How Rick Pitino resurrected St. John's basketball — and his own career

Tip-off was just minutes away at Madison Square Garden when the first few notes of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” sounded over the loudspeaker. Seemingly, all eyes in the sold-out arena shifted in unison toward a tunnel as Rick Pitino, dressed right out of Wall Street, circa 1987, strode onto the court with his St. John’s basketball team.

It’s telling that in an era where most college coaches wear quarter-zips and joggers to even the biggest games, Pitino goes to battle in bespoke suits with pocket squares. There is no workday casual in Pitino’s world. In fact, there is nothing casual, period. When you are driven like he is to be the best, say those who know Pitino well, no detail is too small, no opponent too insignificant for him not to give it 100% of his attention and effort.

This, more than anything, goes a long way in explaining how a 72-year-old coach with some significant baggage is once again rising to the top of the college basketball world and doing it in an NIL age that has sent many of his peers scurrying into retirement.

“He is never content. He is never satisfied. It’s always urgent,” Jeff Van Gundy, an assistant under Pitino with Providence and the Knicks, told Newsday. “He just has this drive to be great. He’s had it throughout his entire career and that’s not an easy thing to do.

“He loves the game. He loves the competition. And, I do think he really, really loves proving himself once again.”

Six years after being exiled to Greece when his latest basketball scandal at Louisville deemed him an untouchable, Pitino is proving himself in the most dramatic way possible by resurrecting both his Hall of Fame career and a St. John’s basketball program that had fallen on decades of hard times.

With a game to go in Big East play, St. John’s (26-4, 17-2) has already clinched its first regular-season conference title in 40 years and its No. 6 national ranking is the school’s highest since 1991. The Red Storm will be the top seed in next week’s Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden. Pitino is on the precipice of taking his sixth different school to the NCAA Tournament, but his plans don’t stop there.

Said Pitino: “We’re just getting started.”

HIGHS AND LOWS

Eight years ago, it looked as if Pitino’s storied four-decade career had ended in controversy.

A coach with a resume like no other, Pitino landed his first full-time head coaching job at the age of 25 with Boston University. His relentless drive to be the best had taken him to stops at Providence, the Knicks, Kentucky, the Celtics and Louisville, where he spent 16 seasons.

It carried him to huge highs, like making seven Final Four appearances at three schools and winning national titles with two different programs, Kentucky and Louisville. It also featured some ugly lows, like being blackmailed by a woman with whom he had a late-night tryst at a restaurant, having one of his titles vacated for NCAA rules violations and being fired from Louisville in 2017 after the program was caught up in an FBI investigation.

Pitino tried to walk away from it all. He moved to Miami at age 65 and attempted to apply his competitive drive to something outside of basketball. He bought a boat. He played golf. He had Dolphins season tickets. Yet, somehow trying to be the best retired guy in Florida was not as satisfying as trying to be the best coach in basketball.

“I did enjoy some things, but then I’d go home every night and watch games until one o’clock in the morning from the West Coast,” Pitino recalled in a recent interview with Newsday. “My wife finally said when I got a call from Panathinaikos in Greece, ‘You are going. This is not you. This lifestyle is not you.’ ”

He flew 6,000 miles around the world to launch his comeback.

In Athens, Pitino faced challenges he never could have imagined. He led a campaign to get fans to quit smoking during games and he learned how to build a team out of players who were, for the most part, on one-year contracts. That second factor prepared him for the world of college basketball today.

“It reminds me exactly of the EuroLeague,” Pitino said of the college game in the new era of NIL and the transfer portal. “Over there, if you sign a player for two years it’s a long time. You get different players every year.”

After two years in Greece, Iona decided to give him a chance. He rewarded their faith with two NCAA Tournament appearances in three seasons. And then St John’s and the big time came calling.

ADAPTING IN THE NIL ERA

It didn’t matter that St. John’s was a shell of the basketball program it had been 40 years ago. Pitino, who was born in Manhattan and played high school basketball at St. Dominic in Oyster Bay, immediately understood its potential.

