Quick. What’s America’s most hated team? The Yankees? The Cowboys? The Lakers? How ’bout none of the above, especially in March. The title belongs to Duke’s men’s basketball team, and the coast-to-coast animosity reached an apex when Mike Krzyzewski coached the Blue Devils.
Its legions of haters will tell you that the Blue Devils got too many calls and never felt the full wrath of the NCAA for alleged infractions. All the while, the Blue Devils keep winning with an often perceived holier-than-thou attitude. Their message: We play by the rules, the right way, and we’re better! With the exception of a few hiccups, they are.
Photo courtesy the Associated Press
For 42 years – no, that is not a typo – Coach K helmed Empire Blue Devil, and he was quite simply the best in the business. And yes, even before NIL, college basketball is a business. Coach K reportedly made $7 million a year, and that didn’t include speaking engagements or sponsorship deals.
For Duke, it was money well spent. During his tenure, Coach K had 13 Final Four appearances, five national titles, and three Olympic gold medals. As the face of Duke, Coach K transcended the role of coach.
As he has stated himself, he’s a brand, a multi-million-dollar brand. It’s a remarkable story of Horatio Alger proportions, and author Ian O’Connor does a very nice job telling it in Coach K: The Rise and Reign of Mike Krzyzewski.
Book cover courtesy Mariner Books and Amazon.com
Coach K’s story starts in blue-collar Chicago. The son of a cleaning woman and an elevator operator, Mike was a playground rat and eventually a high school star – but not a superstar. The Big 10 stayed away, but Mike caught the eye of West Point coach Bobby Knight. Eventually, Mike became an assistant with Knight at Indiana and the U.S. national team.
With Knight’s support, West Point hired Mike to be their coach. In the book. Knight’s and K’s often turbulent relationship gets plenty of compelling page time. At West Point, Mike won some but lost a lot, too. In his final season, he went 9-17. Despite that, Duke took a flyer on the 33-year-old.
And Coach K was born, well, not quite….
In Durham, winning wasn’t immediate. It was only after Coach K secured one of the best recruiting classes in the country that the Ws started to pile up. Duke stood out – and it wasn’t just because they were good. In a sport dominated by black men, Duke was very white. Remember the crafty point guard Bobby Hurley and the controversial center Christian Laettner? Of course you do. Heck, Laettner was the subject of his own ESPN documentary, I Hate Christian Laettner.
As the game evolved, Coach K adapted. (His mentor, Coach Knight, did not.) How so? Coach K expanded his recruiting net, going after players from backgrounds that were not Rockwellian. As the U.S. Olympic coach, he built bridges with NBA multi-millionaires, most notably LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, which is no easy feat. (Ironically, neither attended college.)
A Zion slam (photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer)
That Olympic experience helped Coach K immensely in the one-and-done era. Who will forget when one-and-done Dukie Zion Williamson, described by O’Connor as a Mack truck on a pogo stick, busted out of his sneaker with Obama looking on? Yes, Duke gets its share of celebrity courtsiders.
Coach K is not all cheers and chest bumps. The book includes a handful of poignant scenes, including one with North Carolina coach Dean Smith. Even hardened Tarheel fans might be touched. O’Connor even delves into the grievances of Duke haters – but probably not deep enough to satisfy the North Carolina faithful. Interestingly (provocatively is a better word), O’Connor had to cut 30,000 plus words from his original manuscript. That move makes me want to read those words!
Coach K is gone, replaced by neighborhood friend-like Jon Scheyer. But March Madness persists, a time to never forget the man who put Duke at the top of the fold, eliciting fans’ fist pumps and groans across the land.
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Jon Hart is the author of Man versus Ball: One Ordinary Guy and His Extraordinary Sports Adventures and its undeserved sequel, Unfortunately, I was available.
