Getting to Us

by Seth Davis

  That type of exchange has been paused, freeze-framed, rewound, and replayed countless times during Krzyzewski’s coaching career. It is a critical tactic in how he gets his teams to Us. He doesn’t want his players just to think like winners. He wants them to feel like winners. That means they need to see what he sees.

  Most every player who has come through Duke has at some point been on the business end of Krzyzewski’s ethnic pressure. At the end of J. J. Redick’s sophomore season, which ended with the Blue Devils losing to UConn in the 2004 Final Four, he came to the coach’s office for what he thought was going to be a nice pep talk. Instead, Krzyzewski told Redick that it was his fault the team had lost, that his off-court conditioning, sleeping, eating, and partying habits made him unworthy of being a champion. Redick was pissed, but he knew Krzyzewski was right. Two years later, Redick was the national player of the year, largely on the basis of his superb conditioning.

  Quinn Cook was a freshman reserve midway through the 2011–12 season when he got word that Krzyzewski and his top assistant, Jeff Capel, wanted to meet with him in the coach’s office. Cook also assumed he was in for some praise, but instead the coaches showed him video of him sitting on the bench during games and not cheering for his teammates. Krzyzewski and Capel ripped Cook for his selfishness and suggested that he should turn in his uniform. Cook was devastated. He felt like he was letting the family down.

  By the time he was a senior, Cook had become one of the best leaders Krzyzewski ever had, serving as a captain on Duke’s 2015 NCAA championship team.

  This ability to empathize with his players based on facial expression and body language is Krzyzewski’s great coaching gift. When senior forward Kyle Singler had a subpar game in the 2010 South Regional final win over Baylor, Krzyzewski showed him video that focused not on Singler’s shooting form or decisions with the ball, but on his posture. “You’re being an upper-body player here. That means you were thinking about just yourself,” Krzyzewski said. “If you’re talking and giving instruction, you get outside of yourself, and you become a lower-body player. Your feet are wider. You’re in a stronger stance. Your arms go out, your feet go out.” Singler got the message. The next weekend, he was lower-body strong again, winning Most Outstanding Player as Duke won yet another crown.

  Krzyzewski used the same approach while coaching the U.S. National Team at the Olympics. While preparing the Americans for the 2012 Olympics in London, Krzyzewski observed to Kevin Durant that every time he spoke, his eyes were on the floor.

  “That’s because I’m shy,” Durant said.

  “Kevin,” Krzyzewski said, “you can’t be shy. The guys need you not to be shy.” Later, while watching video with the team, Krzyzewski saw Durant make a great play and run downcourt with a confident look on his face. He paused the video and asked each of Durant’s teammates to tell him how empowered they felt when he looked like that.

  He wants his players to be instinctive, not calculating—to follow the courage of their convictions, just as his grandparents did when they set sail for America. That’s why he uses a motion offense, which he learned from Bob Knight. The system does not involve set plays. Rather, it puts players in position to read and react to what the defense is doing. That’s why Krzyzewski tends to recruit versatile players, and while he rules his team with West Point discipline, he wants his guys to play with freedom. Thus his favorite metaphor: “If you put a plant in a jar, it will grow to the shape of the jar. But if you put a plant outside, there is no limit as to how much it can grow.”

  Instinctiveness begets adaptability. Krzyzewski is constantly on guard against being trapped by old habits. He makes decisions on playing time based on performance, not hierarchy. I remember interviewing him once at an early-season practice when he told me he was leaning toward starting freshman Elliot Williams at point guard over Greg Paulus, who was a senior. When I asked him if he was worried that Paulus would be upset by that, he shot me an annoyed look. “No,” he said. “This isn’t some inherited wealth.”

  The willingness to share blunt truths gives Krzyzewski his authenticity. If he is willing to tell a new girlfriend she was his third choice for a date, he damn sure isn’t going to be shy about telling a player he isn’t good enough to start. “They know they’re going to get the truth from me all the time,” he says. He insists his players do the same for each other. Krzyzewski often says that he works to instill three systems—an offensive system, a defensive system, and a communication system. His practices are a cacophony of conversation. If the players stop talking, he will halt the action and remind them he wants to hear their voices.

