>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> vox.com, a new website, launched this month. its mission is simple -- to

build a significant centralized news property for a digital age. the chief of vox.com was the founder of the wapo blog. i am also joined by the ceo of the parent company of vox.com. how and why did this happen? >> it happened because i have been writing about american politics for about 10 years. what you learn when you are doing that, particularly the policy stuff -- obamacare, the financial crisis, the hard, complicated stuff -- is that we are not well set up to guide readers through stories. we started covering obamacare before anyone in the world was covering it. by the time people tune in, we have done our explanation. we are on little bitty pieces.

the idea was, what if we could create a news site that over five years of covering something does not just give you 5000 articles about obamacare, but build a central resource that could really guide you from the beginning of the story to the end, so that no matter when you wanted to start paying attention, you had the information in front of you to understand it. the insights behind this was that the problem was technological. in order to print one thing, you have to leave out something else, what the internet has plenty of room. if we could create a new publishing technology and a new journalistic workflow, we have plenty of space to create the kind of resource we always wanted as writers. vox media had something close to that publishing technology. >> who noticed who first?

>> our technology guy was at a conference with ezra. ezra heard him speak. i think you describe it as, either i join these guys or i compete against them. we wound up coming together. >> he said an interesting thing. tell me if i am right about this. you said, they are already using the technology we are working on. you knew they had something, knew what they were doing. >> i was at this conference and had this idea in my head, before we had gone public with it at all. i heard tray talking about some of the things they invented. in every room trey was, i would not speak, because i was worried that if i said anything more,

they could execute on it. we would not have room to do it later. i left the conference terrified to let people know about vox media. a couple of weeks later, we hooked up and it was an easy merger. >> you know someone who was on this program with his son, early. he said to me, so many startups ups have the idea, but not the technology. >> i think in media in particular, it is taken for granted. you know whether it is energy or health care, education, they have all been transformed, the whole industry, by technology. when it comes to media, we look at certain platforms -- netflix is a great example. amazon is a great example. when it comes to content creation, technology has been marginalized. i think there is this historical legacy of, let the i.t. guys build it, as opposed to, let us be a technology-driven product. >> the tech guys are simply publishing what the creators

give them. >> that is exactly right. the first phase was, great companies with great brand names, putting content on the web, whether it is video or text, putting it on the web and expecting great results. they were burned by that. that is where we hear about digital dollars turning into dimes. the next thing came where the pendulum swung, and honestly you got a lot of low value content. a lot of slideshow, pop-up, content farms and crowd source model. consumers were conditioned to have low expectations of web content. it was lousy, and the advertising was also lousy. i think we are entering a third phase, where great new brands are being created with quality web-native journalists, great design, and great user utility. that is what we are investing in. >> how did you come to form vox media?

>> it started as a sports site, sbnation. that is still one of the fastest-growing parts of the seven different brands we run. an oakland a's fan got fed up with all the giants coverage in his hometown and decided to do something about it. he started an oakland a's blog called athletics nation which is still around. at the time "moneyball" was coming out, billy beane became a fan of the site. now we have 320 of those in different communities. this underlying publishing platform allowed us to publish in real-time, take advantage of where we saw media going, which was more social, conversational, more real-time, and more topical. there were a lot of great portals. but you cannot necessarily command authority in any given area, so we wanted to be more vertical in nature.

we did well in sports and decided to launch into technology as our second one. we created one called the verge. that is a site that focuses on the intersection of technology and culture. technology has an impact on everything today -- art, literature, science. the verge looks at the world through the lens of technology. as a result, it has been taking off, and rose to the top of -- passed a lot of older brands that had been around for a while, with its fresh approach. >> brands like what? >> brands we respect, like wired or techcrunch. all great sites in their own right, but we took a new approach, with forward-looking design and forward-looking content strategy. as a result, the audience continues to grow. >> what is the key to design? this is not about health care.

