Former Kansas All-American Julian Wright calls for Bill Self's 'early retirement'

Former Kansas All-American Julian Wright called for Bill Self’s “early retirement” while assessing the state of the program in a lengthy Facebook post. Wright played for KU from 2005-07 as he became a first-round pick in the NBA Draft.

Wright said he called Self and assistant coach Kurtis Townsend, but didn’t get a response following Kansas “abysmal season” in 2024-25. The Jayhawks fell to Arkansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, ending the year with a 21-13 overall record and an 11-9 mark in Big 12 play.

Wright called out Kansas’ “mid type of playbook,” which he said was “old,” as well. He also said he was willing to chip in for Self’s buyout, which currently sits at $23.1 million if he is fired without cause, according to the Kansas City Star.

“I know head coaches delegate and assistant coaches are more responsive,” Wright wrote. “I’m a former player so Coach T doesn’t have to be as responsive. You’re a terrible leader with mid type of playbook (I’m algorithm.. his playbook is old y’all! I don’t even wanna be a head coach.. I’d demolish KU with a Creighton type roster. You 40+ year old coaches, start calling this new wave of 18-years PROS! Let’s admit our parents and grandparents and coaches meant well, but they ain’t have all the answers then and their advice may not work in 2025. Look at the ASW game.

“You old heads need to sit down and stop gatekeeping and rather empower the next wave of players and younger coaches with pro playing experience. Fans, boosters. Y’all got it.. $23.1 for a buyout.. I’m putting 5% down if we start a gofundme to send Bill off to early retirement! Lol! If not, he’s no different than false prophets robbing their ‘followers’ BLIND!”

As the Jayhawks looked ahead to the offseason, Bill Self said the program would re-evaluate roster construction moving forward. Kansas was one of the big winners in the portal the last two cycles, but both years resulted in early exits from the NCAA Tournament.

“That’s a fair question,” Self said. “I think it’s a fair question that in some ways is an unrealistic question, though. If I’m not mistaken, no matter what you do in life, there’s going to be some ups and downs and we just haven’t had very many downs, to be honest with you. The last two years, we were such a beat up team at the end, we probably didn’t have much of a chance with our injuries to [Kevin] McCullar and [Hunter Dickinson] wasn’t healthy.

“This year we don’t have that excuse. This year our roster was good enough to be competitive, but it probably wasn’t the roster it needed to be to be talked about in a way that the best teams in America are talked about.”