Overcoming obstacles

By BRYAN STRICKLAND : The Herald-Sun
rbs@herald-sun.com
Sep 30, 2001 : 3:40 pm ET

DURHAM -- For every great moment, there usually is a grating moment.

Mike Krzyzewski has accomplished as much as any coach in college basketball history. He has won praise, won championships and now has won recognition from the Basketball Hall of Fame.

But there have been losses along the way.

Early in his career at Duke, it looked like Krzyzewski might lose his job. Later, when he had established the program as a powerhouse, the Blue Devils had reason to fear that they would lose him to another job.

And more recently, Krzyzewski lost his good health and thought he had lost his love for the game.

But after handling each hurdle, Krzyzewski emerged better than before.

When Krzyzewski took over for Bill Foster before the 1980-81 season, he inherited a program that had averaged 24 victories and had won two ACC championships over the previous three seasons.

But while the program had been strong, the returning team was not. Gone were Mike Gminski and Jim Spanarkel — Duke’s top-two career scoring leaders at the time — leaving Krzyzewski with All-American Gene Banks, Kenny Dennard and Vince Taylor, but little else.

Still, Duke fans were used to winning, and Krzyzewski didn’t do enough of that to suit their taste at first. His first team went 17-13, settling for an NIT bid, and his second team — with Banks and Dennard gone — slipped to 10-17.

After his second season, Krzyzewski landed a promising recruiting class, but the third season brought more unrest — and more losses.

With four freshmen — Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson and Jay Bilas — often starting, the Blue Devils bottomed out with a record of 11-17.

Duke hadn’t suffered through such a poor winning percentage in back-to-back seasons since the 1920s. To make matters worse, the last two national champions resided just down Tobacco Road — UNC in 1982 and N.C. State in 1983.

While the Wolfpack ended the ’83 season with a celebrated victory over Houston, Duke ended its season with an embarrassing 109-66 loss to Virginia in the first round of the ACC Tournament.

Duke fans were restless, but Krzyzewski was relentless.

"Walking out of The Omni at the end of my third year when we lost by 40-something to Virginia, I felt like a leper," Krzyzewski said. "But that got me angry, not down. I think anger, it can help you if it’s used properly, and that was a motivator for me.

"Also it’s kind of nice because it set the stage for me to not be dependent on the outside. We have really good supporters, but none of them are a part of this team. They have no say-so."

Those with the power, Duke athletics director Tom Butters and president Terry Sanford, recognized that the Devils were rebuilding and preached patience. The next season, when point guard Tommy Amaker came onboard, that patience began to pay off.

The Blue Devils won 14 of their first 15 games of the 1983-84 season — albeit mostly against a mediocre nonconference schedule — and after a slow start in ACC play they finished 7-7 in the league to tie for third place.

Behind the scenes, the team touted its regular-season finale at UNC as its coming-out party of sorts. But the Tar Heels pulled out a double-overtime victory, keeping the Blue Devils at bay — at least for a week.

"We wanted to win at Chapel Hill to prove we were among the nation’s elite and could compete with the nation’s elite," Bilas said. "But we lost in double overtime in a game that we should have won because we missed a one-and-one at the end of the game, and then they made a shot out of their ass.

"We were devastated, but [Krzyzewski] came in and basically all he said was, ‘We’re going to play them again, and when we do, I promise you we’re going to win.’

"When we played them a week later we won, and I really think him saying that was a complete factor in us beating them. That was a time when we thought we could beat anyone on the planet, and that was a huge turning point for us."

That victory, 77-75 over UNC in the ACC Tournament semifinals, wrapped up Krzyzewski’s first bid to the NCAA Tournament — the first of 17 over the next 18 seasons.

From 1986-90, Krzyzewski coached the Blue Devils to four Final Fours in five chances. The string of success had fans wondering what Krzyzewski would do for an encore. Krzyzewski wondered the same thing.

The Boston Celtics gave him an idea.

Following the 1990 season, one that ended with Duke’s third straight trip to the Final Four, the Celtics courted Krzyzewski.