  Krzyzewski’s Blue Devils have been clipped a few times in the early rounds of the NCAA Tournament, but by and large they do not lose many games they are supposed to win. This is remarkable given that every time Duke plays a road game, it gets its opponent’s best shot. He believes that by keeping players in attack mode, it renders them impervious to pressure. After his former assistant, Mike Brey, became the coach at Notre Dame, he found himself coaching an excellent team that had risen to the top of the rankings. When Brey asked his former boss for advice, Krzyzewski replied, “Coach like you’re playing with house money.”

  Krzyzewski has been approached many times about coaching in the NBA, but he only seriously considered two offers: in 1990, when the Celtics offered him their head coaching position, and 2004, when the Lakers tried to hire him. He turned them down because he understood who he was and where his skills would be best applied. The one job he did take coaching pros was the only one that paid no salary. In 2006, he agreed to become Team USA’s national coach. USA Basketball had suffered a string of humiliating losses, but Krzyzewski revived the organization by treating it like a college program, even though the players were now seasoned professionals. He coached the United States to three Olympic gold medals. Many people speculated that by taking on the added responsibilities, Krzyzewski was going to drain himself of precious energy, but if anything, it revitalized him. By working with NBA coaches like Nate McMillan, Mike D’Antoni, and Tom Thibodeau, not to mention his good friend Jim Boeheim of Syracuse, Krzyzewski added to his basketball knowledge, which infused him with newfound energy he could apply to his Duke teams. “When you learn another way of doing things, you’re anxious to do it,” he says. Being the USA coach also helped with recruiting, which has prompted much envious sniping from his peers.

  It would be inauthentic for Krzyzewski to encourage his players to trust their instincts if he weren’t willing to do the same, even in the most pressurized situations. Krzyzewski did just that in the final seconds of Duke’s 2010 NCAA championship game against Butler. The Bulldogs were a No. 5 seed, and their romp to the final had echoes of the movie Hoosiers, whose final scene was filmed in Butler’s home arena, Hinkle Fieldhouse. That the Final Four was being hosted just a few miles from Butler’s campus in Indianapolis only added to the storyline. With 3.6 seconds on the clock and Duke clinging to a one-point lead, Duke’s senior center, Brian Zoubek, went to the foul line. Krzyzewski’s instincts told him that his team would be in trouble if the game went into overtime. So after Zoubek made the first free throw, he gave his player an unconventional order: Miss the second on purpose. That meant Butler, which did not have a time out, would have to find a way to advance the ball 94 feet without an in-bounds pass. On the other hand, it preserved the possibility that Duke could lose in regulation if Butler made a three-pointer.

  Many coaches in that situation would consider such a risky maneuver, but very few would actually follow through on it. Krzyzewski did, and it almost backfired, but a halfcourt heave by Butler forward Gordon Hayward rimmed out.

  In 2015, Krzyzewski claimed his fifth NCAA championship, which left him in second place all-time behind UCLA’s John Wooden. Three of Duke’s five starters were one-and-done freshmen. Not only was that team young, but it relied heavily upon a lumbering 6´11˝ freshman forward named Jahlil Okafor. Because of Okafor�
��s size, he had difficulty defending the screen-and-roll, and his teammates were too inexperienced to understand the complicated maneuvers that could compensate for that. So midway through the season, Krzyzewski did something he had never done before: He played zone defense. He also dismissed an upperclassman guard named Rasheed Sulaimon for disciplinary reasons in late January, which left his team with just eight scholarship players. His belief never wavered. “Eight is enough” became his mantra, and sure enough it was. After the Blue Devils came back from nine points down in the second half of the final to defeat Wisconsin, his oldest daughter, Debbie, stood amazed in a hallway. “Nobody believed this could happen,” she said, “except the kids in that locker room.”

