Just about one year ago, Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski was gearing up for the “Road to Redemption.”
Krzyzewski, admiral of the “Redeem Team,” coached USA basketball back to the mountaintop of international hoops, and on August 24, 2008, an Olympic gold medal was placed over Krzyzewski’s head for the third time, the first coming as an assistant coach to a Michael Jordan-led 1984 team and the second as an assistant on the 1992 original “Dream Team.”
The architect of one of the most storied programs in college basketball and the engineer for two of the greatest basketball teams of all time paid a visit to Bloomington-Normal April 30 to speak for the American Red Cross of the Heartland’s Annual Evening of Stars.
Before he spoke to nearly 800 people at the Double Tree Hotel, however, Krzyzewski visited with student-athletes from Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan Universities at Redbird Arena to answer questions for both the athletes and media members.
“I’d just like to say it’s an honor to be here. Illinois State has a warm place in my heart,” Krzyzewski said. “One of the guys who has his jersey retired here, Doug Collins, is a great, great friend of mine. I was hoping his court [Doug Collins Court] would be [laid out]. I told him I was going to come with dirty shoes and mark a funny face.”
The Hall of Fame coach drew connections to Collins when he coached his son, Chris, at Duke where Chris served as the team captain in 1996. Chris has been a nine-year member of the Duke coaching staff and helped Coach K with the USA basketball squad the past three years. For Krzyzewski, this wasn’t his first trip to the area. He said he had visited multiple times to see former ISU coaches Bob Bender and Billy King.
Krzyzewski’s sense of humor and unlimited knowledge of camaraderie and diligence, both on and off the basketball court, left an attentive crowd delightfully educated.
Fresh off his 29th year as head coach of the Blue Devils, Krzyzewski served as the 16th Evening of Stars featured speaker. He used his experience with the 2008 Olympic team to draw an analogy to the Red Cross.
“The one common thread is, with all of those guys [Team USA players], and they told me face to face, ‘Coach I’ll do anything you want to make our team better. I’ll be there for you,” he said.
“Basically the parallel there is they wanted to be counted on. Tonight, it’s about honoring a team and organization that’s there when you can count on them. They can always be counted on and that’s the Red Cross.”
Krzyzewski also shared his book, “Gold Standard: Building the World Class Team” for the Evening of Stars. He enlightened the student-athletes as his ingredients to the 2008 Gold Medal Team.
“You win championships by having high standards and you live those every day,” he said. “Champions do extraordinary things in an ordinary manner because they do them on a daily basis.”
Krzyzewski helped restore the shine of gold to the United States after taking Bronze in the 2004 Athens Olympics.
“At the turn of the century, it was obvious that it wasn’t our game, it was the world’s game,” he explained. “But we were arrogant and said it was our game. So we didn’t prepare.”
Krzyzewski said the NBA players he coached are some of the hardest working individuals he’s seen and they care more about the name on the front of their jersey than the name on the back.
“Kobe Bryant every day in the Olympics except game day, worked out three times-once [with the team], once early and once late. So, you see him and say, ‘he’s got a lot of talent.’ Damn right he’s got a lot of talent. One of his best talents is his passion to prepare. You can’t measure that with the high jump or how fast you go…you measure it by your commitment,” Krzyzewski said.
“LeBron James said we shouldn’t make any excuses [before the Olympics]. We did that and they lived it the whole time. We tried to make sure we had the best athletes. But we spent a lot of time developing the team aspect. It was really good and I really respect those guys. They were unbelievable guys to work with. We formed a brotherhood that will last forever.”
During the 2008-09 season, Duke had more former players on NBA rosters than any other college program. Despite the prestige, Krzyzewski believes the game of basketball has transcended into a completely different animal since he took over Duke in 1980.
“The main thing that has changed is the entry of college players into the [NBA] draft,” he explained. “That’s created a whole different dynamic for the game. I do think that with the more athleticism that’s been introduced throughout college basketball, there’s been more individualism introduced to a team sport.”
NBA teams such as the Los Angeles Lakers have tried to lure Krzyzewski to coach at the next level full-time. On the brink of his 30th season at Duke, college basketball appears Coach K’s home, where he owns an 833-274 career head coaching record.
The only coach with a resume quite as tantalizing as Krzyzewski is his predecessor, Bobby Knight, who coached Krzyzewski at Army for four years.
“With Coach Knight, I learned about passion first of all,” Krzyzewski said. “Not just the passion to compete, but the passion to prepare. A lot of people want to compete. Not as many people are passionate about preparation. I learned a lot of what I do as a coach because I was lucky enough to be with Coach Knight.”
Despite coming from different sides of the spectrum, Krzyzewski commended the Illinois State basketball team for its respectable 24-10 campaign. But when asked if ISU and Duke would bump heads in the near future, he respectfully declined.
“Illinois State had a great year,” he said. “If we played Illinois State, it’d be an honor. It’s probably not going to happen. [They have] a rich tradition and obviously a really good team capable of beating us. We would prepare accordingly. It’d take an away game. It would be better to play it in Cameron [Indoor Stadium].”
Source: http://media.www.dailyvidette.com/media/storage/paper420/news/2009/05/04/Features/Krzyzewski.Speaks.To.Area.StudentAthletes-3735432.shtml