>> the answer is really good designers. a really good platform. >> obviously, that is true. but i am asking again -- is there a sense that if you can have somebody that can give you some variation of this, that is where you have to go, designwise? >> one of my cofounders is a woman named melissa bell, who built products and designs. our theory was that there were four pieces to what we're doing. there was the editorial piece, the building of the underlying technology, the design, and the business. if any of the four was not there -- >> this was design, technology,

and editorial. >> the thing about design is, i cannot do it. i do not have a design sense. the folks who we work for at vox.com, some of the designers, like matt irvine, are unbelievable. a lot of people do a design and think, how pretty is it going to be? what they would talk about is user experience. i think this is an port and distinction to make. on the editorial side, the idea was we could give evil a range that went from the specific articles they come to us for, and also an entry into all kinds of topics. they could go as deep as they ormaon, go. the experience for the user, how overwhelmed they get or do not get -- they can bring it somewhere else that matters. that experience decides whether or not that information is words on the internet. if you do not pay attention to design, the whole thing fails.

>> across mobile and across tablets and desktops -- you have to make it all work. we are conditioned to think of our phones as beautifully and elegantly designed devices. apple has conditioned us and many others to think that way. when you thought of websites, you did not think about things that were beautifully designed and utilitarian. we put a lot of effort into that. we test and refine and are not afraid to be bold. you see a lot of things that are overdesigned on the web, pretty for the sake of being pretty. the web had become a little over optimized. you often wind up in the exact same place. a lot of websites and up looking the same. you get people crammed into the right rail of the website, the right side. that is where we put that other stuff. people were like, that is best practices.

we were able to talk to our audience, analyze the data, and be bold about where we were going. >> with guys like ezra, what do they have to do to ring your bell? >> we have a strong belief and vox media that there is a new breed of talent, a new class of storytellers that grew up as web native. in silicon valley, we are part technology. you have this culture of the hacker as hero. this is a person who never asked permission to create a web application. they did it at home. mark zuckerberg is the prince of the hackers. in media now, it is the same way. when i was younger, you had to fight for that school paper job just to get yourself published.

let alone if you wanted to be a professional at this, you had to have some connections and hope your talent would take you far. obviously, that has all changed now. we have access to open platforms. we can create a blog on wordpress, video on vimeo or youtube. talent can experiment. 99.99% is not going to be professional grade. but there are going to be stars that rise, whether it is a woman like melissa bell, or ezra or josh, or any of our team. we look for those media hackers. >> did you learn on your own? >> i applied to the santa cruz

college, and i got rejected. around that time, i had started a blog. i said, i guess i will spend more time on them. i have often thought that if i had actually gotten into the newspaper, he could not only have gone differently, but a lot worse. a lot of the skills that were valuable and important or not where the industry was going. my blog, i began it in march of 2003. it is utterly uninformed. whatever this college kid. >> every time you have ever been on the show, you were a great guest. we knew you could deliver. it would be an interesting point of view. beyond health care, where is your core competence in terms of editorial?

>> in terms of editorial as a writer, my core competence is generally positive. the different kind of learning i did on my site is, if you are going to go into media, which i did not intend to do, you are going to be doing a blog as an amateur. you are not going to get your calls returned by congressman. you have to learn about politics a different way. you have to figure out something that gives you the information to elicit value for your audience that is not uninformed. the direction i went in with that was reading a lot of white papers from think tanks, a lot of academic research. think tanks are open even to people who do not have a huge platform. it gave me, on the research and, the ability to dive deep and get the kind of information that a lot of professional journalists did not want to take the time to do. it can be dull, complicated. the great thing about doing policy online is, you can go very deep into very esoteric topics that would never get a huge audience, because you would never make it into the paper or a magazine or television show. but it does not bother your audience. you can write it. every other time you are dealing with that issue, you are more grounded. separately, i have spent the

last couple of years at the washington post, running five riders at a blog there. i switched to a tech site which was more socially driven. i have had a bit of experienced rain to build on my product and trying to understand, who is your audience, and what do you do to serve them? if you are going to complete online, the fundamental difference is not just technology. how competitive it is. you need to be delivering a service to your readers that other people are not delivering. there is almost no way in a world that has a new yorker, washington post, new york times, these incredible organizations, that you are going to be such better writers that you are going to be able to compete. you need to find a service. at washington post, our service was policy.

