The Legends Club Page 6

  Like most plebes, Krzyzewski was miserable during the summer of 1965. No one was especially happy to be at West Point. Many were there because Vietnam was ramping up and they figured if they were going to be drafted into the military anyway, they might as well get a free college education and graduate as officers rather than end up as enlisted men. The seniors who would graduate at the end of Krzyzewski’s freshman year in June of 1966 would suffer more casualties in Vietnam than any other West Point class.

  Somehow, Krzyzewski survived, although he admits he’s not sure how he passed the swimming part of his fitness test. “We were supposed to swim the length of the pool with a brick in each hand,” Krzyzewski said. “The closest I’d ever come to swimming in my life was when we’d open a fire hydrant during the summer to cool off.”

  He smiled. “Somewhere at the bottom of that pool are the bricks they gave me. I can tell you for certain they never made it from one end to the other.”

  Being a cadet was hard. Playing for Knight was harder. Krzyzewski was a three-year starter at point guard on very good teams. Army went to the NIT, which back then was still a big deal, in both his junior and senior seasons. Krzyzewski was the team’s captain his senior season even though he never averaged more than eight points a game. He had been the leading scorer in the Chicago Catholic League as a senior, but he was never a scorer in college.

  “SOB wouldn’t let me shoot,” he said, smiling, talking about his college coach. “I could shoot the ball. But I couldn’t shoot it as well as [fellow guard] Jim Oxley.”

  During the summer between his junior and senior years, Krzyzewski was on a flight home to Chicago when he met a strikingly pretty dark-haired flight attendant (they were stewardesses back then) named Carol Marsh, whom everyone called Mickey because she had idolized Mickey Mantle growing up outside Washington, D.C. They began dating, and by the time basketball season began, the relationship had become serious.

  Mickie—who changed the way she spelled the name once she began using it regularly—showed up one night with a friend when Army was playing at Princeton. The Cadets lost the game in overtime. The next morning, Mickie met Mike at the team hotel for breakfast. The players and coaches were scheduled to take a bus back to West Point a little later that morning. As Mike and Mickie were eating, Knight walked into the restaurant. Seeing his captain enjoying breakfast with his girlfriend only hours after an overtime loss, Knight went ballistic. He told him he was throwing him off the team and that he better figure out a way to get back to West Point because he wasn’t welcome on the team bus.

  “I had to buy a Greyhound bus ticket to get back to school,” Krzyzewski said. “I was really angry. I hadn’t done anything wrong. When I got back, I went to see Coach Knight. I told him what he was doing was unfair. I had not spent the night with Mickie—I had breakfast with her. I told him he knew how much I cared about the team and about my teammates. I told him I didn’t deserve to be treated the way he was treating me.”

  Knight had no intention of throwing Krzyzewski off the team. Once his captain was finished ranting he told him he was going to give him one more chance to prove himself—as if he hadn’t done that for almost four years. Army ended up reaching the semifinals of the NIT that season, upsetting South Carolina in the quarterfinals. South Carolina’s best player was All-American guard John Roche. Knight put Krzyzewski on Roche and told him not to switch to another man at any point, regardless of what South Carolina was doing offensively. Krzyzewski held Roche to 11 points and Army won 59–45. The Cadets ended up finishing fourth in the tournament.

  After graduation, Krzyzewski went on to play on an All-Army touring team. One of the other players on that team was Fran Dunphy, who had enlisted in the army shortly after graduating from LaSalle. Dunphy would go on to be a hugely successful coach at both Pennsylvania and Temple. Forty-five years later, he still remembered the young Krzyzewski he encountered on that team.

  “His knowledge and understanding of the game was on another level from the rest of us,” Dunphy said. “I remember thinking, ‘This guy won’t just be a coach someday, he’ll be a great coach.’ ” Dunphy smiled. “One of the few times I got a call right.”

