One on One

by John Feinstein

  As he did whenever he spoke in public, Jim Valvano, then in his second year as the coach at Iona, stole the show. This was no small feat. Foster was a very good speaker and Lou Carnesecca of St. John’s was a great storyteller. No one was in Valvano’s class.

  “When I first got the job at Iona I was so excited,” Valvano said that day. “I was at a party and I kept introducing myself to everyone there, saying, “I’m Jim Valvano, Iona College, great to meet you.

  “Finally this one woman looks at me like I’m crazy and says, ‘Young man, aren’t you a little young to own your own college?”

  Valvano had played for Foster at Rutgers in the late 1960s. He was one of two coaches there that day who I remembered seeing play in college. The other was Krzyzewski, who had played at Army under Bob Knight and was now in his second season as the coach at his alma mater. Valvano was loud and funny; back then, Krzyzewski was neither.

  They both came over as soon as the lunch was over to say hello to Foster, along with Tom Penders, who was then the coach at Columbia. We had walked in a little bit late because our flight had been delayed, so Valvano raced over as soon as the lunch was over to see his old coach and to introduce him to his two friends. They were three fresh-faced young coaches: Penders, the oldest at thirty-two; Valvano a year younger; and Krzyzewski a year younger than Valvano, a couple months shy of turning thirty. To put that in a little bit of perspective, think about how gaga everyone went at the 2010 Final Four when baby-faced Brad Stevens took Butler to the final. Stevens was thirty-three. Of course, at that moment, none of the three coaches was thinking about coaching in the Final Four.

  Foster introduced Tate, Mickle, and me and told them that I did a good Dean Smith imitation. In truth, I did an okay Dean imitation. Years later, during a conversation with Dean and his longtime SID, Rick Brewer, Dean said to me, “I hear you do me pretty well.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “But Rick’s better.”

  Dean turned to Brewer, who instantly turned forty-eight shades of red. “Rick,” he said, “do you do me?”

  Brewer was flustered for a moment and then said, “Coach, everyone does you.”

  That was certainly true in North Carolina; almost everyone imitated Dean’s nasally Kansas twang, complete with all of his clichés about senior leadership and how fortunate Carolina would be to beat anyone they were playing. As Lefty Driesell once put it, “Dean Smith’s the only man in the history of coaching to win eight hundred games [879 to be exact] and be the underdog in every one of them.”

  Now the three young coaches were looking at me expectantly. “It’s not that good,” I said.

  “Come on,” Valvano said. “Don’t be shy. The three of us combined will never win as many games as Dean’s won.”

  I thought about that line on the night Krzyzewski won his 880th game. Certainly none of us standing there on that December afternoon thought Valvano’s line was off target. “When Jimmy said it,” Krzyzewski said thirty-four years later, “it made absolute sense.” As it turned out Penders won 650 games and Valvano 346—and a national championship—before he stopped coaching at the age of forty-four, three years before he died of cancer. That means, if you add in Krzyzewski’s 900, the three of them had won 1,896 games combined. Back then they had combined to win about 100.

  Urged on by Valvano, I did the imitation—talking about seniors and points per possession and how proud I was of all the doctors and lawyers I’d coached.

  “That’s pretty good,” Krzyzewski said. “Now if you can do Jimmy, I’ll really be impressed.”

  “No one can do Jimmy,” Foster said, accurately.

  After I got to the Post, I stayed in touch with Valvano, Krzyzewski, and Penders—who by then had gotten the job at Fordham. As a young reporter, I liked the fact that they would call me back right away. The first time I called Krzyzewski I reminded him that I was the guy he had met with Bill Foster who did the Dean Smith imitation. He remembered.

  It was only after Valvano and Krzyzewski both moved to North Carolina in 1980 that I got to know them well. Both took over for coaches—Foster at Duke and Norman Sloan at North Carolina State—who had been very successful but had been frustrated by Smith’s godlike status in North Carolina. Sloan used to get so frustrated with Smith that he would call Driesell, who he saw as an anti-Dean soul mate, and start the conversation by saying, “Do you know what that goddamn Dean just did?!”

