TRANSCRIPT: Kentucky MBB assistant Ron "Chin" Coleman speaks with media

The new assistant coach for Kentucky Men’s Basketball, Ron “Chin” Coleman met the media in person on Saturday afternoon during the annual Father-Daughter Camp located in the basement gyms of the Joe Craft Center.

It was the first time that Coach Coleman has been able to talk with the media face-to-face since being hired onboard the Wildcat coaching staff back in May. During the conversation, he went in-depth on how he earned the nickname “Chin”, how Kentucky is dealing with the potential for new NIL rules, and even how he’s developed a taste for fashion. There’s also some basketball talk mixed in there, too.

Below is the entire transcript for the 17-minute interview along with the full video at the bottom of the page.

On how he got the nickname “Chin”…

Oh, man. I think I’ve told this story a thousand times. It’s just one of those nicknames I couldn’t get rid of. I tried when I got into coaching after I stopped playing, I tried to get rid of it. I thought it would be more professional if I got rid of my street name, my little childhood street name, but I couldn’t get rid of it. And here’s a quick story. It was a name that I picked up as a kid playing basketball. A guy by the name of James–when you play basketball you earn a nickname. Like in the city of Chicago and New York and L.A., lots of big cities, when you get a nickname, you’ve earned it. Here’s the crazy story, the guy that gave me the nickname, his nickname was ET, he didn’t earn he, he wasn’t a good player he just got the nickname ET. He kinda gave me the nickname and I guess it’s because of my chin, my beautiful chin, and so it stuck with me ever since I was a kid. My first job at Colorado State I just tried to get off it. Coach (Tim) Miles, we tried it for a week and then he called me into the office and he was like ‘Chin’–and we had been going by Ron for a good week, lasted a hot week, it didn’t last long. Then I said Coach we not doing Chin no more, he’s like yeah but if we call you by your biological name, no one will know you anymore, you’d lose all your street credibility. So the whole basketball world as a player as a coach, they all know me as a Chin so it’s kinda like a bad cold that I haven’t been able to shake yet.

On if his friends and family call him Chin…

Some of them do. My mom, she doesn’t call me that but some of my family members do. Sometimes my brother does sometime he don’t. I think my nieces and nephews do because they’re young and that’s pretty much all they know me as. They don’t know me as Little Ronald, which is what my mom calls me. That’s all that everybody knows. If some coach or some uncle or somebody knew me as a player, that’s what they know me as, is Chin, and not as Ron or Ronald. I haven’t been able to get rid of it and it’s cool.

On his competitiveness…

I wouldn’t say I’m a sore loser, I’m just really passionate and really pointed in my direction. And ‘Toine (Antoine Walker) is probably talking more as a coach because we grew up together, we’ve been best friends for a long time. He, I, Naz (Nazr Mohammed), we all kinda grew up together playing ball. He’s talking more from a coach’s perspective than a player’s perspective. So what happens is all of them know that I coach and so I’m in a different lane. When we lose, I kinda take it upon myself and I take it personally to think that I can fix it and so if I’m doing scouts or if I’m training guys, I try to train them hard and work better and work harder on my scout, so I kinda shut off everything and have these horse blinders on but I’ve gotten better. They’ve helped me get better. They know not to call me if we lose because I won’t answer the phone or they know not to text me after we lose because I’m not gonna answer any texts. But I’ve gotten better, I’ve gotten a lot better than I was. Before, I wouldn’t even talk to my friends, and Shawn Marion, we’re all friends and I wouldn’t talk to them during the season and that’s bad. So I’ve kinda gotten better from that and I don’t take it as hard as I normally was. I’m a lot better now.

On how he looks for the winner mentality’s when recruiting…

It’s the pedigree. You want to recruit guys where they’ve been in situations and programs where there’s a premium on winning. We wanna recruit players, in a perfect world, where they won at their high schools and they won state championships or they’ve been in a bunch of championships, because then they understand the sacrifice and they understand the things that it takes to win and to be on a basketball team like Kentucky where there’s gonna be other good players and you have to know how to simulate to that environment. You can’t simulate that environment if you’ve never done it. If this is the first time you’ve ever been in a situation to where there’s a premium on winning then you’re learning–it’s moving really fast, things here move really really fast. There’s not a lot of time to learn so you want to recruit guys who have already had the experience of winning culture so they know what that means. They know what is expected, they know how to sacrifice. You try to look for that in terms of recruiting; have they ever won, have they ever won any state championships, regional championships, sectional championships? With transfers, you want to recruit transfers that come from a winning program because you know you’re putting winners in your locker room and that is contagious.

