Takeaways from Josh Heird's Comments on Payne's Firing and Louisville's Coaching Search
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A tortured chapter of the Louisville men's basketball program is now in the past.
On Wednesday, athletic director Josh Heird announced that Kenny Payne that "will not return next season as men's basketball head coach."
Payne' went just 12-52 during his two seasons with the Cardinals, including 5-35 in regular season ACC games, 1-28 in road/neutral site games and 0-19 in Quad 1 NET games. He went 4-28 in his first year at the helm before going 8-24 this past season.
Later in the day, Heird met with the local media and answered questions regarding Payne's firing, the upcoming coaching search, and a variety of related topics. Below are some of the more significant takeaways from the roughly half and hour that Heird spoke for:
A fundamental understanding of the position as a whole will be required for the next coach.
It's not exactly breaking news that the number one barometer of success when it comes to evaluating coaches is winning. There's a reason that the adage "winning cures all" exists. So long as you continue to pile up wins, they can mask any deficiency or question marks that the public has about a coach or program as a whole.
Of course, having a track record of being a winner is a massive factor in Heird's search for the Cardinals' next head coach. He even went as far to say that Louisville was one of "a handful of programs around this country that you don't truly have the luxury of time," and that winning must come early and often.
But on top of simply winning, whomever will be the next head coach must come to grips with the fact that the position is much, much bigger than basketball.
"Our fanbase is dying for this program to be successful. Absolutely dying for this program to be successful," Heird said. "That will be a very, very direct question with whoever I’m looking at as far as filling this head coaching role. Can you manage the enormity of this position? Because it’s big. It’s really big, and there’s a lot more complexities to it. It’s a lot more than coaching basketball."
When you're the guy running the Louisville men's basketball program, you are more than just a head coach. You are single-most popular figure in one of the 30 largest cities in the United States. What comes with that is a level of community outreach and connection that most other sporting organizations in the country - collegiate or professional - simply don't demand.
Kenny Payne's last game as the head coach was a perfect example of this. Even though everyone and their brother knew that he was getting fired, guess who made the trip to the ACC Tournament and was on the sideline? Women's basketball head coach Jeff Walz and football head coach Jeff Brohm.
Payne played at Louisville, and later would spend a decade in the state as an assistant down the road at Kentucky. However, it seemed like he never truly understood how big this position was. Payne made some rounds around the community in the couple months after he was hired, and that's it. He also didn't do himself any favors with the media considering the only time he ever interacted with the local media was in contract-mandated pre- and post-game press conferences, plus his coaches show.
In fact, when Heird was asked about what qualities he is looking for in Louisville's next head coach, being able to foster relationships with the community and the media was the very first thing that came out of his mouth.
“I think one of the qualities that’s really important to me is the ability to connect and create that connective tissue with the fans, the media, the players, and everybody," he said. "They have to have the ability to do that."
Not only do they have to understand that this is what you're signing up for, you have to be able not only be okay with it, you have to want it. Louisville's last two permanent head coaches seemingly did not understand the magnitude of the position, and Heird wants his next guy to be driven by its demands.
"At the end of the day, one of the things that I think is more important than anything else, we’ve got to have somebody who is dying to coach this basketball program," he said. "I mean, they will crawl here to coach this basketball program because that’s how much it means to them."
Louisville has the reasonable financial means to be able to pursue top coaching candidates.
Whenever a coaching change happens, buyouts are obviously a massive factor in who is available for hiring. Not only do you have the buyout of the coach that was just fired, but then there's a good chance you will run into one to be able to hire your next coach.
Louisville is certainly no stranger to buyouts. For starters, Payne will owed $8 million in buyout money per the terms of his contract. Additionally, UofL is still financing the buyout from former head coach Chris Mack, the settlement from former athletic director Tom Jurich, and have certainly felt the financial effect of the KFC Yum! Center being roughly 75 percent empty for the majority of Payne's tenure.
Because of the aforementioned financial strains, there has been speculation that Louisville might not be able to pursue some top coaching candidates because of lofty buyouts. For example, UCLA head coach Mick Cronin has a buyout hovering around $20 million.
On one hand, Heird does admit that he is not going to make a hire that will be detrimental to the athletic department as a whole. But on the other hand, he also believes that Louisville has the financial ability to be able to hire a top candidate.
“Do we have the ability to hire a top-flight coach? Absolutely. Am I going to make a rash decision where finances aren’t taken into consideration? No," he said. "If you look at some buyouts out there, they’re north of $10 million, and when you start to do the analysis relative to the return of fans to the arena and some different things like that, I kind of call it the value equation: what makes sense here?
