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How Rick Pitino’s Kentucky Teams Anticipated Modern Basketball

How did Rick Pitino's Kentucky teams anticipate modern basketball? Tony Delk recalls skilled bigs, open lanes and a 1996 title built on threes and pressure.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · February 17, 2018

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In the 1996 title game, Tony Delk hit seven three-pointers against Syracuse. Kentucky made 12 as a team, then won 76–67. Years later, Delk could still explain what happened before a shooter got open: a defender had to leave the basket and follow a Kentucky big man toward the arc.

That is how Rick Pitino’s Kentucky teams anticipated modern basketball. They made room for drives with outside shooting, gave big men more to do than wait near the rim, and let several players move the ball. Delk described the result on Tales From the Association: the other team had to decide which threat to guard first.

How did Rick Pitino’s Kentucky teams create space?

Tony Delk told Chris Horwedel that Pitino disliked long two-point shots with a foot near the three-point line. Delk remembered a coach who wanted players to step back for three and wanted big men to draw defenders away from the basket.

The choice was ugly. Its shot blocker could stay home and leave a Kentucky player open outside, or follow him and leave a lane behind. Delk said a few made threes could force the defense to choose. A guard who liked to drive suddenly had somewhere to go.

Delk gave Wayne Turner as an example. Turner’s strength was getting to the basket. Delk said Pitino did not try to make him a three-point specialist. He put shooters around him instead. If several defenders could ignore the men on the arc, they could crowd Turner’s path. If they had to guard those men, Turner could attack the gap.

There is a small catch in Delk’s memory. He said Pitino could put five players on the floor who shot threes. That describes the threat Kentucky could show, rather than every lineup’s shooting record. Antoine Walker, for instance, made 18.8 percent of his threes that season. Walter McCarty made 46.7 percent. Both were big men with useful skills, though a defense had far more reason to chase McCarty outside.

Why did Antoine Walker change Kentucky’s offense?

Delk remembered meeting a young Antoine Walker and seeing a player roughly 6-foot-9 or 6-foot-10 who could handle the ball. Walker could take a rebound and head upcourt himself. He could also pass and score near the rim. Delk compared the sight of a big man running a play to watching Magic Johnson.

That mattered before Kentucky even set up its offense. A defense expecting the point guard to bring the ball down had to account for Walker doing it instead. Another defender might have to stop him early, leaving someone else free. Delk’s point was about the number of choices Kentucky could make, not the name beside Walker’s position on a roster.

Walker’s 1995–96 numbers help keep the picture honest. He averaged 15.2 points and 8.4 rebounds, with 2.9 assists. His outside shot was still a weak part of his game. He was a skilled big because he could start an attack and find teammates, even when his own three was unlikely to fall.

Delk said Walter McCarty could dribble, too. He also remembered Mark Pope bringing the ball down the floor. That did not mean every trip began with a forward pretending to be a guard. It meant Kentucky had another way out when a defense tried to stop the first one.

Did Kentucky’s big men really shoot threes?

Some did. In 1995–96, McCarty made 46.7 percent of his threes and averaged 11.3 points. Pope, listed as a center, made 35.6 percent on a smaller number of tries. Those attempts gave their defenders a question they would have preferred to avoid: how far from the rim must a big man follow his man?

Delk remembered McCarty’s shooting with special care. He said Kentucky’s 1995 season changed when McCarty went to the bench against North Carolina. Delk recalled that the team lost a scorer and playmaker who could pull a defender out. It is his account of the game, and it shows what he valued about McCarty: the space he made for everyone else.

“If you got 4 or 5 guys that can bring the ball down the court, to me it's hard to guard those guys.”
— Tony Delk, on Tales From the Association

Pitino had gone further with threes on earlier Kentucky teams. The school’s record book lists 340 made threes in 1992–93. The 1995–96 championship season had 266. The later team did shoot them more accurately, making 39.7 percent. Its edge was the way shooting worked alongside the other skills on its roster.

Pitino himself described that mix after the title game. He said Kentucky had taken relatively few threes that night by its own standards. He described a team built around pressure defense, the three-point shot and movement. On a night when the shots came and went, the pressure stayed.

How did several ball handlers make Kentucky harder to guard?

That was the question. Chris Horwedel asked Delk about the NBA’s positionless game and whether it might have changed Delk’s own career. Delk said his scoring and ball skills would have fit, then pointed back to Kentucky, where an offense did not always need its point guard to start every play.

Picture a defender ready to press the guard as soon as he catches a pass. The first plan can fail. If Walker can bring the ball up, or McCarty can put it on the floor after a catch, his defender cannot simply charge at him with both feet planted. Delk said players who could pass and handle made Kentucky harder to read.

The same choices shaped who got a shot. Delk told Horwedel that his 1996 teammates did not have to wait for one scorer to rescue a possession. Walker could score. McCarty could make a shot from outside. Derek Anderson gave Kentucky another option in the backcourt. Freshman Ron Mercer could come off the bench and produce.

Delk contrasted that team with Kentucky’s 1993 Final Four side, whose offense he remembered as centered on Jamal Mashburn. Delk praised Mashburn. His point was that a defense preparing for the 1996 team had more names to worry about, and Kentucky’s players accepted sharing the work.

What did the 1996 championship game show?

It showed the threes, certainly. Delk scored 24 points and made seven of 12 from deep. Mercer added 20 points off the bench and made three of four threes. Anderson made the team’s other two. Kentucky won its sixth national title on April 1, 1996, in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

It also showed why calling Kentucky a team of shooters leaves too much out. Syracuse turned the ball over 24 times, and Kentucky scored 27 points from those turnovers. Pitino’s pressure made opponents hurry. His offense then had players who could use the openings that followed.

The title-game box score supplies one more check on the memory of five big shooters. Walker missed his only three. Pope missed both of his. Kentucky won anyway, with Delk shooting from deep and other players doing their work elsewhere. A flexible team did not need every player to make the same shot.

Horwedel later said he missed the old, rough games, even as he watched more threes go up. Delk laughed at the thought of Charles Oakley and Bill Laimbeer meeting for drinks after one. He liked the newer style. He said he wished he had been born in 1994 instead of 1974.

Was Pitino’s Kentucky team ahead of its time?

Delk thought so. He told Horwedel that Pitino’s thinking about skilled players at forward and center was 10 to 15 years ahead of others. That is a former player’s judgment, not a date when basketball suddenly changed. Kentucky’s own 1992–93 team had taken even more threes than the champions would.

The useful comparison is narrower. Delk recognized parts of Kentucky’s game in the later style Horwedel asked him about: big players who could handle the ball, shooters who gave a driver room, and an offense that did not stop when one player lost the ball. The 1996 team put those parts together and finished 34–2.

For Delk, that lesson followed him into the NBA. He told Horwedel that early in his pro career, playing point guard was hard because he had spent so much time as a scorer. The positionless game sounded good to a man who knew what happened when a coach decided he had to fit one position. Back at Kentucky, Walker could grab a rebound and go. That was the whole plan.