>> but you also believe -- i believe the washington post would have been more attractive to you then doing what you did. what could they have made, some promise that would have made you stay there? you have said nothing but good things about "the washington post" in your description of the departure. but i question whether someone like this might have the same thing he has, to go to the entrepreneur. >> i think you do not underestimate an organization run by jeff bezos for its ability to be -- i love the post. it is an incredible organization. i think it decided to focus itself on "the washington post." i felt this product needed to be built to be itself, needed to be its own thing.

i have no doubt the post will make amazing products, as they do every single day. >> was there something that could have promised you that would have made you stay? what didn't they have in their promise that would have compelled you to stay? >> i think that when we have those -- >> framing it in the positive -- >> i am not asking for negatives. i am just asking for the truth. >> you already touched on things like a particular technology and a particular approach to design that was already built up. the post is capable of building up, but we had it. i think testament to that is, we launched our site within six weeks.

it will never be a finished product. most great websites are not. but we were ready to go. we had a lot of assets. another difference. we have this set of brands. verve, sbnation, and now vox, what we are trying to do is create next-generation brands. you go to the magazine rack and see big categories -- news, sports, home, food. you turn on cable and see big categories -- news, sports, home, food. on the web, we want to be that company that creates the leading media brands for a generation of consumers that have grown up expressing a preference to consume digitally, by the web, by mobile. every ounce of our organization is consumed with that. we wake up in the morning with no distractions. no business model distractions. no creative distractions. focus is a big part of being successful in any endeavor, and we are able to focus on that. >> would you say there is a condescension toward providing simple information?

>> there is in the media broadly. in many of our explainers, we will begin an explainer about the crisis in ukraine, with the answer of what is ukraine or the ukraine, or an explainer about medical marijuana laws -- what is marijuana? you get pushback from the media, because they feel it is simple. >> you will never get any from me. >> why do you know that? >> i believe in digging deep as you possibly can. but a simple informational question -- what follows tablets? something like that is a very simple question. there is a huge need for it. >> there are two problems in the media around this kind of thing. one is that the media rights for

itself too often. it is trying to impress the peer group. you have a lot of desire to be on the analytical and and on the reporting and, the cutting-edge, to be the competitor. you are trying to come up with an idea on the bleeding edge of the conversation, that none of your competitors have thought of. meanwhile, your readership has not read everything on the planet about this. they are not like you, a professional media consumer. by always being on the bleeding edge, you are missing part of the pie. my mother -- i am sure i will mess up the quote.

from eric severeid's sign-off -- "we have always tried to never underestimate the audience's intelligence or overestimate their information. i think we often do both. we underestimate how serious they are about hard issues. wapo was all about the idea that policy was not about the vegetables. you put in the work to make it readable, but you need to give folks the information they need to understand what you are talking about. and so when i hear folks looking at a part of the site, i am thrilled, because it shows me how wide open that space is. >> what is interesting is, after they get through the first card -- you asked about design. one of our design features is a metaphor of a card stack. preparing you for a topic, helping you to consume information. this is a design metaphor that works particularly well on mobile. you can be on your phone and

swiped from one set of explanations to the next. as ezra was saying, the first is basic. what is obamacare? as you go through, it gets more detail. always easy to understand. the first card, for people who are experts, might be evident. as you go through, i have had experts on a topic like gerrymandering, say, i learned something new. and i do this for a living. >> and people like to learn new things. >> and by the way, in the share economy, it is something people like to share. i learned this, and i want to express that i learned this. it is helpful in that regard. >> my friend david carr has

several things to say. klein's change of address could be read as the latest parable of old media cluelessness. a star journalist cashing in on namebrand success, but it is more than that. he said, mr. klein is not running away from something. he is going toward something else. >> there is some sort of negative judgment being rendered on the washington post. the washington post just won a number of pulitzers. i was deeply glad to be there and it is a deeply incredible organization. this was just a different idea.

