Rick Pitino did his part in St. John's renaissance; can New York City deliver the NIL funds a champion needs?

Rick Pitino built a roster good enough to dominate the Big East. But if St. John's is going to take over college basketball, the Red Storm must capitalize on the momentum of a historic season that ended Saturday with a second-round NCAA Tournament loss to an Arkansas program with deeper pockets.

The next step for the Red Storm isn't just about finding more outside shooting. It's about raising the money to attract the talent Pitino needs to take the next step in 2025-26. 

By no means has St. John's operated from a position of poverty through two seasons. After all, Pitino plucked one of the most sought-after transfers in the sport, Kadary Richmond, from the portal last year when Big East rival Seton Hall couldn't afford to keep him.

But while the Red Storm may be rich by Big East standards, they are not spending near the top of college basketball. In fact, Pitino referred to the Red Storm's leading scorers RJ Luis and Zuby Ejiofor as "very low-paid players" this month.

"I think there's a lot of misrepresentations about NIL," Pitino said after the Red Storm's Big East Tournament title win this month. "NIL didn't get us this team."

Few coaches are better equipped to outperform financial limitations. But the ruthless reality of modern college basketball is even an all-time great like Pitino is beholden to boosters more than ever before.

There's no doubt many of the top players who are going to enter the portal in the coming days (it opens March 24) would be interested in playing at St. John's for Pitino. But will they take less money in order to do it?

Don't kid yourselves. In most cases, it's money first -- with factors such as coaches, schemes, location and history serving as tiebreakers.

Pitino knows it, and he knows St. John's will have to pony up just to keep Ejiofor and Luis.

"I'm sure they'll be at Matt's window as soon as the season ends," Pitino said this month, referring to St. John's general manager Matt Abdelmassih. "But they're not going anywhere. So you build a team by making sure you understand the whole puzzle of what goes into it, and people just mischaracterize the NIL and why St. John's has been built. St. John's didn't get built by the NIL. St. John's got built with character of the players, and certainly we are excited to have these young men."

His greater point is that you can't just blindly purchase talent and expect it all to work. The pieces have to fit, and there has to be a culture in place to turn the hired hands into a team.

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Last offseason, when CBS Sports asked coaches across the country which programs they believe have the best NIL situations, it was Arkansas that topped the list. St. John's was 19th.

The New York Post reported that St. John's had a payroll of around $4 million this season. Pitino used those funds to assemble a good roster and then molded the talent into a great team.

The next step is to give him a great roster he can build into a championship team.

Pitino is serious about winning. St. John's is, too. Otherwise, it would have never hired him in the first place.

But after getting a taste of what he can do, it's on the fan base, administration and boosters at St. John's to double down. They have one of the sport's best coaches. Now they need to provide him with one of the sport's top warchests.