The final walk will come Saturday, in the vicinity of 6 p.m. ET. It is not a long journey, just down a hallway and through a set of doors that, curiously, are at the opposite end of the gymnasium from the bench his team calls home. The sight of him will engender a rapturous ovation from more than 8,000 people jammed into a confined, rectangular space, and the many gifted sports journalists gathered will struggle, in the moment or the aftermath, to describe the overwhelming degrees of gratitude, admiration and esteem contained in the cacophony.
This is not the last game for Mike Krzyzewski as head coach, but it will the last for him at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and North Carolina will be the opposition. And that is an occasion that will not pass without attention.
It will be a different walk for the man who will run the Tar Heels, rookie head coach Hubert Davis. The visiting locker room at Cameron is down a set of stairs near the front of the building. Hard to make a charging entrance after ascending a few flights.
It is different, as well, because nearly every man in Davis’ position for the past three decades, even those enshrined nearby to Krzyzewski at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, has, to at least the slightest degree, looked up to see the man universally they call “Mike”, never Coach K. That terminology is reserved for his fans, and those in the public wishing to save a few syllables.
COACH K'S FINAL SEASON
Chapter 1: Ending the era
Chapter 2: Inside the greatest game
Chapter 3: Getting recruited by the legend
Chapter 4: Redeeming USA Basketball
Chapter 5: Coaching against K
It is Mike’s position to which all competitors in this arena aspire: the record 1,196 victories, the 12 Final Fours and five NCAA titles. And they’ll admit that. They also will cherish the times when it was they who left a contest with a victory, or a Final Four, or a championship, along with his sincere congratulations. Because it never was easy.
Roy Williams
Kansas 1988-2003
North Carolina 2003-2021
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, 2007
Our relationship started when I was an assistant here and he was the head coach at Duke. When he got there, he was not on that pedestal that he very deservedly needs to be on now. We would have conversations on the road. I remember one time I took our JV team over to Duke, and they had just finished practice, and I walked out and we sat down for like 30 minutes and he was very open, very honest. And he still is.
I think the thing that Michael did, to me, is how long he’s done it at such a high level. I’ll never forget, in ‘91, when they beat us in the national championship game, we shook hands. I said, “I’m very sad and hurt for my team, but I’m very happy for you.” The regrettable thing, is I also said that same thing to (Jim) Boeheim 16 years later. I helped those guys get their first one. But when I said it to Michael, he said, “You’re going to get one, too.”
It’s a relationship built on respect, more than anything.
He doesn’t play golf, and I love to play golf. I love to be with my family; he loves to be with his family. The only thing other than that is coaching. And so it’s not a buddy-buddy, but we have a TREMENDOUS – I would capitalize every letter in that word – relationship.
What he did, is he made you be better. If you didn’t work, cross all the T's and dot all the I's – because he was going to. Mike became the standard of doing the program, not just being a basketball coach.
I had the greatest teacher in the world, in my mind, in Dean Smith. But Mike set the bar. You had to be able to do everything, or you were not going to be able to compete.
The toughest thing for us, and I’m serious, we only beat them for three or four kids in my entire tenure. We were fortunate enough, got Harrison Barnes and Brandan Wright and Walker Kessler, maybe. When I was at Kansas, we got one, and that was Nick Collison. It was really difficult because we could never, ever quite figure out how to beat them on the recruiting front. And it was awfully difficult to beat them on the court.
Gary Williams
American, 1978-82
Boston College, 1982-86
Ohio State, 1986-1989
Maryland, 1989-2011
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, 2014
When I was a very average player at Maryland in the 60s, Mike – I think he was a year or two behind me at West Point. They had a young coach named Bobby Knight. We played against each other in the Charlotte Invitational in 1966. That was my first meeting with Mike, as player to player.
We went our separate ways and Mike did what he did at Duke. When I came back to Maryland as coach, we weren’t very good, so there was no rivalry between Duke and Maryland. Because we weren’t good enough to be a rival with them. What I did was, I’d look at Carolina with Dean Smith and I’d look at Mike with Duke and – no offense to any other team in the ACC – they were the two teams that I thought, well, we should try to emulate them.
The one thing I saw with Mike, no matter how good his players were, he gets good players to really play hard, and I’ve always thought that was a big part of his success. A lot of coaches were good recruiters, they get good players, but you had a shot against them because they don’t really play hard every night. I don’t remember ever against Duke – and I think we played them, during the time I was at Maryland, 48 or 49 times maybe – every game, you knew what was coming. They were going to play as hard as any team we played all year. And obviously they played well, the way Mike coached the team. But when you combine great players with great effort plus the coaching Mike could give them, that’s why they were so good on a consistent level.
