The Legends Club

by John Feinstein

  Later, Jim Delany, the chairman of the basketball committee—and UNC grad—would claim Smith had been ejected for leaving the coaches’ box when he had walked Harris to the scorer’s table. Technically, Pavia had the right to tee Smith up for leaving the coaches’ box, but that wasn’t why he did it. If Smith had simply walked Harris to the table without saying anything, nothing would have happened. He knew Smith was walking with Harris for the express purpose of getting close enough to him to say something.

  After getting tossed, Smith went down the length of the Kansas bench, shaking hands with Williams, his staff, his players, his managers, and perhaps the mascot, before finally leaving.

  As the officials walked in the direction of the tunnel leading to the locker rooms after the game had ended—the same one Carolina was using—Bill Guthridge started screaming angrily at Pavia. “That was bush league!” Guthridge screamed. “Bush league!”

  When Guthridge walked closer to Pavia to continue yelling, security stepped in to intervene. They needn’t have bothered. Carolina SID Rick Brewer already had an arm on Guthridge and wasn’t going to let him get any closer to Pavia.

  In all, it was embarrassing for Smith and for everyone involved. It was only the third time in thirty years Smith had been ejected from a game.

  “The worst part is that all you guys are going to want to talk about is [Smith’s ejection],” Williams said. “We should be talking about how well our guys played.”

  He was right. It wasn’t going to happen.

  In the Duke locker room, Mike Krzyzewski was sitting in the coaches’ locker area watching the game’s final minutes. His thoughts weren’t about Smith’s ejection: they were about Carolina’s loss. Like most people, he had expected the Tar Heels to win the game.

  “I realized when they lost that I felt a sense of relief,” he said later. “If we won, we wouldn’t have to play them in the championship game. The pressure—on both teams—if that game happened would be unbearable. Beyond that, if we didn’t win against Vegas, I wouldn’t have to sit and watch them play in the game.

  “It occurred to me that if I was thinking that, the players were thinking that too. I felt like I had to deal with it right away.”

  Krzyzewski walked into the main area of the locker room. It was not the time he would normally talk to his players.

  “Guys, listen up a second,” Krzyzewski said. “Carolina’s just lost. Let’s not pretend that doesn’t matter to us. It does. Okay, think about it for a second: Carolina’s out. Now, flush it. What just happened doesn’t matter. We have to go out ready to play Vegas.”

  With that he walked out.

  —

  They were ready to play. With Hurley handling the Vegas pressure and Laettner getting off to a fast start, Duke jumped to a 15–6 lead, making its first five shots from the field. The Rebels dug in after that and began to pound Duke on the boards. The two teams seesawed to halftime, UNLV leading 43–41 at the break. The feeling could not have been more different from what it had been a year earlier in Denver when Duke had been lucky to be down only 12 at halftime.

  This time the sense in the locker room was, “Coach was right, we can beat these guys.”

  Down the hall, there was tension in the Vegas locker room. Prior to the game, CBS’s Billy Packer, one of the few members of the national media who had publicly said that Duke could win the game, made an important point: “If Duke can take this game down to the final minutes, the pressure will all be on Vegas,” he said, adding, “and they haven’t played in a down-to-the-wire game all season.”

  The Rebels didn’t want to play in one now. After Anderson Hunt had made a steal and layup early in the second half to give his team a 4-point lead, he turned in the direction of the Vegas fans, who were mostly sitting on their hands, and began waving his arms, imploring them to somehow push his team to the next level.

  They couldn’t do it. The game stayed close—neither team leading by more than five points. But when center George Ackles tipped in a Hunt miss with 2:15 left to give UNLV a 76–71 lead, it appeared that Duke would walk off the floor after a gallant effort that just wasn’t quite good enough. Krzyzewski stood to signal time, knowing his team needed to regroup and take a deep breath. It had been a draining game, physically and emotionally.

  Nowadays, as soon as Krzyzewski signaled for time, it would have been granted. Back then, though, someone on the court had to actually ask for a time-out. Hurley had dribbled quickly into the frontcourt and didn’t see his coach trying to call time-out. Neither did his teammates. Seeing an opening, Hurley quickly stepped into a seam and drained a three-point shot with 2:14 left.