  Krzyzewski had married Mickie on the day he graduated from West Point, and they were stationed overseas for two years, although he was never sent to Vietnam. When his five years in the army were over (the minimum time of service had been raised from four years to five during the Vietnam War), Krzyzewski came home, now a father, looking for a job. By then, Knight was at Indiana and had already taken the Hoosiers to a Final Four in 1973, his second season there. Krzyzewski went to meet with Knight about a job as a graduate assistant coach.

  “We went to his house,” Mickie remembered years later. “I was fascinated by Knight. I wanted to hear everything he had to say to Mike. After a while, though, he wanted to talk to Mike alone, man-to-man. He was the ultimate sexist. He kept dropping hints that Nancy [Knight’s wife at the time] should give me a tour of the house or take me outside to see the garden. I kept saying, ‘Oh no, I’m fine here, thanks.’ Finally, Knight stood up and said, ‘Mike and I are going outside. You stay here.’

  “He and Mike went outside and he said to him, ‘Mike, you have everything it takes to be a great basketball coach someday. But I gotta tell you one thing: your wife is a pain in the ass.’ ”

  In spite of that, Krzyzewski got the job. A year later, when Army needed a new coach after going 3–22, Knight recommended his twenty-eight-year-old graduate assistant for the job. Having already coached in a Final Four at Indiana after his stint at West Point, Knight’s opinion was taken very seriously by the school’s athletic leadership. Krzyzewski got the job.

  He turned the program around quickly, winning 11 games his first season and 53 over the next three winters, getting Army back into the NIT. After his fourth season, Krzyzewski was a finalist for the Vanderbilt job, but the school hired Richard Schmidt, who was then an assistant on Terry Holland’s staff at Virginia.

  “Actually I was hoping he would take Vanderbilt,” said Bobby Dwyer, who had been Krzyzewski’s first hire as an assistant coach at Army. “I thought that was a logical step and it was the right time. We’d had success, he’d proven he could coach, and it was a good school academically—the kids we’d be recruiting wouldn’t be that different, at least as students, from the ones we’d recruited at Army.”

  A year later, after going 9–17, Krzyzewski knew the time had come for him to leave—if the right offer came along. “Army’s a very hard job for anyone for all the reasons that are obvious,” he said. “The academic requirements, the military commitment, what you go through as a cadet—it’s a good challenge, especially for a young coach, but it’s a challenge. I wanted the chance to coach someplace where a national championship was possible—the way Coach Knight had been able to do it.”

  By then, Knight had won the 1976 national championship at Indiana—going 32–0 a year after an injury to star forward Scott May had derailed a team that lost in the Elite Eight and finished 31–1.

  The chance for Krzyzewski to move up was there in March of 1980: Iowa State was making a coaching change and the school’s first choice was Krzyzewski. If not for Steve Vacendak, he might very well have landed there.

  —

  Vacendak’s pitch to Tom Butters after he first brought his name up was simple: Mike Krzyzewski is only thirty-three but he’s already a great defensive coach. He played for and coached under Bob Knight, and Butters had always admired Knight’s coaching. There was one other thing: unlike any other coach Butters might interview, Krzyzewski would view Duke’s academic standards and its recruiting pool as an escape from what he had to deal with at Army.

  “All the other guys we were bringing in to interview were going to see our admissions standards as a roadblock,” Vacendak said. “They were going to feel restricted when they went out to recruit. Coming from Army, where the academics were equally stringent and there was a five-year military commitment when you g
raduated, Mike was going to feel as if he’d found recruiting Valhalla.”

  Butters heard Vacendak out and then asked him two questions:

  “Army?”

  Vacendak was ready for that one. “Bob Knight went from Army to Indiana and was in the Final Four in his second year.”

  The second question was harder: “What was his record this season?”

  Vacendak’s answer brought Butters up a little short: “He was nine and seventeen. But,” he quickly added, “he’s seventy-three and fifty-nine in five years and took over after they’d just gone three and twenty-two.”

  Butters was impressed that Vacendak had done his homework but not sold. “I just had trouble getting the nine and seventeen out of my mind,” he said. “We’d been in the Final Four two years earlier and we were about to play in our third straight NCAA Tournament, and I was going to step to a podium and introduce a coach who had been nine and seventeen at Army?”