You see teams go up and down, have a couple good years and then a couple bad years. That didn’t happen. When Mike got it going in the mid-1980s, they’ve been as consistent as any team in the country at a very high level.
When Lefty (Driesell) was coaching at Maryland, it was Dean Smith and Lefty Driesell. Anything Carolina would drive Lefty nuts, because he thought: Carolina’s got all the advantages in the ACC, it’s located in North Carolina, the whole thing. But when Dean Smith retired, that kind of changed Maryland fans. Because we’d started to get good enough where we could compete with Duke. There were some great games there that got the fans’ attention, and all of a sudden, that became the game of the year.
The coaches were fine. There was always a mutual respect. Our crowds got crazy during that time; they did. When you’re coaching against arguably the best coach since John Wooden, or the best coach ever, depending on how you feel about that, I’m going to be ready to play that game. That’s another thing about Mike that he should get credit for: I wasn’t the only one. Most teams gave them their best shot. He dealt with that almost his whole coaching career.
Jim Boeheim
Syracuse, 1976-present
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, 2007
Since we first started playing, way back when we did the Big East Challenge with them, they were always going to be good. We’ve been pretty good. So there’s been a lot of battles. Lately, they’ve just been better than us, but for a while there, we were pretty good, pretty close.
He’s the best of the modern-day coaches. I exclude John Wooden from any talk or comparisons, but from 1970 to today, which is when we’re coaching, he’s the best coach. He’s done the best job running the program, establishing the program. He’s very organized, planning-things-out type of guy. His main strength is he’s just really good at knowing what people need to do, what they should do, how to handle people and handle the psychology of coaching.
That’s why he was so good with the Olympic teams. He is just really good at understanding what players need and what coaches need, allowing coaches like Mike D'Antoni, Nate McMillan, Tom Thibodeau and myself to have input into the team and what’s going on. He’s absolutely the best at that: the mental approach, the team approach to any sport. That’s why he’s the best. He’s a really good guy to coach with, because he listens.
They’re really good defensively, so you’re not passing the ball around a lot. You have to run a lot of quick stuff. You have to be able to put the ball on the floor. With our success against them, we had guys that could make plays. It’s very difficult to run your offense. With their offense, they’ve got guys that are hard to stop. They always have a good combination of inside and out, so you can’t defend one thing. Even with getting one-and-done players, it’s hard to be really good defensively, but they’re still pretty good defensively. They’ve got great players and he knows what to do with them. That’s the bottom line. You have to get the players – that’s part of college coaching – and you have to get them to play together. That’s what he does.
Jim Calhoun
Northeastern, 1972-1986
Connecticut, 1986-2012
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, 2005
I met him at West Point, because I coached against him when I was at Northeastern. To this day I remember, because it was the same kind of games we had when it was UConn vs. Duke.
Mike has got a great gift of imparting his incredible competitiveness to basketball players. Very few can do it, and not many can do it as well as Mike does it. When Jimmy Valvano was a broadcaster, he was doing a game of ours, we had a talk about Mike and he said, ‘The thing about him: When you scout it, you don’t see much.’ What you see is, he used to be a great, great motion offensive team. Then he was a ball-you-man defense, coming out of Bob Knight and a guy named Al LoBalbo many years ago. But through all of it, it’s not what you teach, it’s how you teach it.
When you play Mike, you know you’re going to put your gloves on. They’ll be as tough as any team you’ve played, anytime, anywhere. That’s a gift.
The nicest thing he ever said to me was, “You never quit.” And I said, “You know what? I didn’t learn that from you, but we did it kind of side-by-side.”
I remember the ref Timmy Higgins said, “Most games, you kind of know when the game’s over. With Krzyzewski and Calhoun, it was never over.” Not that we couldn’t hug afterwards, but both of us are brutal competitors.
Like the saying goes, boys to men – he made them into men. It wasn’t perfect. It’s not always great. Every kid’s not always a success. I know that. But you do it 50 years, and you kind of get the picture. He had a great ability to make those teams. They were going to be physically tougher than they ever imagined they could be. Mentally tough. I bet some of that got through from his training as a military guy.
You know, the gift of a jumpshot is a great thing. The gift of mental toughness is a hell of a lot better, because it lasts you all the way through.
John Calipari
UMass, 1988-1996
Memphis, 2000-2009
Kentucky, 2009-present
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, 2015
What he’s done for all of us coaches is, he raised the bar. He raised the bar in recruiting, he raised the bar in having a program that is impactful for every player. For me, even though I’m younger, probably the era after him, it’s just understanding what excellence is about.
For me, wherever I’ve been, being everybody’s Super Bowl, it’s knowing he’s gone through 40 years of that.
I’ve done it five or six years at two different places –12 -- and then the 13 here. But that ain’t 40.