if you are a large distributor, a large magazine that has a good website, you need a publishing system that provides a number of different solutions and integrates different things, including how to move things from digital. you have publishing systems built in the world that are really good. the thing we needed to do, which was create a quite vast amount of information, that was easy to update, easy to make permanent, easy for reporters to get back to, that could be attached to other information -- that was optimizing your technology for something entirely different. what david is saying -- what we were running towards was this idea there was something different we could do. not necessarily better. just different, and needed. vox media had the technology to do it. >> do the people creating the product know more about technology than editorial content? >> it is a perfect question. it requires a multidisciplinary approach. our platform -- we get a lot of kudos for it.

people say, is it a unicorn with a pink ribbon that creates magical content? of course not. it takes subject matter experts that know how to work the web. but technology can assist the storytelling process. technology is developed by people who listen and collaborate to develop the best systems for helping existing storytelling, distribution, and the consumption of digital media. as david carr pointed out, there is a whole class of talent. we get people who understand digital and create stories for this media, first and foremost. whether it is our guys spencer hall, the college football voice on the web, or a woman like izzy grant, who understands fashion and retail better than anyone -- every day, we think, how do we enable the audiences and advertisers? >> when you think about people who are leaving, does this in a sense make these institutions lesser, if they are losing so many good people? in the digital sphere? >> it is hard to point to anyone at these great institutions, that still create incredible products -- i tend to think of our products as targeting a class of audience that really

prefers to consume digitally. the new york times is doing some incredible work digitally as well. there are older media organizations that can get it and execute on it very well. not all of them do. some are afraid because they lost money or for whatever reason. >> last things about the place you came from, washington post. one of the things i love, and i think this fits into simple curiosity. you will look at something and say, five bits about obamacare. you will see new information you have not thought about.

the new york times is doing some incredible work digitally as well. there are older media organizations that can get it and execute on it very well. not all of them do. some are afraid because they lost money or for whatever reason. >> last things about the place you came from, "washington post." one of the things i love, and i think this fits into simple curiosity. you will look at something and say, five bits about obamacare. you will see new information you have not thought about. but it has become part of the conventional wisdom and might not be true. what do you think bezos is going to do? what impact will he have on the "washington post"? >> i would be fascinated to know. but me say a broad think about jeff bezos. there can be a sort of a cult of

the billionaire. it is not just the "washington post." any time a charismatic billionaire takes over, the question people ask is, what will jeff bezos do? the answer is, there is a really talented editorial team, and products team and other types of teams at the post. he is going to give them, for a while, the resources and the autonomy to execute on their vision. jeff bezos is not going to come in and tell the executive editor, here is how you would publish this. jeff bezos is going to help back marty, and emilio, who runs digital, and the rest of the leadership team. some people have this image that whoever owns it is going to sit in the back room and come up with a great plan. but they are good, deep organizations. i think jeff bezos will be listening, but i think execution, just like it would be

for anyone, including -- this is how jim would describe what he does at vox media. it is going to be empowering really good people, giving them the resources and protection and time to push the post and any other institution like this forward. >> it is good to have you here. >> great to be here, thanks. ♪

>> john calipari is the head basketball coach at the university of kentucky. he arrived in lexington in 2009 after building programs at the university of massachusetts and others, culminating in an improbable run through the tournament to the championship game. he writes about his coaching philosophy and much more in "players first: coaching from the inside out." i am pleased to have him at this table for the first time.

