Late Night Letter

Saw this. Had to post.

Dear Ben,

You surprised me tonight. I’ve been hearing about the legend of Ben Simmons for years now, so the fact that you double-doubled was expected—not surprising. No, what surprised me is the team you did it for. Maybe I’ve been mislead, but I was under the impression that you were a Kentucky Wildcat. I did recruit you in high school, right? World Wide Wes did you give you the talk, didn’t he? You wanna know what those things mean? They mean you play for me.

Just be completely honest, and I’ll promise not to be mad—Do you really play for LSU? You do know I’m the commissioner of their conference, right? They can beat me in an early January game as many times as they want (no they can’t) but when March comes around they’ll be knee deep in football preseason running 3-cone drill in the bayou. I mean if you do play for them I suppose it is a bit of weight off of my shoulders… I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get you off the pine and into a game all season.  But from what I hear from my assistants, you were sitting on their bench tonight—not mine. Seriously, I even tried to find you in our locker room at halftime because you were the only guy on our team I thought could guard the guy that looked like you on the other team.

Regardless, if this is not a practical joke and you really do play for LSU, we will figure it out together. I don’t care if you already go to another college, there’s definitely still a place for you on this Kentucky NBA Development Team and I’m gonna recruit my tail off until you’re a part of it. You know what I call players who play for me more than one season? Walk-ons. So listen, this is what we are going to do. Drake’s new album is coming out at midnight. I’m going to go ahead and push that to make sure he includes “Big Blue Ben Simmons” at least twice, and I’m also gonna talk a little bit of cover art with him. Besides that, do you have any other hobbies? Are you Catholic? Do you want to be Catholic? I can have you confirmed by morning. You just let me know what you need, and I’ll make sure the only time you have to go back to Louisiana for the rest of your life is to eviscerate the Pelicans for the next 18 years. I’ve been an innovative recruiter my whole career—never in the middle of the season, but hey it is year 2016—so don’t worry about the hippies in the media and the old white people in the NCAA. Let me worry about what is “legal.” You just be at shoot around on Saturday in Tuscaloosa and Poppa Cal will take care of the rest.

See you soon,

John Calipari

P.S. We will take #55 from your team as well.