On how well he knows the Chicago recruiting landscape…

I am Chicago. But not just me, myself. There’s a group–there’s a saying that there’s a certain group of guys who are Chicago and I’m one of those guys. And if you know what I’m saying that’s not being braggadocious but there is a group and his name is Lefty Boyd, Aaron Boyd, and Aaron has a website, he’s in the media, and he has a whole deal and he has a lot of marketing that says ‘I am Chicago’ but not everybody from Chicago is apart of this particular group. And if you’re a part of this group then you can say ‘I am Chicago’. So Chicago is my footprints but I’m just not only Chicago. I think I’m a little bit more than that because I have relationships all over the country and even abroad like I recruited kids in Belgium, kids in the country of Georgia, kids in obviously Nigeria and Sudan. So I think that in this particular field, you gotta be able to connect dots on wherever they’re dribbling balls not just where they’re dribbling balls in Chicago. You’ve gotta be able to connect dots where they dribbling balls even in Belarus. I think I have a long reach and it’s all about relationships so it’s all about the relationship where people want to help you and people know that you’re gonna do good by their kids and they then want to send their kids to you because you know that you’re going to care for them. I’ve done a good job with that, I have a good rapport all around the world.

On not being known as just a recruiter…

I had interviews for two head jobs even this year. So I’m not only that (a recruiter) and I don’t want to typecast as that. I’ve worked too hard to try and fight against that. At some point I want to be a head coach and I study and work hard to be a head coach.

On why he didn’t take a head coaching job…

Well, I didn’t get offered the job first of all. I took the interview as long as I could go and I got far in the interviewing process but then, let’s be clear, you get an opportunity to coach at the University of Kentucky, it’s where players and or coaches dream of having the opportunity to coach and or play at. I obviously had, during this process, I had a lot of major colleges trying to get me to coach at their schools while I had this opportunity and I think I made the right decision. I chose Kentucky because it is Kentucky, and I know that’s very cliche, very simple to say, but Kentucky is different. It’s Kentucky, there’s no other place like Kentucky, there’s no other place in college basketball like Kentucky and I think that Kentucky is the crème de la crème, it is the top of the top and it’s in a world by itself. I said this before in an interview that it’s a blue-chip brand: Yankees, Cowboys, Kentucky.

On expectations for the incoming freshman class…

I don’t think we should just single them out, those three (TyTy Washington, Daimion Collins, and Bryce Hopkins) as the recruiting class, they’re just part of the recruiting class. I think that if you take this recruiting class in totality–that means the three freshman and the transfers–I think you would say that it’s number one. So let’s not just simplify it to our three freshmen, let’s look at our entire recruiting class and if you look at our entire recruiting class, it will say that it is number one. There is not a recruiting class anywhere in the country with the mixture of transfers and freshmen better than what we have. And I think you all would agree. And I think that our freshmen are really really good, really really talented, it’s just not a recruiting class that’s heavy on freshmen and newcomers. It’s a recruiting class that incorporates more than just the freshmen and our transfers are included in that recruiting class. We’re really excited about this group as a whole, not just the freshmen.

On if recruiting through the transfer portal will become the norm…

I think that you have to adapt. You don’t have to become just that. I think that you have to adapt to–you can’t swim against the current, you gotta swim with the current. So I think that we’re swimming with the current right now in terms of the transfers. The transfer rule and transfers are an advantage to Kentucky. I think Kentucky wins in that because a lot of those players they wanna play at Kentucky. This is a place that will benefit more than others from the transfer rule. But I think we’re always going to recruit the best high school players in the country and I think that–I can’t speak to our recruiting, what we’re doing right now, but you guys know who we’re recruiting, you guys know what it is. We’re still recruiting the best high school players in the country and we’ll be fine when those guys make their decisions. But I think we’re still gonna swim with the current of the transfer rule because it benefits us. Because at the University of Kentucky, not only does the high school players, the good high school players wanna come here, but also the transfers. So we have to take advantage of all that.