  “After a while,” Driesell said, “I thought that was his full name, ‘that goddamn Dean.’ ”

  Valvano and Krzyzewski both vowed not to be bothered by the aura coming out of Chapel Hill, but both did find it difficult to deal with at times. Valvano was one of the world’s great storytellers. Whether all his stories were true no one knew for sure, but when he told them they sounded true. One he especially liked was about the first haircut he got after getting to NC State: “I go to the campus barbershop. The old barber has been there for a hundred years or something. He says to me, ‘You the guy replaced old Norman?’ I say, ‘Yes, I am.’ He says, ‘Well, I sure hope you have more luck than old Norman did.’ I look at him and I say, ‘Wait a second. Didn’t Norman Sloan win a national championship? Didn’t he go 27–0 one season?’ Guy looks at me without missing a beat and says, ‘Yeah, I guess he did. But just think what old Dean Smith would have done with that team.’ ”

  Krzyzewski and Dean clashed publicly in 1984 after a game in Cameron that Duke could have won—but didn’t. Dean never liked going to play at Duke. Unlike most people, he never found the students funny. That game was actually one of their better performances. A week earlier, when Maryland had been in town, they’d gone over the line, taunting the Terrapins’ Herman Veal, who had been charged with sexual assault, by throwing panties at him and chanting R-A-P-E. Terry Sanford, the university president, had written an open letter to the students in the Chronicle that week that basically said, “Not funny. We’re classier than this.”

  When Carolina came into the building, they were considerably better. Before the game, the Blue Devil mascot presented Dean with a dozen roses. (He wasn’t amused. By contrast, when NC State’s Lorenzo Charles was charged with stealing pizzas from a Domino’s delivery truck, Valvano signed for the dozen pizzas Duke students had delivered to his bench just prior to tipoff and handed them out to the crowd.) When Carolina ran onto the court the students held up signs that said, “Welcome honored guests.” They also chanted “We beg to differ” when they didn’t like a call, rather than using the profane and worn-out “bullshit” chant heard so often in gyms to this day. And when Carolina was shooting free throws, instead of waving their arms behind the basket, they held up signs that said “Please miss.”

  All of that, combined with a great Carolina team that included Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, Brad Daugherty, and Kenny Smith taking on a young Duke team coming of age—Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Jay Bilas, David Henderson, Tommy Amaker—made for an electric game and atmosphere. At one point, when the official scorer didn’t see one of his subs and failed to hit the horn, Dean stormed down, accused him of cheating, and hit the horn himself. Krzyzewski demanded that the refs tee him up. They didn’t. Carolina ended up winning a tight, tense game, and Krzyzewski got teed up in the waning seconds (the game had been decided), screaming at the refs that they had stolen the game from his team.

  Two things happened afterward, one well chronicled since then, the other not. Krzyzewski made his infamous double standard comment, claiming that ACC referees gave Dean preferential treatment. When Dean heard about it, he was furious. He got even angrier after I called the other six coaches in the league to see if they agreed with Krzyzewski. Four of them weren’t going anywhere near the argument. “Mike and Dean are both just trying to protect their players,” Bobby Cremins, who was at Georgia Tech at the time, said. “I don’t blame either one of them.”

  Bill Foster of Clemson (who was known as Clem-Foster in the league when the other Bill Foster was at Duke) and Lefty Driesell both sided with Krzyzewski.
“I don’t think they do it on purpose,” Clem-Foster said. “But referees are human. They think Carolina’s better, so they ref the games that way.”

  Lefty repeated his “eight against five” line (by now there were three officials working games) and said he knew how Krzyzewski felt.

  Dean was so upset when he read the story that he called Foster, called Lefty, and called me. “Did Mike tell you to write that story?” he asked.

  “Come on, Dean, don’t be ridiculous. It’s all anyone in the league is talking about. If the other six coaches had all said Mike was completely wrong, I’d have written that. I had no way of knowing what they would say when I called.”

  Dean was already angry with me that week because of the other postgame moment. Someone had asked him what he thought of the Duke students’ performance. He waved it off dismissively. “The schedule says we have to come over here once a year,” he said. “We do it, hope we get a win the way we did tonight, and go back to Chapel Hill.”