  “You have nothing to lose by talking to him,” Vacendak said—still pitching.

  Butters looked at his new assistant and laughed. “Just how badly do you want my job?” he asked. “Are you really trying to get me fired by convincing me to hire this guy?”

  But he didn’t dismiss the idea. He respected Vacendak’s understanding of basketball. He decided to find out what Bob Knight thought.

  “I’m looking for a basketball coach,” Butters said when he reached Knight on the phone. “You have any thoughts?”

  Knight had several suggestions—all of them men who had worked under him previously.

  “Dave Bliss,” he said.

  Butters knew Bliss was young (thirty-six) and had enjoyed some success at Oklahoma, although there were rumors that he was about to leave to take the job at SMU.

  “Anybody else?” he asked.

  “Don DeVoe,” Knight said. “Great defensive coach.”

  Butters knew DeVoe was very good. He had taken Tennessee to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments in his first two seasons there. He wasn’t convinced DeVoe would want to leave Tennessee.

  Knight brought up Bob Weltlich.

  “On the list,” Butters said.

  “He would be a great hire for you,” Knight said.

  Butters asked about Jack Hartman. Knight knew him well.

  “Terrific coach, but he’s not leaving the Midwest,” Knight said. “He’ll come out there, you’ll interview him, you’ll like him, and then he’ll get a raise and stay at Kansas State.”

  Butters suspected Knight was right. He waited to see if Knight had any other names he wanted to bring up. He didn’t.

  “What about Mike Krzyzewski?” Butters asked finally.

  Years later, Butters still recalled the next sixty seconds vividly.

  “He didn’t say a word,” Butters said. “There was dead silence. Finally he said, ‘Butters, you really like the way I coach, don’t you?’ I told him I did. He then said, ‘Mike Krzyzewski has all of my good qualities and none of my bad.’ That stuck with me.”

  What Butters didn’t know was that, at that moment, Knight was pushing Krzyzewski to take the job at Iowa State. Because the Cyclones hadn’t made the NCAA Tournament, they were a couple of weeks ahead of Duke in their coaching search and Krzyzewski had already interviewed there.

  Butters decided that Vacendak was right: he had nothing to lose by interviewing Krzyzewski. He asked him if he would fly to West Lafayette, Indiana, that Friday. Duke was scheduled to play a second-round NCAA Tournament game there on Saturday. Krzyzewski and Butters met for several hours. When Krzyzewski left, Butters said to Vacendak, “Now I understand what you’re talking about.”

  Vacendak asked Butters what he was going to do next. “I don’t know,” he said. “I honestly don’t know.”

  Two images kept running through Butters’s mind: the smart, intense young man who clearly had a plan and with whom he had spent several hours in his hotel room. That made him smile. The second image wasn’t as golden. It was a newspaper headline that said “Butters Hires Army Coach with 9 and 17 Record.”

  —

  Butters finally decided he needed to meet with Krzyzewski again. Duke had beaten Pennsylvania in West Lafayette to advance to the round of sixteen, meaning the Blue Devils would play Kentucky in Lexington—a matchup that had upset Butters so much when the brackets were announced that he had called North Carolina State athletic director Willis Casey, who was a member of the tournament selection committee, to complain about potentially playing Kentucky on its home floor.

  Butters asked Krzyzewski if he would fly to Lexington for another meeting. Krzyzewski agreed. Once again the two men met in Butters’s hotel room. “The more we talked, the more I liked him,” Butters said. “And the more we talked I think Mike became more and more convinced that I wanted to hire him. Or, more specifically, that I should hire him.”

  Krzyzewski was thinking that. By now he was convinced Butters wanted to hire him. What’s more, he had put all of his eggs into the Duke basket. He had turned Iowa State down earlier that week, even though Knight had urged him to take it.

  “I had called him [Knight] after they made the offer to ask him what he thought,” Krzyzewski said. “He said, ‘Mike, I think it’s time for you to leave Army. I think you need to take this.’

