better and you want a coach who cares about you, Billy Gillispie is the guy," Johnston said. "It's not an easy road. It's ultimately for the better of you."

That Gillispie's way turned off Legion, that Mills said he "agreed 100 percent" with the word "demeaning" as an accurate description of the style did not surprise Johnston.

"It's not that he's trying to belittle you or hurt you," Johnston said. "He's trying to help you. Some people can't look past the criticism to see it's constructive."

Without any prompting, Mills likened Gillispie's style to another no-nonsense, this-will-be-good-for-you coach who draws admirers and detractors.

"I love Bobby Knight, but it's like Bobby Knight tactics that you read about," the now former walk-on said. "It's all about holding power and stuff like that."

Unlike Knight, Gillispie doesn't physically abuse a player. "No, no, no, no, no," Mills said. "I truly believe Billy Gillispie would never physically touch a player. I've seen him very, very (ticked) off, but he never made any motion toward physically touching a player.

"Put it this way, if he was ever in my face, I'd have 100 percent confidence that he would not lay a hand on me."

Gillispie, an unabashed Knight admirer, recoiled from any comparison to Knight. "Any time you're compared to a guy who won 902 games and graduated his players, that's not fair to Coach Knight," he quipped.

Observers have said Knight acted like a drill sergeant, tearing down buck privates and then building them back into soldiers. "He believes that destroying you motivates you to prove him wrong," Mills said.

Since Southeastern Conference play began, Gillispie has been noticeably freer with praise for players. Good numbers by Crawford in November and December drew a shrug. In the last week, Gillispie has used the word "fantastic" when asked about Crawford and Patterson, and noted how Bradley's turnovers in the clutch are a bargain when weighed against his ability to score.

"I don't have a strategy," Gillispie said of the recent encouragement. "What I do is I tell the truth 100 percent of the time."

Sometimes the truth hurts.

Gillispie noted his demanding nature extends to the classroom and social settings as well as basketball.

"I think we're teaching life through basketball," he said. "Life isn't always easy either. The people most prepared to be successful are the people who've probably gone through some trials and tribulations."

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