  That summer, when Krzyzewski spent time with the great Coach Pete Newell, who in many ways had become his mentor at that stage of his life, Newell said to him, “The Laettner kid was great in Indy, but Hurley hit the most important shot of your career.”

  As soon as Hurley’s shot swished to make it 76–74, Krzyzewski got the time-out.

  Hurley’s shot changed the feeling in the building—and on the two benches. Duke wasn’t going to go gently into that good night. Vegas had not yet survived its most difficult test. They were now in the danger zone that Packer had talked about prior to the game.

  “There’s no underestimating how important Bobby’s shot was,” Krzyzewski said. “It was as if we all got a shot of pure adrenaline at that point. The game was like a heavyweight fight.” He smiled. “It was like Rocky, where Rocky and Apollo keep landing haymakers and neither one of them will go down. Just when it looked like we might go down, Bobby hit that shot. We went from on our heels to feeling like we had them on their heels.”

  Vegas was tired. Duke was the deeper team, the younger team, the team playing with house money. The Rebels couldn’t find an open shot and were called for a forty-five-second shot-clock violation with 1:24 left. With the entire building standing, Duke came down, everyone expecting the ball to go to Laettner. But Brian Davis caught a pass on the wing and went to the basket, surprising the Vegas defense. The shot went down and Davis was fouled. He made the free throw with 1:02 to go and, stunningly, Duke was in front, 77–76.

  Vegas didn’t wait long to shoot. Stacey Augmon drove to the basket and missed, but Larry Johnson—who had been outscored 26–12 by Laettner to that point—grabbed the rebound and was fouled. Clearly feeling the pressure, Johnson missed the first shot. Then he missed the second. But there was a whistle.

  Johnson had a hitch in his free-throw shooting motion. He would bring the ball up, seemingly start into his motion, and then stop. Then he’d reload and shoot. It almost looked like a Harlem Globetrotters move—act as if you’re going to shoot and then hold on to the ball. Needless to say, opponents knew about the hitch, and players were told not to move on Johnson’s first motion. But with all the raw emotion in the building at that moment, Thomas Hill forgot for an instant about the hitch. When Johnson made his first nonshooting move, he stepped into the lane. Granted a reprieve and a third shot, Johnson finally made one to tie the score at 77–77.

  There was a five-second difference between the game clock and the shot clock, so Duke couldn’t play for a last shot. Krzyzewski didn’t want to call time-out because that would give Tarkanian a chance to set up his defense.

  Thomas Hill flashed open fifteen feet from the basket and fired a jumper with the clock just under fifteen seconds. It rimmed out, but Laettner was right there for the rebound. As he went up with the ball, UNLV’S Evric Gray fouled him with 12.7 seconds left. Tarkanian called time to let Laettner think about the free throws. Krzyzewski—perhaps channeling Al McGuire—didn’t even think about the possibility of Laettner missing either shot.

  “Okay, after Christian makes these, this is what we need to do,” he said as his players leaned in to listen. What he didn’t want was Hunt, who had been UNLV’s best player all day, with twenty-nine points, getting any kind of look at the basket. In fact, he much preferred allowing Johnson to have the ball because it was clear to Krzyzewski tha
t nerves were affecting UNLV’s star. He saw no such sign of nerves in Hunt.

  The teams came back on court. Neither of Laettner’s free throws hit anything except the bottom of the net. Down 79–77, suddenly facing defeat, Vegas pushed the ball into the frontcourt. Hurley and Grant Hill both attacked Hunt, forcing him to give up the ball. It swung on the right wing to Johnson, who, for a split second, had an open three-point shot. Johnson froze. Laettner got out to him and Johnson had to pass. By now, though, the clock was under two seconds. Desperate, Johnson reversed the ball to Hunt, who was a good twenty-five feet from the basket with Hurley in his face. Hunt had no choice but to heave a shot in the direction of the rim. It hit off the side and bounced to Hurley as the buzzer sounded.

  Hurley dropped the ball and began leaping in the air, arms over his head, celebrating. He jumped into Grant Hill’s arms as everyone in blue began to hug one another.

  And then they stopped.

  Krzyzewski had rushed onto the floor at the final buzzer—but not to hug anyone. This wasn’t 1984 in Greensboro against North Carolina or even 1986 in Dallas against Kansas.