  Unlike Tom Izzo and a lot of other coaches, Krzyzewski has no problem with his players using social media. He assumes they will post stupid things that get them in hot water, but that, he says, is part of getting an education. Though he has not set up an official Twitter account, Krzyzewski does have an alias so he can follow what is going on. He is a prolific texter and emoji enthusiast, and he has always made an effort to get to know his players’ favorite music. “Part of that is you feel music,” he says. “If I want to find out how to make them feel a certain way, I have to understand the things they do. If I use some words or a phrase from a song they like when I’m talking, their attention picks up. It’s like saying I’m in their world. And I like it. It keeps me young.”

  If he didn’t adapt, if he didn’t maintain his persistence and grow his empathy while staying true to who he is, Krzyzewski would be unable to continue acquiring the knowledge he needs to stay relevant—and indeed, highly successful—for this long. Jay Bilas, in his role as an ESPN broadcaster, spends as much time around Krzyzewski as any of his former players. He is struck by how often his old coach says something insightful that Bilas has never heard before. “He’s still the same great guy, still has the same core principles, but in the way he goes about his job, he’s infinitely better,” Bilas says. “The guys ten years after us played for a better coach than we did. The guys playing today are playing for a better coach than J. J. Redick or Grant Hill did. We probably feel the same way that guys who played for John Wooden felt, or guys who played for Dean Smith. We would all say we played for the best coach ever. It just happens that we’re the ones who are right.”

  * * *

  • • •

  On December 22, 2016, I interviewed Krzyzewski in his office for my Campus Insiders show. My timing was not great. The night before, Duke had defeated Elon in a game that was marred by an ugly episode where Duke’s volatile junior guard, Grayson Allen, had kicked an opposing player. It was the third and most blatant such incident involving Allen over the previous year, and the sports world was ablaze with hot takes and recriminations. Given the circumstances, I wondered if Krzyzewski would go through with our interview and, if so, whether he would be in a talkative mood. But despite getting almost no sleep he was sanguine when I arrived the next morning. When I asked how he was doing, he grinned and said, “Oh, you know. Life is a cabaret.”

  Krzyzewski did not handle the situation well in the immediate aftermath. He reflexively reverted to the defiant posture that is forever a part of his makeup—the ethnically proud soldier trapped behind enemy lines. He made clear that while he believed what Allen did was wrong—and he had brought him into the Elon locker room to apologize to the player he kicked—Krzyzewski did not think there should be further punishment. “I don’t need to satisfy what other people think that I should do,” he said. “Anyone else who wants to take shots about anything else, about Duke and me or whatever, go for it. Because that’s territory that I’m comfortable with.”

  By the time I got to his office the following morning, Krzyzewski was thinking more clearly. He was also listening to the smart advice being given to him by his communications staff and athletic director. The school issued a statement that Allen would be suspended indefinitely. (It turned out to be for one game.) I told Krzyzewski that I thought it was good that Allen had faced the cameras in the locker room to express his remorse, but I wished he had sat up straight and looked everyone in the eye instead of slouching and keeping his head down.

  Krzyzewski disagreed. He preferred the authenticity. “People should see what he was really feeling,” he said. “I mean, look at him. He’s just a fucking kid.”

  Krzyzewski’s office has an ultra-high ceiling and is filled with pictures—of his family, his players, his staff, his closest friends. Krzyzewski likes to tell people that he is a big picture guy, not to mention a big-picture guy. He likes being surrounded by images that evoke feelings. They remind him to trust his instincts.

  One of those special memories occurred in 2001, when Krzyzewski was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. The ceremony was emotional for many reasons. He and Bob Knight had experienced a very public falling-out dating back to the 1992 Final Four, when Duke defeated Indiana in the semifinal en route to winning Krzyzewski’s second title. In the run-up to that meeting, there had been much conversation in the press about the pupil-versus-teacher matchup, and though Krzyzewski offered Knight much praise, he also tried to downplay the storyline by emphasizing that he had other mentors as well. Unbeknownst to Krzyzewski, Knight took offense. When the game was over, he blew by Krzyzewski, refusing the postgame handshake. He also handed a letter to a mutual friend, who delivered it to Krzyzewski right before he took the dais for the postgame press conference. The letter informed Krzyzewski that if a divorce was what he wanted, then that’s what he would get. Aside from a few brief stretches of civility, the two had not spoken until 2001 when Krzyzewski, in a move that shocked his wife, called Knight and asked if Knight would present him for induction into the Hall. When Knight gave his speech and summoned Krzyzewski to the stage, Krzyzewski fell into his arms with tears in his eyes.