  I was standing near the door with Keith Drum while Dean talked. As he walked out he turned to me and said accusingly, “You think they’re funny.”

  I did think they were funny—not always, but certainly that night. “I’m sorry, Dean,” I said. “They were funny tonight.”

  He walked out shaking his head, clearly not happy with me, or anyone else who had ever been associated with Duke.

  That game jump-started the Duke-Carolina rivalry, which had been languishing for years because Carolina had been dominating the series. Duke hadn’t won a game in Chapel Hill in almost twenty years, and the Tar Heels had won eight of eleven in Cameron. Carolina won the regular season rematch in Chapel Hill, but needed an off-balance jumper at the buzzer by Matt Doherty to tie (Krzyzewski maintains to this day that Doherty walked on the play) and then win the game in double overtime. A week later they met again, in the ACC Tournament semifinals. This time, Duke hung on and won, in what turned out to be Michael Jordan’s last ACC game.

  During Krzyzewski’s first three years at Duke, there had been one member of the North Carolina media who had consistently defended him: Keith Drum. Keith wasn’t your typical sportswriter. He really knew and understood basketball, so much so that in the early ’90s he made a unique job switch, going from reporter to NBA scout. He’s now been a scout—first with the Portland Trail Blazers, now with the Sacramento Kings—for twenty years. Drum saw in Krzyzewski what others didn’t: a young coach who had a plan and knew what he was doing. They became friends, and Krzyzewski would often ask Drum what he thought about his team and individual players because he respected his understanding of the game. He still does that today whenever Keith, who still lives in Chapel Hill, goes to watch his team practice.

  Keith had gone to North Carolina. There are lots and lots of Carolina graduates covering sports in the state. UNC has a great journalism school, and many of those who graduate from it stay in the state, often for life. Most—not all—are unabashed Carolina loyalists. Drummer wasn’t. He respected Smith and Carolina but, unlike a lot of his colleagues, didn’t live and die with the fortunes of the Tar Heels.

  That bothered Dean. Remember, Dean read everything written that involved his team or his rivals, and he knew that Drum had consistently written that, given time, Krzyzewski would bring Duke back and challenge North Carolina. Moments after Krzyzewski’s and Duke’s breakthrough win in the ACC Tournament, Dean stood outside his locker room smoking his postgame cigarette. (For the record, Dean gave up smoking in 1987 after a series of nosebleeds led his doctor to tell him he had to stop. He still chews Nicorette constantly and admits the cravings have never gone away.) When Keith and I came down the steps leading from the floor to the locker room area, Dean spotted us. He made a beeline for Keith, his hand extended.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “Your team played very well. I’m sure you’re very happy.”

  Classic Dean. He had to make the point to Keith that he knew he liked Krzyzewski. You see, it was okay for me to like Krzyzewski because I was a Duke guy. But for a Carolina guy to like Krzyzewski was some kind of betrayal. That’s one thing about the ACC, especially in those days when it was a smaller league: everyone was into labels. Dean always said I was okay for a Duke guy. Lefty Driesell often said Drum was okay for a Carolina guy.

  ACC politics were so intense that when Gene Corrigan retired as commissioner in 1997, almost everyone in the league believed the right person to succeed him was Tom Mickle. According to Corrigan and everyone else involved, Mickle blew away the search committee with his vision for the league and the plans he said he would follow through on as commissioner.

  The committee chose John Swofford.

  Why? Because Corrigan was Duke class of ’52 and Mickle was Duke class of ’72. League politics simply wouldn’t allow one Duke graduate to follow another as commissioner. Swofford is a graduate of North Carolina.

  “Absolutely ridiculous decision,” Maryland coach Gary Williams said years later. “Tom Mickle was as smart as anyone in college athletics. Who cares where he went to school? He would have been the best guy for the league. But that’s not how the league works.”

  Duke’s win in Greensboro in ’84, on the day when Drum’s “team” played so well, changed the dynamic of the Duke-Carolina rivalry and the entire league. Smith was 8–1 against Krzyzewski up until that day. His program certainly didn’t slip afterward, but Krzyzewski’s continued to improve. The last twenty-nine times the two met, Dean won sixteen times, Krzyzewski thirteen.

