Duke Basketball: Coack K Has the Winning Touch

What distinguishes being a good coach from a great one? 

Is it the ability to win games? Or is it the ability to win the big game? I would say neither. 

It’s the ability to establish a system, staff and players that makes winning as common place as apple pie in the south on a Sunday afternoon. It’s having the passion and drive to pursue greatness and the necessary tools to harness it once you’ve caught it.

It requires the precision of a master watch designer, the determination of a triathlon and the words of a self help guru or maybe just a poet. Suffice it to say that few coaches possess the recipe to properly combine the mixture. 

And then there is Mike Krzyzewski.

After a short run of 30 seasons with Duke, he’s managed to become the NCAA’s most winning active coach and the second most winning NCAA coach of all time.

He has coached the Blue Devils to 27 NCAA tournament births in his 30 year tenure, positioning him as the most winning coach in NCAA Tournament play with a record of 77-22. His Blue Devils’ have won 12 ACC Championships, and have made 11 final four appearances. 

Of those 11 appearances, remarkably they have walked away with four NCAA National Championship Titles.

He has amassed sufficient awards and honors to construct his very own shrine as a coaching god, including an Olympic gold medal for coaching the “Redeem Team” in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

As if all of the above mentioned is not enough, what is it that makes coach K as he has come to be called different from the rest?

If you have ever watched Duke play, then you know that they aren’t the most talented team to play the game, nor are they the most physically impressive. If you take an inventory of the players that he’s coached that have gone on to play at the next level, they generally aren’t NBA All Stars.

What they are, however, is something all together different: They are all role players. The strength of a Duke team coached under Coach K can not be found in the dominance of one or two outstanding players.

Rather, it’s strategically located in their abilities to play together as a unit like Spartan warriors. They play the game like a well oiled machine designed and engineered for that purpose. Each member yielding his gifts and talents for the strength of the whole: honor, loyalty, duty and personal sacrifice.

And that, my friend, is what greatness is made of. After all, coach K should know. He’s a graduate of The United States Military Academy at West Point class of 69. 

Hoo-ha!

This article was published on Sportsfeens.