St. John's Coach Rick Pitino On NIL, Transfer Portal: 'Complaining is of No Value'

Rick Pitino took St. John's from being a team that was nowhere to be found in the NCAA Tournament conversation to a No. 2 seed in just two seasons.

How did Pitino get the Red Storm to rise to prominence so quickly? Living in the reality of NIL and the transfer portal, rather than fighting it.

"I felt the change was here and quitting, resigning, complaining is of no value," Pitino said about NIL on Wednesday's edition of "The Herd." "You have to win the day. You have to get the job done, and I just felt that ‘Okay, we’re going to use it to the best of our abilities at St. John's.' 

"So, we're an urban school; we're a computer school; we play in Madison Square Garden as our home court: How can we maximize our potential by embracing the NIL and the transfer portal? We went away from high school basketball players, although we have taken one or two to develop, but by and large we've gone after older players."

Pitino also expressed that parents have never been more involved in the recruiting process than now.

On the basketball front, Pitino explained what his practices look like.

"We have player development sessions every morning, Monday through Friday, where we go three-to-four different sessions with four players, and we try to take players like a Donovan Mitchell, a Terry Rozier who maybe's not ranked top-20 or 25 in high school, and they've got a little bit of a weakness. Donovan Mitchell had a weakness with the arc on his jump shot. Everybody's got a weakness coming out that's not top 10, so we try to take those player development sessions and make the players better," Pitino said.

"Our practices, yes, are very difficult, but I will say this: They're not long. We don't go more than two hours, but we go hard for two