>> i've made it. i got to the table. >> on behalf of the table, i say thank you. the table says, we do not speak. we just do. i am glad to have you. as you know, i am a huge basketball fan. a duke basketball fan. it is blue. it is blue. we did not do so well in the ncaa this year. you know better than me. >> very good recruiting class. very good players in the program. obviously, michael had those guys ready. >> what is it about you and mike and michigan, louisville? you build programs. you do not build teams. you build programs. >> the program in kentucky started in the 1930's, with a guy named adolph. it is amazing that the foundation he set still stands today. true leaders, in my mind, build something.

and when they leave, it continues. and that is what he did. walking into kentucky is like nothing i have ever done. i had to build massachusetts, and rebuild. i walked in there. the program was down, but it was tough. >> they had a fan base. >> he did not have to sell a ticket or get people excited about basketball. and they watched the tapes more than i watch the tapes. >> you mean the fans. >> they will watch it three times. i watch it once or twice. but, again, what we are doing, and what i talk about in "players first" -- the players have not changed. the clutter around them has changed. the environments have changed, in that they now have choices after a year of going to college. where kids stayed four years, now it is, how do you deal with this? >> you look at the reality and say, that is the reality that i

have to deal with? there are players in the country going to college for one year. not all of them, but most of them. but the majority of them, first and second round choices -- >> it is crazy. the nba is getting younger. they need to change the rule, but that is another point. here is the other issue for me. if i recruit good players, i have to give them the information that leads them to make the best decision for themselves. they have to trust me. if i wanted to be a team during the season to give up part of your game, to sacrifice, to be there for your teammate more than yourself, to do less so it ends up being more for you and us -- they say, but coach, you

have to have my back. i am when to worry about everybody else. you worry about me. you have to look at the information. if the information leads them to make a decision to go to the pros, you have to be happy for them and their family. it is not what i want, but i will deal with what is left. >> do you deal with that when you are recording? i would prefer you stay for years and get a degree. do not deal me as somebody who wants to come in and take you for a year and support your talent, and do something big for me and the university who pays my salary. i want you to get an education. >> i say, will you commit to your family that you will come back and get your degree? and they say, i will. we just started that. i have only been there five years. >> take one. john wall. >> john wall has not, but john wall was just becoming that player. he got a max contract and gave a million dollars to charity right away. so did demarcus cousins. they learned something from us. i predict that of the guys who

went after one year, half of them will begin to come back. brandon knight will finish up. he stayed one year. i tell kids, do not think you are staying one year. if something happens and you are good enough after one, i will support you. i am not going to use you. i want you to use me. i do not want this family to think, i do not need to use children. use me for everybody i know, everywhere i have been. you use me. that is what we go in with. we do not even talk nba, but they know, if you go there and are good enough, he is not going to hold you back. >> what do you teach them in a year? >> a lot of life skills. servant leadership. do you know how hard that is, teaching servant leadership, when the young man and the young guys were the center of

attention their whole lives? all of a sudden -- >> since they were 8 or 10 years old? >> since they could think. now, they were on a high school team that they shot every ball. they are coming with me and into years, i am trying to get them to understand, when you make life about yourself, very difficult. very lonely. very hard. when you make life about everyone else, life becomes easy. and that is the game of basketball. when you want it to be all about you, it is difficult and lonely. my team that won the national title, anthony davis, michael kidd, gilchrist -- one and two pick in the draft. they took the fourth and fifth most shots on my team. they understood servant

leadership, and they were young. to say you cannot teach that when they are young -- yes, you can. can you make someone feel good, because you are in a kentucky uniform, spending two minutes with a child or a grandmother, somebody from the hills in pikeville that comes in? in two minutes, you just made them for six months. money has wings. if you chase money, you never really get it. chase excellence. money follows. the first million, put that away. do not worry about buying cars. put it in the bank. leave it there. in seven years, it doubles. if it goes south on you, you can live the rest of your live off what comes out of $2 million. there are a lot of things we try to teach, but it is all speeded up. >> how many accept what you are teaching? >> michael gilchrist's mom called me and said, he listened to everything you said about the

money talk. i have it with all of them. it brings emotion to me, because they were listening, they were watching. what we found out -- we raise money for haiti, for sandy victims. a million and a half. but they were part of the fundraising. and they see, i can have an impact for other people. and understand, fame is fleeting and money has wings. there is more. and they will tell you. what we try to do is teach more than basketball. we are teaching life skills. >> when you say players first, what do you mean? >> every decision i make is based on, is this right for them? i will give an example. when i went to all the players on this team and said, would you like nba teams to check on you, yes. they get the information, and i tell them, you know i want to coach you. but i also know you have dreams and aspirations. but i also want you to understand, you make this decision for you. during the season, it is all about the team.