On name, image, likeness and how it will affect UK and college basketball…

I know that it’s very close to there being a decision on the name, image, and likeness stuff but there are too many moving parts for me to speak upon it because I don’t think anyone fully has an understanding what they can talk confidently about with name, image, and likeness. I think until there is a full layout of legislature, of laws and the state and the government and also the NCAA and then you have the individual schools, there’s too many moving parts right now, and that’s way above my food chain for me to comment on right now. So I think that until that is all laid out, we’ll be able to speak on that confidently. But we are getting educated, we’re getting educated with it every day. We talk about it every day as a staff and I can tell you right now, there is no one on top of it more than Coach Cal. No one, I promise you. He’s spending 27 hours a day on trying to understand all of the NIL stuff, whatever it relates to; crypto, NFTs, and all of that stuff. Believe you me when the time comes, we’re getting the education and we’ll be able to speak on that confidently. I can’t speak on it confidently right now, there’s way too many moving parts. It’s like the matrix. There’s way too many moving parts for me to speak on that.

On what he learned from recruiting last year that can help him this year…

That I’m not a good house cat. I’m not a good house dog or house cat, whatever the case may be. That’s not my strengths. My strengths is to be out, be on the frontline, to be visible to the eye test, to be able to sit down and evaluate on the frontline and communicate with the people like we’re doing right now. Being at home, being in the house and Zooming all over the place and doing all those Zooms, it’s just not my cup of tea. So I’m excited more than anybody to get back out and do what I do best and that’s being amongst the people, in the gyms and I can’t wait to get back out there. There was a tournament going on back in Chicago yesterday and I’m getting FaceTimes from the tournament and there’s all kinds of coaches in the gym and it’s–again it’s my sanctuary, it’s where I’m comfortable it, it’s where I get jubilation and joy from being in the gym so I can’t wait to get back out there.

On his acute sense of fashion…

It’s a little bit more than suits. You can’t be called a haberdasher if you can just put on a suit. I can put on a suit, I can–streetwear, what they call it–I can dress down, I got it all. I got a problem with shopping and it’s very expensive. Shopping can break you too like sometimes I gotta get myself together and put myself in confinement. The good thing about being in Lexington, Kentucky is a lot of the places I like to shop at I can’t just go and walk to them. You can’t just go to Gucci, you can’t just go to Louis Vuitton, you can’t just go to Givenchy and all these different places and stuff that I wear. I never was a guy that shopped online because I like to be able to see the stuff, feel it and touch it. Man, I shopped online so much it’s a shame. I enjoy fashion.

On what he’ll wear to games…

I have a tailor. So all of my shirts and suits and ties and socks and all that stuff is tailor-made. I don’t shop off the rack for that kinda stuff because I can’t. I can’t get rid of the shoulders. I can get rid of everything else, I can slim down, I can keep a slim waist but the shoulders aren’t going anywhere. They don’t have a diet for shoulders, I wish they had Atkins or some type of diet for shoulders. I was born with these so I can’t get rid of them. And because I have these shoulders and these arms I can’t just go to Macy’s and get a suit or go to Neiman’s get a suit, Saks and get a suit, I can’t. If I do, I gotta get it cut anyway, so might as well just get the whole thing tailored.

On how he made sure Illinois’ head coach was dressed fashionably…

I gave Coach (Brad) Underwood some swag. I used to do his pocket squares for him, I used to do different kinds of pocket squares for him, before every game, make sure his pocket square was good, make sure his tie that he was wearing fit that suit. I got Coach Miles into wearing Ferragamo, he wasn’t wearing Ferragamo at Colorado State, I got him wearing Ferragamo. If you ever talk to Coach Tim Miles, he’s at San Jose State now, I got him wearing Ferragamo. Cal, I think Cal, he’s good money. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to do anything with Cal.