Coach K has gone from blatant bully to political apologist.
In 40-plus years of coaching hoops at Duke, Mike Krzyzewski has taken us on quite a ride. Let us count the vehicles.
His fans thought he was brave and his detractors crazy when after a narrow loss to No. 1 UNC at Cameron in 1984, Coach K poked the bear who was Dean Smith by claiming a double-standard existed in the ACC between Carolina and the rest of the league.
Never mind that, even before Smith retired, the same charge was being leveled at the Blue Devils and their phalanx of favoring game officials and their bevy alumni broadcasters.
But it turns out that Mike knew exactly what he was doing that day, since he had a contract extension in his pocket that protected him from getting fired, so he had a license to go off on Smith.
Then there was the time that the Duke Chronicle sports staff, including future 15 minutes of famer Seth Davis, downgraded the Blue Devils at mid-season and Coach K invited them into his locker room where he f-bombed them into submission. AD Tom Butters had to tell him that was below the belt and to knock it off.
In recent years whenever a controversy erupted – from A as in slanted American Express commercials airing during the NCAA tournament when coaches were in a dead period, to Z as in various Zion Williamson problems – Krzyzewski reminded any of his critics to look up at the banners next time they walked into Cameron.
This time, he took a little of each from his playbook, when his team fell to 5-5 (3-3 in the ACC) and on the outside of the Big Dance looking in and a new generation Chronicle reporter asked him after the loss at Pitt where his team goes from here. A pretty benign question.
Coach K wanted to know the kid’s major and when the cub reporter replied Economics, the coach who teaches some classes at Duke compared it to him flunking a tough Econ exam. None of it, like his past rants, made any sense or had any legs.
This is COVID season, which can be an excuse for anything that goes wrong. Krzyzewski needs to take whatever the results turn out to be and move on. He realized that and later called the reporter to apologize for something he never should have said in the first place.
(AP Photo/ Gerry Broome)
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