  “Stop!” he screamed at his players, his palms down in the “cool it” signal. “Stop! We haven’t won anything yet!”

  They stopped. They went and lined up and shook hands with the stunned UNLV players. Krzyzewski hugged Tarkanian, who was clearly in shock.

  Up in the stands, John Wooden, who had won seven straight national championships at UCLA between 1967 and 1973 and coached four undefeated teams, stood up and turned to Quinn Buckner, who had played on Indiana’s undefeated team in 1976.

  “You know something, Quinn,” he said. “A lot of great teams have won one in a row.”

  The two men made their way out, both with broad grins on their faces.

  —

  There was, of course, the not-so-little matter of beating Kansas in the final. The Jayhawks were on an impressive roll. They were a veteran team led by center Mark Randall and two superb guards, Adonis Jordan and Terry Brown. There was also the added twist of Roy Williams—the same Roy Williams who had been so stunned when Krzyzewski refused to shake his boss’s hand for a moment the first time they’d met more than ten years earlier—being the one coach left standing between Krzyzewski and a national championship.

  Krzyzewski wasn’t concerned about Williams or any twists of history. He really didn’t care that Saturday had been arguably the worst day in North Carolina basketball history. Not only had Carolina lost a national semifinal, Dean Smith had been ejected and then Duke had pulled one of the great upsets in the history of the tournament. The hopes of all Tar Heels now rode on Roy Williams, UNC class of 1972.

  Krzyzewski’s concern was with his team—and his players. Laettner and Hurley had both played forty minutes against UNLV. Laettner had been banged around by the Rebels’ big men and was sore and tired. Hurley, who could run forever, appeared to be fine.

  But Krzyzewski was just as worried about his team’s mind-set. No matter how many times he told them that the job wasn’t done yet, he sensed a feeling of accomplishment he didn’t like. They had taken down the team that had humiliated them the year before, the team that had already been crowned as champion in the minds of most people.

  It was en route to practice on Sunday that Krzyzewski found a way to get his team’s attention. When he walked onto the bus he noticed that Greg Koubek and freshman Marty Clark had apparently done some shopping. They were both wearing brand-new cowboy hats.

  Not for long.

  Krzyzewski took the hats off their heads and stood in the front of the bus.

  “Let me tell you guys something,” he said. “Yesterday is yesterday. It’s done. Over. Kansas could give a damn that you guys beat Vegas. Frankly, right now, I could give a damn that you guys beat Vegas.

  “I don’t like the way you’re walking or the way you’re talking right now. I don’t like the looks of satisfaction on your faces, and I really don’t like the way”—he paused to glare at Koubek and Clark—“you’re dressing right now. I’m gonna tell you this right now and I’m not gonna say it again: When we get to the arena, you better have forgotten yesterday. You better be totally focused on tomorrow night. Because if you’re not, we’ll lose the game. And if we lose the game, none of you are gonna want to be around me.”

  He sat down. The cowboy hats had given him exactly the excuse he was looking for to rip them.

  “It was actually perfect,” he said later. “I mean, what was I going to yell at them for? They’d just beaten Vegas. I had been telling them they needed to put it behind them, but, I mean, what the hell, they’d just beaten Vegas. But the cowboy hats were proof—tangible proof—that they thought they’d become God’s gift to basketball. It was just what I needed.”

  Championship Monday is the longest day of the year for the teams playing in the game. Because Indianapolis is in the Eastern time zone, tip-off wasn’t until nearly 9:30. It was Krzyzewski’s third championship game in six years, so he had the hang of it. Koubek, no longer wearing the cowboy hat, scored the game’s first five points. He never scored again, but he’d done enough—he’d seen to it that his teammates didn’t feel tight at the outset.

  Duke led 5–1 when Laettner grabbed a rebound and quickly got the ball to Hurley. As he raced across midcourt, looking to see if anyone ahead of him might be open, Hurley spotted Grant Hill darting toward the basket. Two steps across center court he threw a semi-lob in the direction of the rim, hoping Hill could grab it.

  But, still a little too pumped up on early game nerves and adrenaline, Hurley overthrew the pass. Just as he was about to point to Hill and say sorry, Hurley saw something that neither he, nor the 47,100 in the building, nor the millions watching on TV, could quite believe.