it is all about brotherhood. it is all about sacrifice. when the season ends, no more games. it is about you. this program is going to be here 50 years from now, whether you make a decision to leave or go. this school, this state -- everything is fine. if you choose to leave or come back, this program will be here. do what is right for you. >> what happened this year to your team? slow start. everybody thought you were going to be a killer. >> we all did. i probably got intoxicated by it.

i think i needed to develop rolls faster than i did. i think i read the hype and did not want to step in. i needed them to fail fast so i could see what they were and what they were not. but no one has ever attempted to do what we did. start freshmen and win a national title, seven freshmen and a sophomore? i woke up one day and thought, how am i going to help andrew? the tweaks you heard about was me getting with andrew, getting him to watch tape of williams, telling him, play like that. and telling him, create for us. do not shoot any balls. the changed our team. that is on me. i apologize to him and the team. why did it take so long? i do not have an answer. >> did it take time for freshmen to bond together? it is simply, no matter how you cut it, a matter of time. >> you cannot skip steps. there is a process. in different years -- i will

give you an example of the process as you are going. i talk in this thing about us playing vanderbilt in 2012. we are the best team in the country. michael kidd gilchrist comes in before the championship game and says, start darius miller in my place. what are you talking about? it is 30 minutes before the game. he said, you are killing him. he is not playing well. and we cannot get the national title without him. >> he took 17 shots in the game. we are not going to win. michael got in foul trouble, because he was not used to coming off the bench. in that moment, we won the national title, because darius knew we were all believing in him and rooting for him to do

well. from that point on, he played well enough for us to win a national title. that is part of servant leadership. are you willing to step back so someone can step forward? that is the type of things we are trying to teach. >> the five most important things a coach does for the team? >> during the game, there is managing substitutions. i like it when the players of themselves. >> meaning they come over and say -- >> get me out. the second thing is, flow of the game. when we played louisville, i had to stop that game at different points. people were like, why is he stopping it? my team was scared to death. you stop the game to stop runs. i think the other thing is, as a head coach, being able to feel, where is this thing going, and

how do i make it go a different way, whether it means playing the zone, those are the most important things. the biggest thing of all is, your players throughout have to know you believe. even if you are being hard, they still know you believe. you cannot share lack of effort. you cannot. you cannot share a player who is not focused on breaking down all the players. you cannot cheer a guy who is playing with no intensity, or selfish, or bad body language. that stuff has to be aggressively dealt with. even through all that, they have to know, i believe in you, and we are going to do fine. keep playing. just keep waiting. you have to be there, especially for the kids. they are 18, 19 years old. >> what is the best you have seen, these young men? >> they have a certain drive beyond the norm.

>> that is what i am interested in. we certainly have larger skills, but their whole subset has larger skills. those that have larger skills is what separates them is the drive, the heart, the well. >> you know where i think it comes from? >> mothers? >> a fear they are not quite good enough. the best players i have coached had this thought -- i am not as good as everybody thinks. and it drives them. i can think of a derrick rose that would be in the gym five hours. i remember seeing evans sleeping in a chair because he had just got done working out and class was in the morning, and he would leave from there. i see anthony davis or brandon knight, 11:00 at night, back from recruiting, i pull in my office and look out the window.

he is right there. he said, i had a calculus test and could not come over, so i want to come over tonight. that drive, which is a fear i am not good enough, a fear that someone is getting better -- if it is channeled the right way, it is not all bad. >> it also can be a fear factor. unless i do this, i am -- i want to win so bad. the taste of victory is so good. >> those guys, i will tell you what happens. they work so hard, they never surrender. they may lose, but they have invested too much. they will not surrender. this team, the first thing they had to learn is how to work. when they got that, we could start working on the other stuff.

by the end of the year, they invested so much, they would not lose a game. >> if a kid comes to you and cannot shoot free throws -- >> that is why we lose games. i do not understand it. >> can you teach a kid who has a good game to be a free throw shooter? >> if they have huge hands, it is really hard. you are shooting like this. really tough. but the normal player, the last thing the nba worries about -- if it is mechanically right, they are fine. i will give you an example. >> an nba team will want to make sure the player has the right mechanics as the ball leaves his hand.