The college basketball landscape had changed dramatically since he was fired from Louisville. While big-name coaches like Jay Wright, Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams and Tony Bennett all exited, Pitino embraced the changes.

Helped greatly by the financial backing of billionaire St. John’s alum Mike Repole, Pitino has worked the transfer portal like few others. His portal haul was ranked sixth in the nation in 2023 and fourth in 2024 by 247Sports. That 2024 class included Kadary Richmond, the 6-6 guard that St. John’s basically stole from a Seton Hall team that didn’t have the money to pay him.

Pitino said the days of going into a high school recruit’s house are over for him and that St. John’s is going straight to the portal to build their team.

“If you want to coach between the lines, you have to adapt to not only a style standpoint, but everything that takes place away from the lines,” Pitino told Newsday. “If you don’t, you aren’t going to enjoy the game. That’s when you should get out. Coaches get out because they don’t enjoy that part. But, if you enjoy the game more than anything, you adjust.”

Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan, a point guard on Pitino’s first Final Four team with Providence in 1987, bristles at the idea that Pitino is the perfect coach for the NIL era. That’s because he believes Pitino is the perfect coach for any era, saying Pitino’s ability to embrace changes in the sport over the course of his career is a big reason for his success.

“He loves the game of basketball. Every waking moment is basketball,” Donovan said. “There’s always obstacles in your way. Early in his career it might have been recruiting different guys, then it may have been the AAU becoming a thing. Now, you are dealing with transfers. When you have the level of passion he has and the love of the game, you figure things out.”

Yet, it’s not just how to work the transfer portal that Pitino has figured out. He also understands the extra things that make St. John’s, a commuter school without a leafy campus, an appealing destination for today’s players.

Pitino basically closed the deal with VICE TV to produce the docuseries “Pitino: Red Storm Rising,” knowing that it would both bring in some NIL money and be a great recruitment tool. He is active on social media, sending texts to his son in Florida who then posts them on X so he doesn’t have to see the fallout himself. And he rarely misses a chance to mention that his team plays an increasing number of their games at the Garden.

“We are in the greatest city in the world,” Pitino said recently on WFAN. “It has 10 pro teams, so we’re like the 11th pro team.”

OLD-SCHOOL VALUES

Of course, as much as the game has changed, much of what Pitino does has stayed the same.

He still gets up at 5 a.m. to get in his own individual workout before running individual skill drills with his players in the morning. He still demands that his team be in top condition in order to play the sort of pressing defense that has been his hallmark for years. And he still prepares for every opponent — whether it be a ranked team like Marquette or a struggling one like Seton Hall — as if he were preparing for a Final Four game.

“He keeps everybody on edge, every day. Coaches, players, himself, the whole basketball community,” Van Gundy said when asked what it’s like to work for Pitino. “He has a lot of old-school values like conditioning and being in shape . . . The guys who are attracted to playing for him are either driven or, if they are not, he drives them to greatness or they fall by the wayside.”

What also hasn’t changed is the way Pitino’s teams improve dramatically after his first year. It’s no coincidence that after a tough first year at St. John’s, which included a much-publicized tirade where he criticized the team’s facilities and called the season “the most unenjoyable experience” of his life, Pitino’s team has made a dramatic second-year surge.

Boston University, Providence, Kentucky, Louisville and even Iona all made significant leaps from his first year to his second. His team at Providence probably made the most dramatic improvement, going from 17 wins his first year to 25 wins and a 1987 Final Four appearance in his second.

Could St. John’s make that kind of leap? The Red Storm are on a roll, heading into their final game of the regular season on Saturday at No. 20 Marquette having won 15 of their last 16 games. They also have an unwavering belief in themselves.

When asked what he thought the ceiling was for the team in a recent news conference, guard Deivon Smith said, “I think we can win every game.”

A coach with this kind of drive couldn’t ask for more.

By Barbara Barker

barbara.barker@newsday.commeanbarb

Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.