  LOOKING BACK, THE IRONY of Dean and Mike is that almost everyone believed Valvano would be Dean’s great rival. In his third season at NC State, Valvano won the national championship, matching the one Dean had won a year earlier, but in many ways surpassing it because no one had given that State team even a second thought. Just making the NCAA Tournament seemed like a long shot as the ACC Tournament began.

  State pulled three upsets that weekend in Atlanta, beating Wake Forest by one, Carolina in overtime, and Virginia in the final minute. Carolina and Virginia were both considered serious Final Four contenders. State was a great story, but that was about it.

  On that same weekend, Duke wrapped up an 11–17 season by losing 109–66 to Virginia in the first round of the tournament. Think about that score: Duke lost by 43 at the end of Krzyzewski’s third season. That made him 38–47, and he had yet to win an ACC Tournament game. The previous season had ended almost as badly—an 88–53 ACC Tournament loss to Wake Forest in the dreaded 9:30 game on the tournament’s first night.

  By the end of that game it was closing in on midnight and there were no more than three thousand people left in the Greensboro Coliseum. Twice in the last minute, veteran ACC referee Lenny Wirtz called fouls on Wake Forest walk-ons who Coach Carl Tacy had mercifully put into the game. As Wirtz stood in front of the press table while free throws were being shot, Bill Brill (Duke ’54, who was a Duke loyalist) reached across the table and grabbed Wirtz’s arm.

  “If you blow that whistle one more time,” Brill said, “I swear to God I will take it and shove it right down your throat.”

  Wirtz, who had known Brill for years, got it. There were no whistles in the final seconds.

  The Virginia game a year later was a lot worse. For one thing, the Omni, Atlanta’s then NBA arena, was packed because Duke-Virginia was the first game of the evening doubleheader and people from all eight schools wanted to see Virginia’s Ralph Sampson, who was about to become a three-time national player of the year for Virginia.

  Jay Bilas, who was a 6'8" Duke freshman, was assigned to guard the 7'4" Sampson. He knew he had no chance to stop him but had to do everything he could to try to contain him. Bilas tried to get his body into Sampson, to push him off the block and do anything possible to keep from being overwhelmed. Sampson didn’t like being played physically, and he especially didn’t like some kid trying to play him physically. He got angry and so did his coach, Terry Holland, who thought Bilas was trying to hurt Sampson.

  Years later, Bi
las could look back on the game and laugh. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him,” he said. “I was trying not to get completely humiliated.”

  Duke got completely humiliated. Holland left his starters in long after the outcome had been decided. Then, in the postgame interview, he expressed his frustration with Bilas—and indirectly, Krzyzewski—for what he thought was dirty play. When Krzyzewski came in and was asked about Holland’s comments, you could almost see the steam coming out of his ears.

  “We just got beat 109–66 and he’s complaining about dirty play?” he said. “I’ve got a six-eight freshman hanging on for dear life trying to guard the national player of the year, and he’s complaining about dirty play?” He stopped and shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

  A few minutes later, when Krzyzewski walked back to his locker room, he crossed paths with Holland, who was standing outside his own locker room talking to several writers.

  “That was bullshit, Terry,” Krzyzewski yelled. “You went out of your way to humiliate my team and then you complain about dirty play? That’s bullshit.”

  Holland just looked at Krzyzewski as if he was from another planet. Both men were doing the same thing: standing up for their players.

  Twenty-eight years later, Krzyzewski remembered that night vividly.

  “It was an important night in my career and my life,” he said as he sat in the stands at Georgetown Prep (a Jesuit school in the Washington, D.C., suburbs), watching a kid named Rasheed Sulaimon, who was a junior from a Houston high school, play in a post-Christmas tournament. “That team defined everything that wasn’t about being a team. We had older kids who were jealous of the younger kids, and younger kids who weren’t ready to be the team’s leaders—even though Johnny [Dawkins] tried.

  “I wasn’t a good enough coach then to figure out how to get them to play together, to work together, to compete together. That failure on my part was reflected in the whole season [11–17] and in that night.