>> when they look, they will know he is mechanically ok. it means he has to get into the gym. nba players, if they are mechanically correct -- grady could not make a free throw, a 15 footer. five years later, not only on all-star -- he never missed. >> he had the right mechanics -- so what happened to him? >> they get in the gym. you know michael was not great at the beginning. neither was larry. neither was magic. >> michael did not make the team as a sophomore in high school. >> he got cut. those guys are driven. larry bird would come out two hours before the game and get the managers to rebound for him. shooting is the last thing. for me -- >> shooting is the last thing? >> if you cannot shoot because of your mechanics, that may affect them. i want to know, is he a good guy? does he make people better? there are some now, kyl corker, that is what they do. that is the skill.

passing, defense -- you make shots for us. i am talking a normal basketball player that is well-rounded in a lot of ways. shooting is not the first thing they look out. >> who has the best shot you have ever seen? in the pros or in college. was it ray allen or someone like that? >> ray allen could really shoot. my son loves atlanta. top order can really shoot. curry can really, really shoot. >> father had something to do with that? >> a little bit. jj could really shoot. there are other guys. that can get you in the league. >> it will not make you a superstar. >> you have to have the other

parts of your game. >> given the same quality players, do you believe you can get as good a result as any other coach around, given the same level of skill of your players, that you can do with those players as good as any other coach in college right now? >> there are plenty of great coaches. >> i might ask kevin ollie this year. >> kevin did a great job. i am confident i can get young people together as a team. probably no more confident than other coaches. i would tell you this. if i am doing my job right, i want my team to have more fun than anybody. and i have been there. it is not like life or death for me. if it is life or death, you die all the time. i am trying again. players first. if i focus on them, my life becomes easier.

today, we just learned that willy colley is going to come back. that is like an upset for us. one of our best players last year. hurt in the louisville game. seven foot, athletic. today, he says, i am coming back for my junior year. very unusual for us. am i happy? i am doing back flips. he made that decision and was not influenced by anybody. >> doesn't bother you when people would write, john is a great recruiter. we do not know if he is a great coach. >> i did not hear a lot of it. but it is said. >> all of a sudden, people say, he knows basketball. he is good. it went in that cycle. even though you had built programs in massachusetts.

>> here is what they are saying and why that is ok. he has got really good players. look how good his players are. he needs to be a better coach. i have done my job. it is about them. if i want to say, promote my players at my expense, i am ok. my life has been good. would i rather them say, he has really good players and he really coaches them together? i would, but none of us can worry about people who have never had a meal with us, have never sat down with us, and who are fans of other programs. all i do is, i do the best job i can for those players, the people i work for, the university, the state i represent. that is who i care about. if someone has been my friend and says, he is not a good guy, i have a problem. short of that, i walk on. >> a pleasure to have you here. >> i made the table. >> the book is "players first: coaching from the inside out." written with michael sokolove. >> my pleasure.

>> beat everybody but duke. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

>> live from pier three in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west." it is a race against time as microsoft tries to fix a major security flaw in internet explorer, that hackers are already using in targeted attacks. we are expecting the biggest ipo filing since facebook with alibaba. the commerce e-commerce giant is on an investment spree with the latest deal announced today. first, a check on your top headlines. apple and samsung are ready to make their final pitches to the jury. closing arguments will begin today in the blockbuster patent trial. apple is seeking $2.2 billion in damages for patent infringement. a win would allow the company to