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As the news has settled in about Coach K’s decision to retire after next season, we’re hearing from various people in the Duke world including Jay Bilas and Jason Williams, among others.
Checking in courtesy of TMZ is former Duke and NBA point guard Chris Duhon, who has the most logical idea we’ve heard yet: Mike Krzyzewski deserves a statue. Well, yes. Yes, he does, perhaps in Krzyzewskiville.
Before he came to Duke, the biggest names in Duke sports history were Wallace Wade, Eddie Cameron and Vic Bubas.
It may not be fair to compare him to Wade, since Wade came to Duke 90 years ago and left in 1941 to fight in World War II - when he was 49 or 50 years old.
He was a real soldier too, having landed at Normandy and then going on to fight the Siegfried Line Break, the Battle of the Bulge, and also crossed the Rhine.
He was not the same man after the war, at least in terms of football, and who can fault him if he wasn’t? He’s bound to have seen terrible things, as most men who fought in World War II saw.
Even so, it’s hard to argue that Mike Krzyzewski hasn’t had a bigger impact on Duke. Wade coached brilliantly in the 1930s but never won a national championship. Krzyzewski has five so far. Wade had one brilliant decade at Duke and won three national championships at Alabama and even though he put Duke on the athletic map, he never did that in Durham.
Krzyzewski also has had an astonishing nearly 40 year run of sustained excellence.
So yes, Duhon is right: that’s the least of what Duke should do.
We’ll say again what we’ve said before: Duke should rename Cameron Indoor as Cameron-Krzyzewski Indoor Stadium. Not only does it sound good, it does what it’s intended to do, namely honor the GOAT.