"Each year there are offers, but that comes with anyone who is successful in any walk of life. Probably the Celtics were the closest," Krzyzewski said. "There was a part of me that found it very intriguing."

Krzyzewski hadn’t won a national title, but he had elevated Duke to the height of the hoops world. Now, Duke fans flirted with visions of having to start over again.

The Celtics offered Krzyzewski a chance to prove himself on the ultimate level, and they offered him some serious financial compensation. But in the end, they couldn’t offer Krzyzewski enough.

"It was serious. They were down here and we were talking, and then at the moment of ‘Well, do you do this or not?’ then it wasn’t close," Krzyzewski said. "I can’t leave this. I can’t leave. I’ve got Hurley and Laettner and all these kids, and Grant Hill is coming.

"I think you follow your heart. Your mind looks at everything, and certainly there were financial things that were better, but where is your heart? And my heart has been in coaching at Duke."

And again, a tough situation produced a tremendous success. Over the next two seasons, Krzyzewski helped Duke become the first school to win back-to-back national titles since UCLA in the 1970s.

Just when it seemed that Krzyzewski had all the answers, a health problem forced him to question everything.

As the 1994-95 season began, Krzyzewski’s place in history already was secure. He had steered seven of his previous nine teams to the Final Four and had a pair of national titles on his resume.

But before the season, Krzyzewski faced an opponent that didn’t yield so easily. Krzyzewski had back surgery before the season and tried to return too soon, and in the midst of his team’s December trip to the Rainbow Classic in Hawaii, excruciating back pain threatened to sideline him.

"Hawaii is a great place to relax, but his back was killing him," said Col. Tom Rogers, a special assistant to the basketball program. "That hurt him like the devil."

When the Blue Devils returned to Durham, Krzyzewski returned to the bench for only one game. Four days after Clemson upset Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium for the first time in more than a decade, Krzyzewski announced that he was leaving the team indefinitely to heal.

He handed the team over to assistant Pete Gaudet and disappeared from the public eye for the rest of the season.

Duke soon disappeared from the national polls, finishing the season 13-18 without its leader.

"The team was talented enough to win, but what I didn’t do enough was create the connections that were necessary that if one person is eliminated, other people can do their jobs effectively," Krzyzewski said. "It was my responsibility. It was more talented than the team that won 18 the next year, but it was a very unusual thing to happen.

"It’s early January, and it’s really unfair to those kids and those coaches the way it happened. Sometimes in those situations, you find something that makes it great, but we were never able to find that."

While the teams struggled on the court, Krzyzewski struggled off the court — and not just physically. Krzyzewski said he began to doubt his passion for the game, but in time he realized that it wasn’t basketball itself that had worn him down.

"The first thing it taught me was that I am a human being, that this can happen, and don’t be an idiot," Krzyzewski said. "The second thing it taught me was that by being away, we had gone to so many Final Fours, and I was on like a race and I wasn’t appreciating everything.

"I was getting tired, but I wasn’t tired of coaching. I was tired of everything else — but I was thinking it was coaching. And by being away and having it taken from me — not losing it voluntarily — it was like a huge wake-up call.

"It was like, ‘I’ve got to do that differently so that whenever I do leave coaching, it’s not for coaching. I’ve got to take care of everything; I’ve got to reorganize this.’"

Once healthy, Krzyzewski took better care of himself. He also handed over some of his responsibilities to others and cut down on time spent with the public and with the press.

When Krzyzewski returned the next season, Duke returned to his previous prominence rather quickly. The Blue Devils went 18-13 the next season, leaving them a combined 31-31 over two seasons.

But over the five seasons since, Duke hasn’t lost a total of 31 games. The Blue Devils are an amazing 157-24 since, with an unprecedented five straight ACC regular-season titles, two more Final Four appearances and another national title.

And with the team coming back for next season and the recruits in waiting, no end is in sight.

"When he came back, he said he felt five years younger," Rogers said. "He just keeps getting better. You keep wondering how he can get any better, and then he does."