I generally agree with a lot of what you have to say, but I disagree here.This notion is completely offbased. Pitino is probably sub-.500 coach without cheating. He's whole career is based off of cheating. Without cheating he's probably selling used cars decades ago.
This didn't start a few years ago- it stated before 1977 when The U of Hawaii needed to disassociate him from their program for cheating.
Bonds was a great baseball player before he was juiced, we saw that. We never saw Rick Pitino not cheating.
In my opinion there are not that many coaches that actually coach today. Most either win with superior players or just do "what we do" no matter the circumstance.
Pitino is not one of those coaches. He actually coaches. He adjusts his style to his talent. He adjusts to individual opponents. He adjusts in game and game to game. He is in a small group of coaches that still coach that way.(B,Stevens, G.Marshall, J.Beilein, etc.)
Coaching can be very important. I trust that Pitino is a good enough "coach" that he could win and win big without cheating.