  As the ball was going over his head, destined to end up way out-of-bounds, Hill leaped as high as he could and reached his right arm behind his head, just hoping to get his hand on the ball. Somehow, he was actually able to catch it, cradle it for a second, and, almost from behind the backboard, bring it down to the rim and dunk it. If you watch a replay, you can see Hill’s hand well above the square on the backboard as he gains control of the ball.

  “How did he do that?” Billy Packer said on air, echoing the thoughts of just about everyone as Hill ran downcourt as if he’d made a layup during pregame warm-ups. “That ball was going way out-of-bounds.”

  “I knew as soon as I released it, I’d overthrown it,” Hurley said. “Terrible pass. Except Grant made it a perfect pass.”

  Hill always jokes that when he sees the play again—it’s shown every year over and over during the tournament—all he can think about is the bad freshman haircut he had back then.

  The dunk made it 7–1. As it turned out, Kansas would never get even, although the game never became a blowout. It was 42–34 at halftime. Krzyzewski, remembering David Henderson’s and Mark Alarie’s tired legs in the ’86 championship game, kept taking Laettner out just prior to the TV time-outs. Anytime there was a whistle with the clock below 16:30, 12:30, 8:30, or 4:30, Laettner came out because Krzyzewski knew the first whistle under 16:00, 12:00, 8:00, and 4:00 would bring a TV time-out. Laettner would only miss one or two possessions and get an extra minute or more of rest in addition to the TV time-out.

  Laettner didn’t shoot the ball terribly well but kept getting to the foul line. He made 12 of 12 from there and finished with 18 points. Billy McCaffrey, who had lost his starting job at midseason to Thomas Hill after getting hurt, came off the bench to score 16 critical points.

  It was never easy. Duke led 70–59, but Kansas made back-to-back threes to cut the margin to 70–65 with twenty-six seconds left. Duke called time-out with eighteen seconds to go to avoid a ten-second violation against the press. Coming out of the time-out, Brian Davis caught Grant Hill’s eye. Kansas was overplaying the inbounds pass, trying for a steal.

  Davis knew if he made a jab step in the direction of the ball and then took off, he’d be open. Hill caught the signal.
Sure enough, Davis faked as if to run toward Hill, then went the other way. He was wide open when Hill lobbed him the ball. He took one step and dunked. Kansas was out of time-outs. The lead was 72–65. Since the clock didn’t stop (as it does now) in the final minute of the game after a made basket, the game was over.

  Finally, Duke was the national champion. Finally, there would be no more jokes about why Krzyzewski only played fourteen holes of golf—“because he doesn’t like the Final Four.”

  Gene Corrigan, the commissioner of the ACC, who had graduated from Duke in 1952, was walking the streets of Indianapolis. He had left the building as soon as the game began, unable to sit still. He had tried watching from a bar for a while but it seemed as if everyone in the place was pulling for Kansas. So he walked, alone, on a cold early April night.

  “I kept looking at my watch,” he said. “Every time I looked it was about thirty seconds later than it had been the last time I looked. I thought maybe I should get drunk—bad idea. So I just began walking the building in circles—it’s a big place. After about ten hours—at least it felt like ten hours—I saw people starting to come out of the building. I grabbed a guy and said, ‘Who won, who won the damn game?’

  “He just said, ‘Duke—by seven.’ I took a deep breath, cried a little bit, and then went inside. I figured the commissioner of the ACC should be there to congratulate an ACC coach on winning the national championship.”

  It was Jim Delany, the chairman of the NCAA Basketball Committee, who presented the trophy to Krzyzewski. Jim Delany, who had played for Dean Smith at North Carolina in the 1960s and no doubt felt sick to his stomach as he handed the trophy to Krzyzewski.

  Now Krzyzewski had the one thing both Smith and Jim Valvano had owned that he hadn’t: a national title. Life in the Triangle had changed forever.

  27

  Jim Valvano was delighted to see Mike Krzyzewski cut down the final net in Indianapolis. He had just finished his first season working for ESPN and ABC and had spent a good deal of time with Krzyzewski, especially when he was assigned to do a Duke game.