This would have been the first article in the 2011-12 Blue Devil Tip-Off Magazine. We hope you enjoy it. Thanks for supporting the fundraiser!
By Dan Weiderer
With his first three wins in November, Mike Krzyzewski will become the all-time winningest coach in college basketball
I swear you could hear hearts beating.
I swear the air pressure inside Lucas Oil Stadium changed ever so slightly as more than 145,000 lungs filled like party balloons attached to a helium tank.
I swear the shot, the one launched by Butler's Gordon Hayward just before the horn sounded and the backboard lights lit, hung in the air for minutes.
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As the clock hit zero and the 2010 NCAA championship game ended there was still no winner.
The finish to a riveting season was about to be written in permanent ink, a small piece of college basketball history riding on one 50-foot prayer that seemed to have all sorts of romantic intention as it rotated toward its target.
I swear the stamp on the basketball read "Hollywood" instead of "Wilson".
I swear Butler was about to become the greatest story that sport ever told.
And I swear Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, whether he'll ever admit it or not, had a lump in his throat the size of Indianapolis, wondering, if only for a breath, whether he had just made the most costly coaching decision of his illustrious career.
With 3.6 seconds left on the clock that night and Krzyzewski's Duke Blue Devils leading Butler 61-59, 7-foot center Brian Zoubek went to the foul line. Zoubek, the most unlikely of heroes during Duke's impressive late-season run, made his first attempt, then heard shouting from the bench.
The reports vary as to who said what when, but what has never been in question is that Krzyzewski commanded Zoubek to miss Duke's final shot of the season.
Instead of rooting for a made free throw that would have given the Blue Devils a three-point lead and a worst case scenario of overtime, Krzyzewski wanted the season to end right then, right there. So he rolled the dice with an instruction that logically makes no sense, bringing potential defeat into play and playing a high-stakes game of "Chicken" with fate.
As it turns out, Zoubek's did-as-told miss caromed directly to Hayward, who instantly took off to his right with four dribbles whisking him to half-court and propelling the launch of his shot. And that's when a deafening night suddenly went mute.
Think of the ramifications if Hayward's bomb had been just a little softer. Think of the discussion if the kiss off the glass had sent that shot down through the net instead of off the front rim and down to the floor.
Yet somehow Krzyzewski didn't bother to envision any of that.
We've heard Coach K explain his reasoning at least two dozen times. He's talked about the better shot Butler might have gotten if they took possession on a dead ball.
He's talked about the Bulldog aura he felt in the building and his lack of confidence for what might have unfolded in overtime.
Given a win-or-tie vs. win-or-lose scenario, Krzyzewski boldly opted for the latter.
So little of it makes sense.
Yet, it seems, the only way to grasp it all is to acknowledge the power of Krzyzewski's instincts.
That's how the youngest of his three daughters, Jamie Spatola, finally solved the riddle of the Zoubek miss - by not solving it at all and instead finally allowing her skepticism to be smothered by the faith she has in her dad.
"I can't make it make sense," Jamie says. "I can't. Because of what the options are. If we make the free throw, the worst thing we do is go to overtime."
A few days after the national title game, Jamie grilled her dad on his thought process, firing questions like a feisty prosecuting attorney. The more Krzyzewski explained, with his responses polished after fielding the same questions 100 times before, the less sense it made to Jamie.
"I personally can't make it make rational sense," she says.
So finally, she tossed reason aside and listened again.
Suddenly it registered.
"In that moment, somehow he knew," Jamie says. "I'm not trying to get mystical or anything. But somehow he knew or firmly believed that we could not win that game in overtime. And so ya know what? You can't argue with the result.
"Sure you can say, 'Look at how close that shot came.' Well, they won. And my dad has operated on his instinct and his gut for the majority of his career and most of the time he's right."
Jamie laughs.
"I went into that conversation (with him) very skeptical. But I didn't leave it that way because when you hear him talk about it, you know he can't really explain why it was the right decision. But even though your brain won't comprehend it, you know it was the right decision."
Lindy Frasher never had the same level of skepticism as Jamie about the Zoubek miss. She learned years ago to fully trust her dad's impulses. But the older Lindy's gotten, she's also come to appreciate one thing above all else about the way her dad continues to attack coaching. It's the gusto he works with, his fearlessness. It's his ability to see the top of the mountain as a reachable destination without ever worrying about the hazards of missing a step on the climb.
That's why the Hayward shot sent such a powerful jolt of worry through Lindy. As the ball rotated through the air, Lindy felt like she had too much time to consider the worst-case scenario, too much time to envision her dad's feet dislodging from the cliff and his safety harness snapping.
If Hayward's shot goes down, the Coach K story changes dramatically going forward. Instead of capturing his fourth national title and being heralded as a genius who helped a unified team reach its full potential, the wild end to the 2009-10 season would have twisted the arc of the story.
It would have undoubtedly put Krzyzewski on a spit, slowly roasting above the flames of criticism for an illogical decision that cost his team the ultimate glory. Suddenly, Krzyzewski would have been the legend who fell short again, carrying the baggage of a reputed mastermind who hadn't been able to capture college basketball's biggest prize for nine straight seasons.
Just thinking of the stakes, Lindy exhales.
"You're there thinking, 'Dad will either be a hero or he will be mercilessly crucified,'" Lindy says. "And what are we going to have to live with for the next six or eight months? It's crazy."