  Fittingly, Knight was also on hand as a game analyst for ESPN on November 16, 2011, when Krzyzewski passed him on the NCAA’s all-time wins list with a victory over Michigan State in Madison Square Garden. The two shared an embrace that night as well and remained close thereafter, although with Knight in the mix, they are always one perceived slight from another rupture.

  For a guy who wanted to quit hundreds of times while he was at West Point, in many respects Krzyzewski never left. To this day, before he goes to bed each night, he maps out his plan for the next day. “I think it comes from West Point, where you lay out your uniform the night before,” Krzyzewski told me. “It helps you make effective use of your time. It gets me excited because I’m going to do something I’ve planned to do, what I love to do, and it’s different every day.”

  His program is not on autopilot by any means, but it benefits from the culture instilled over three decades of working hard and winning big. Call it ethnic momentum. When players come to Duke, they are reminded every day that there is a great history they must honor and advance, just like Krzyzewski understood that he owed it to his grandparents to make the most of the opportunities America afforded him. If the freshmen fall short of those standards, the seniors apply the pressure. If the seniors fall short, there are plenty of former players hanging around to deliver the message. That includes the former players who are assistant coaches. “We give them a set of values that they need to take forward,” Krzyzewski says. “Like, our culture has gone through so much. We fought for that, and we’re passing that along to you. Take it, knucklehead.”

  Krzyzewski went through the most painful experience of his life the day after Christmas in 2013, when his brother, Bill, died of complications following cancer surgery. Just as was the case with his father, Krzyzewski tried to get back to Chicago before his brother passed, but he did not make it in time. It’s one thing to see a parent die—Krzyzewski’s mother succumbed to cancer in the fall of 1996—but this was a much deeper loss. “One of the reasons he’s a good coach is he never believes it’s over,” Mickie says. “He’s always saying, ‘We�
��re gonna fix it, we’re gonna get better, we’re gonna learn from our mistakes.’ So something as final and painful as death just knocks him for a loop.”

  That stubbornness has gotten him into trouble before, but he is older now, more knowledgeable. Two weeks after our visit, Krzyzewski underwent back surgery to repair another herniated disc. There was no rushing back this time; he waited the full four weeks before returning to his team. Over the years, there have been a few times when Mickie had to remind him that he was overextending himself again, but for the most part he has kept things in balance. He looks a lot younger than he is, thanks to his remarkably persistent hair, which he insists remains mostly black with no outside help. “I do not color my hair,” Krzyzewski once said in a postgame press conference. “That’s a myth. My buddies would kill me.”

  Krzyzewski told me that when the time does come for him to retire, he does not want to choose his successor, although he hopes it will be one of his former players. Speculation as to when that day will come is a popular guessing game in the sport, but there is no sign that Krzyzewski is slowing down. Besides, it’s not like he needs to stop coaching to spend more time with his family. Krzyzewski’s daughters have borne him ten grandchildren at last count, and they all live in the Durham area. All three of his daughters have roles in the program. Debbie is an assistant athletic director, special events coordinator, and fund-raiser; Lindy owns a master’s degree in clinical psychology and works as a counselor for the athletes; and Jamie is a writer who has coauthored three books with her father. And of course, Mickie can still come and go as she pleases.

  The family also helps Mike oversee his many philanthropic projects, from the Emily K. Center in Durham, which provides college information and support for low-income residents, to the Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Along with his position as an executive in residence for the Center on Leadership and Ethics, Krzyzewski is on the board of several charities, including the Duke Children’s Hospital and the V Foundation, which raises money to fight cancer in honor of his late friend Jim Valvano, who coached N.C. State to the 1983 NCAA championship.