"So do I think we’re going to have the opportunity to hire an extremely good, successful coach. Absolutely. But I’m not going to do it at the detriment of the entire department.”
Heird dispels the notion that Payne was set up to fail.
There's no denying that Payne was dealt a tough hand when he accepted the head coaching job in March of 2022. Louisville was coming off of their first losing season in over 20 years, and had yet to hear the verdict from their six-year long NCAA infractions case, which had a big impact on recruiting.
However, there's also no denying that Payne took what he inherited and made it in much, much worse. Louisville finished the 2021-22 season as the No. 127 team in college basketball according to KenPom, and currently sit at No. 198 in the metric. From the start of year two to the end of the regular season, the Cardinals had a -6.98 drop in adjusted efficiency margin, which was the tenth-worst in the Power Six.
Even still, some in the Louisville fanbase contend that Payne was "set up to fail" because of what he inherited. In fact, one well know university figure went as far to back up this notion because of in-house problems.
On Wednesday morning, UofL professor Dr. Ricky Jones insinuated on social that Payne had not been given the proper tools by the university to succeed.
"Maybe @coachkennypayne will tell y’all the truth about how crappy UofL handled him during his tenure after it’s all over," Jones posted to Twitter/X. "Then again, maybe he won’t. I know some of it, and it ain’t pretty. But it’s not my story to tell. It’s his."
When asked about these comments from Dr. Jones, Heird vehemently dispelled the notion that UofL did not have Payne's back, and that they had given him every tool at their disposal.
“I think we treated Kenny and our men's basketball program like we treat all our programs," he said. "And you know, if that's not good enough, I need to know about that so that we can make it better. Am I going to say that every head coach at U of L has everything that they need, or they want? No. If that was the case, my job would get a lot easier. Do I think that a large majority of what was needed was provided? Yes.
"I think that and I would contend that's the case for every sport that we have. You know, this basketball program is the life blood of this athletic department, the university and this city. And to say that it's not going to be given the resources needed to be successful would be incorrect.”
Character in a candidate is still important to Heird.
During Payne's introductory press conference, Heird mentioned that during the the coaching search, a candidate must have a high level of integrity. He even went so far as to say that “If your character had been called into question as a coach, I told Glenn (Sugiyama) I wouldn’t entertain a conversation.”
Two years later, and he is still holding firm with this stance.
“I think I typically have a high threshold from an integrity standpoint," he said. "But I think that threshold needs to be elevated based on the past that we've experienced here. I don't want to look at just the candidate. I think it's the combination of our history, to say, hey, is there anybody out there that is worth looking at, and you know, what does their past look like?
"So, you know, never say never. But, you know, I think most of the people in this room understand my expectations around this athletic department and the people that work in this athletic department. That will be weighed as we go through this process.”
Because of this, two potential candidates for Louisville are likely off the board. Chris Beard has Ole Miss heading in the right direction, be he does have the allegations of domestic abuse on his rap sheet. Will Wade has killed it in his first year at McNeese State, but he does come with a show cause, even though what he was busted for by the NCAA is technically "legal" now.
Louisville will not use a search firm.
Even though Payne was the overwhelming favorite to become the Louisville coach during the last search, Heird still did his due diligence and employed a search firm to assist him. That will not be the case this time around.
“I don’t plan to," Heird said when asked if Louisville will use a search firm. "Like I said, I feel confident in the plan that we’ve put together to attack this thing, so I think we can do it without the help of a search firm.”
He later went on to clarify that while Louisville will not use a search firm, he will have "two, maybe three people" that he will lean on for guidance and for a different angle other than his own. Unfortunately, he declined to specify who those two to three people were (but I'd be willing to bet that one of them is Jay Wright).
Heird also added that because of his own "leave no stone unturned" tendencies, he feels confident in what he can find out about a candidate alongside his "advisory committee."
"I’ll go back to, I’m pretty analytical and data-driven when it comes to making decisions, so really digging into their past, what have they accomplished, where have they been, all those things," he said. "You can find out a lot about people before you have that conversation. Like I said, the analytical side and the data side is one piece, the other piece is really diving into those individual conversations that you’re going to have and say, ‘Hey, is this a good fit?’, because whoever we hire, I want them to be here for 20 years."
(Photo of Josh Heird: Michael Clevenger - Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK)
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