Tom Izzo
Michigan State, 1996-present
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, 2016
I think my second or third year we played them in Chicago, what they used to call the Great Eight. That was the first time I ever coached against Mike, and then of course I had the one at Madison Square Garden, where he broke the record. I was the sacrificial lamb. But it was kind of cool. Everybody who was anybody came back for that game.
The first time that I played them at Cameron, I think it was Gary Williams said, “Why are you going down there to play?” I said, “I don’t know; I thought it would be cool.” And so he said, “Well, you’re going to get the same three officials, and it’s going to be this, and it’s going to be that.” I remember looking down at Mike, because you see him with a suit on; he’s got the Duke presence, but he gets down on that knee and he can talk a different language. I didn’t know that side of him! Come to think of it, at the end of the game, I think three calls went his way. Those are some of the reasons I never won!
He’s been good to me. They’ve beaten us like a drum, but I think we’ve won two of the last three, and we had that big win against Zion (Williamson). That had to be a gut-wrenching loss, because I think he loved that team, and he was so gracious. I think he’s a very gracious human being.
One time, we were playing them in the Final Four, in Indy. And my son was about 12 or 14, and I did some thing for ESPN, and they asked me about people making picks, and I said, “Yeah, everybody’s picking us except my own kid.” And they said, “Who’s he picking?” And I said, “Duke.” So somehow Krzyzewski got a hold of that, and he says, “Hey, tell Steven he’s got a scholarship at Duke, no problem.” So they beat us, and I’m walking down the hallway and him and Mickie are coming in a golf cart. I’m walking, because I’m at Michigan State, he’s at Duke. I said, “Hey, it was worth the loss for that $250,000 you’re going to pay for my son to go to school there.”
I do like his perspective on things. I think he wants to do what’s right for the players, but he wants to do what’s right for basketball. I’ve always appreciated that about him.
Bill Self
Oral Roberts, 1993-97
Tulsa, 1997-2000
Illinois, 2000-03
Kansas, 2003-present
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, 2017
From my standpoint, in my generation, basically from the start of my coaching to now, he’s always been the standard. I don’t know how many times we’ve had a chance to play them, but the first time we did it was my second game in the NCAA Tournament, ever, at Tulsa. And if we were 42 points better, we would have beat them that night. They were so good.
Just like teams get excited to play great teams and individuals get excited to play against certain individuals, coaches obviously get excited to coach against certain guys. And he would be at the top of my list.
To compete against him and have even a little bit of success is one of the highlights of my individual coaching career. I don’t know what my record is against him, and I’m sure it’s definitely not a winning record, but any win against him carries a little more value than what it does against most everybody else.
We’ve had some great games. The championship game in Maui. A couple of Champions Classic games that came down to the last possession. We’ve had some great games, but none with the stakes as high as that Elite Eight game in 2018. Although we were the 1 seed, they ran basically four pros out there. So that was a huge win for us and our program.
He was always complimentary and gracious regardless of the outcome, and I always thought that was very classy about him.
Jay Wright
Hofstra, 1994-2001
Villanova, 2001-present
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, 2021
I watched him through USA Basketball. He brought me in to work with the team as an assistant in different categories and then watched him through the Olympics. He brought me in to coach the Select Team, which was college players at the time, to prepare for the World Cup. He had LeBron and Dwyane Wade, and I’d be in meetings and watch him build his staff and build his team and prepare his team. It was just amazing.
And then, being a part of (Gregg Popovich)'s staff in last year’s Olympics, seeing how hard it was to do what he did. I couldn’t get over it, the whole time we were in Tokyo, thinking that Coach K did this THREE TIMES. The amount of work, the commitment, the difficulty. And watching Pop, who had an automatic relationship with these guys from the NBA and realizing Coach K was doing this as a college coach and built a relationship with these guys, got them to play as a team, for their country.
When I was younger, going through it as a part of his staff, he amazed me. But after I did it with Pop, it amazed me even more, because I saw the advantages Pop had. It just showed even more his genius, to do that for three Olympics.
The time commitment, away from your program, is incredible. And he was still winning national championships. It was unbelievable. He truly is one of the greatest coaches of any sport of all time.
I think one thing I noticed was his total commitment to his family and having his family involved, which allowed him to be totally committed to the team. He wasn’t missing family time, because they were with him. You could feel it. So his family was committed to the team. You know there was no distractions. You were getting his total commitment.
As a small part of the staff with him, you felt like: This guy is 100 percent in, so I have to be. And I feel like the players felt the same way. And he cared about each person. This guy is the head coach, and in every meeting, he listened 90 percent of the time to the staff, and 10 percent of the time he made decisions and talked. He just made everybody feel they were valued, they were a part of it, but there was never a doubt he was in charge. That’s really hard to do.