  “I understood what he was saying and I thought he was right, that it was time. I knew recruiting at Army wasn’t going to get any easier, and this might be my best shot to move up. That’s why I’d interviewed for the Vanderbilt job the year before. But the Duke thing was still there in the back of my mind. I knew Weltlich was also interviewing, and I thought that Coach [Knight] might see him as being ahead of me in the pecking order. He was a little older than me [thirty-five], had coached longer because he hadn’t spent five years in the army, and was already coaching [at Mississippi] in the SEC.”

  Krzyzewski decided to ask Colonel Tom Rogers what he thought. He had known Rogers since he had arrived on campus as a cadet in 1965. Rogers had been Knight’s OR—officer representative—at the time. Each varsity team at West Point has an OR, an army officer who acts as a liaison between the team and the university. An OR does everything from helping cadets pick classes or find tutors to counseling them when they get into trouble. They often become close to the head coach because their role is so important.

  Rogers had become Krzyzewski’s OR when Krzyzewski became the coach at Army in 1975. Krzyzewski’s father had died suddenly in 1968, during Krzyzewski’s junior year, and Knight and Rogers had been the two men he had looked to most for guidance and advice since that time. Krzyzewski told Rogers what Knight had said.

  “Iowa State’s a good job,” Rogers said. “But there will be another job like it out there for you again, if not this year, then next. I think Duke’s pretty special. I think you need to ride the Duke thing out to the end.”

  Krzyzewski’s gut told him Rogers was right. He knew Iowa State would be a step up—a good job in a major conference. But he wanted the Duke job and he believed he was ready for it. So, he turned Iowa State down and went to meet with Butters for a second time.

  As the two men talked back and forth, Krzyzewski began to get frustrated. Butters was repeating questions and Krzyzewski was repeating answers.

  “Mr. Butters,” he finally said. “What’s the problem here? What’s the holdup?”

  Butters paused and then looked him in the eye. “The problem is you’re thirty-three, you’re not ready, and you were nine and seventeen at Army. How can I hire you?”

  Krzyzewski let that sink in. Then he said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were running scared.”

  “I should have thrown him out of the room right there,” Butters said. “I didn’t, because part of me realized he was right.”

  The two men talked for three hours, and when they shook hands, Butters said he’d be in touch. Duke had managed to beat Kentucky, 55–54, the previous night to reach the Elite Eight. Tired and drained, the Blue Devils ran out of gas on Saturday afternoon and lost to Pur
due, 68–60. That loss ended the Bill Foster era.

  It was time for Butters to name a new coach.

  —

  Three days later, on the morning of March 18, Butters went through the formality of parading each of the candidates before Duke’s Athletics Council. Technically, Butters needed the council’s approval to hire a new coach, but the members were there in almost all cases to rubber-stamp the athletic director’s decisions.

  “They said, ‘You’ve brought us five good candidates; we’ll be satisfied with whatever choice you make,’ ” Butters said.

  That morning, the Durham Morning Herald had confidently reported that, while the name of Duke’s new basketball coach wasn’t known yet, there was no doubt that his last name began with the letter W. The new coach, according to the Herald, would be Weltlich, Webb, or Wenzel. The paper didn’t mention Tom Davis or Mike Krzyzewski.

  After meeting with the council, Butters went to see Chuck Huestis, who was the most athletically inclined of the three-man troika whom President Terry Sanford leaned on to help him run the university. The others were Ken Pye, the school’s chancellor, and William Griffith, the vice president for student affairs. Vacendak was also there, and the three men talked about making a final decision.

  “I think I’d like to talk to Krzyzewski one more time,” Butters said.

  “What else can you possibly ask him?” Vacendak said.

  “I have no idea,” Butters answered. “But ask him if he’ll come see me in my office before he goes to the airport.”

  Krzyzewski brought his wife, Mickie, with him to meet the council members. As instructed, Vacendak escorted them to Butters’s office. There were more questions and answers and still no resolution. Vacendak was going to drive the Krzyzewskis to the airport. Before he left, he went in to see his boss one more time.