The feeling Lindy had that night in Indianapolis was eerily similar to the one she had in Beijing during the gold medal game of the 2008 Olympics as Krzyzewski and Team USA scrapped with Spain.
"This is his legacy," Lindy says. "It's all on the line. If they don't win that game, there will always be a 'but' attached. A silver medal would not have been good enough. Not for anyone. So you think about it like that and it's 'What are we going to have to listen to for the rest of our lives?' But somehow my dad loves putting it all on the line. And he does it in a way where it's not about that. It can't be about that. How egotistical would that be? For him, it's just about that game, that time, that play."
****
Over 36 years as a coach, the last 31 of them at Duke, Krzyzewski has won 900 games and 12 ACC regular-season championships. He has taken his teams to 11 Final Fours and captured four national titles. In his last 25 full seasons on the bench - he missed 19 games during the 1994-95 campaign - Krzyzewski's Blue Devils have posted an average record of 31-6. Twenty-three of his Duke players have been first-round NBA draft picks.
In mid-November, with Duke's third victory of the season, Krzyzewski will pass Bob Knight, his mentor, as the all-time victories leader in the sport. The achievement will be widely glorified with Krzyzewski forced to reflect more often than he likes, even as his gut instinct tells him to stare through the windshield and not into the rearview mirror.
The climb to get here has required shrewd strategy and sturdy self-confidence. It's been built with passion and ambition. And while it's easy to understand how Krzyzewski's kin would feel such a profound admiration for all he's accomplished, the testaments to his brilliance come from everywhere.
The praise comes from Kevin Durant, who under the direction of Krzyzewski in 2010 carried USA Basketball to a gold medal at the FIBA World Championships in Turkey, soaking up all the expertise Krzyzewski had to offer on the keys to pursuing a championship.
"That experience was incredible," Durant says. "You learn to play with that sharpened mindset that every game counts. That was one thing that became clear and important to me. You have that sense of how much every game counts. And I honestly believe that helped me take a step forward in being a better leader."
The praise comes from Gary Williams, who for the past 22 seasons engaged in a fierce rivalry with Krzyzewski, yet always took time to respect the skill he had in unifying his teams.
"Duke has obviously had some great players over the years," Williams says. "But when you really look at it, whether you're going all the way back to Grant Hill or most recently with a guy like Kyle Singler, those guys play a team game. And I know that comes from Mike's idea of how a team should play basketball and how a team should be coached. I hope people appreciate that. Because sometimes they think it just happens. You get good kids, they work hard and all that. Well, that's true. But you still have to put it all together."
The praise comes from Monica Malone, the mother of Nolan Smith, who watched Coach K and his staff transform her son from a frustrated and strugglinh underclassmen into a National Player of the Year frontrunner.
"Coach K has his girls," Malone says. "But then his players are his boys. He makes you feel secure that when you're leaving your son with him, he's going to be like a father. And he totally caters to each kid's needs, believe me. One thing I know about Coach K and his wife is that they know how to parent. That's one thing I love, knowing my child was going into a situation like that."
And yes, the praise even comes from those who have fired quivers and quivers of arrows at Coach K. Like CBS Sports columnist Gregg Doyel, who covered Duke for The Charlotte Observer from 1997-2003 and often saw Krzyzewski as pompous and condescending. Yet over time, Doyel came to respect Krzyzewski's vision and intelligence, his competitive energy and quick wit.
Like so many reporters who have covered Coach K over the years, Doyel always finds himself captivated listening to Krzyzewski and enamored by his sense of humor.
"Humor is generally a function of intelligence," Doyel says. "You're only as funny as you are smart. And he is very smart and very funny. Anyone who's gone to even just one of his press conferences, you look forward to them, you enjoy them. You'll fill up 12 pages in a notebook because every sentence out of his mouth is good. Literally every sentence he says is funny or profound or insightful or just darn interesting. He doesn't win you over when you watch him on TV screaming at the refs and red-faced and snarling and he looks like a caged animal. He wins you over when you listen to him talk and listen to how thoughtful he is."
****
The magnificence of Krzyzewski's run at Duke isn't just that he's won consistently. It's that he's won at a high level for an eye-opening length of time without any indication that his finish line is nearing.
At 64 years old, Krzyzewski feels energized. And rather than let his landmark success provide feelings of accomplishment and contentment, he has conditioned himself to always press forward, to pursue each new challenge as its own endeavor independent of all those that have come before.
Through his family, which now includes seven grandchildren, Krzyzewski has found balance and perspective.
Through his many side ventures, whether it be coaching USA Basketball or hosting his Sirius XM radio show or through his work with the V Foundation, he has found new avenues to learn about leadership and team-building and devotion to a cause. He is, at once, an astute teacher who also relishes being a student.
And in the latter stages of his career, Krzyzewski has ably thrown himself headfirst into nurturing his players with a focus on their dreams. He talks often now about trying his best to enjoy their moment while shielding them from the outside pressure to match the achievements of all those Duke teams that came before.
There is flexibility required in all this, a quest for equilibrium across all fronts.
And, yes, there are those gut instincts that contribute to Krzyzewski's unwavering self-confidence and his thirst to continue climbing the mountain without fear.
"He's all about letting it ride," Lindy says. "And as long as he continues to let it ride, we'll be there. But we'll be biting our fingernails the whole time."
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