How Coach K Was Almost Fired by Duke in 1983

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American People. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. John Feinstein is a sportswriter of forty-two books, twenty-three of them New York Times bestsellers. His first book, about Bobby Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers, A Season on the Brink, is the best-selling sports book of all time. He is also the friend of Duke University’s legendary basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, otherwise known as Coach K, who won five national titles at Duke and three consecutive gold medals as the head coach of the U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team. John is here to tell the story of how that almost didn’t happen.

I actually first met Mike Skrzyzewski and Jim Valvano on the same day when I was a senior in college. Duke was playing Connecticut in New York City at Madison Square Garden. Duke was bad in those days. People refused to believe that Duke was ever bad in basketball, but they were bad. In fact, the Duke-Yukon game was the first game of the Garden doubleheader. The feature game was Fordham and Rutgers. That’s how different times were. And I flew into New York, which was my hometown, with Bill Foster, who was then Duke’s coach, Tom Mikkel, who was Duke’s sports information director, and Tate Armstrong, who was the star of the team, who had played on the nineteen seventy-six Olympic team for Dean Smith. And there was a media lunch every Tuesday in those days in New York for the New York basketball coaches, and Jim Valvano was coaching at Iona, and Mike Skrzyzewski was coaching at Army, his alma mater, where he had played for Bob Knight. And when the lunch was over, Valvano came over to see Bill Foster because he played for him at Rutgers, and he brought along with him Shryzhevski and Tom Penders, who was then the coach at Columbia, who would go on to win six hundred and forty-eight games in his career. And as we were talking, I mentioned to Shizhevski that I had seen his greatest game in the nineteen sixty-nine n, when I was a kid in New York, when Army had upset South Carolina and he had guarded John Roach, South Carolina’s All-American, the whole game and held him to eleven points. So that sort of got us off to a good start, although we did vehemently disagree on the subject of the Cubs and Mets. He’s a Chicago kid and Cubs fan. I, obviously, New York kid, Mets fan. But after I got to The Washington Post a year later, I kept in touch with both Shazewski and Dalvano. So I knew them both when they were hired, respectively, at Duke and at North Carolina State in nineteen eighty, and by then I was covering ACC basketball for The Washington Post, and so I dealt with them a lot, and I think it’s fair to say I became close to both of them. Later, years and years later, I wrote a book called The Legends Club, which was about Kashawski, Valvano, and Dean Smith, all of whom I was fortunate enough to deal with quite a bit in the nineteen eighties when they were coaching against each other in the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and Valvano, of course, was a rocket. His team won the national championship in nineteen eighty-three, the famous Survive and Advance team, the championship ending with Lorenzo Charles’ dunk, off of what Derek Wittenberg still insists was a pass. And so Valvano, because of his personality, because of his success, was a huge star. Shizshowski, not so much. He used to joke about how he had to follow Valvano at ACC media days. Jim would get up, do twenty minutes of stand-up, leave everybody on the floor, and then Mike would follow and talk about the battle for the center position between Mike Tissaw and Alan Williams, which didn’t exactly rock the room. So Shizshowski’s first recruiting class was a bust. They finished second for a bunch of very good players, the most notable being Chris Mullen, who went to Saint John’s. But then, the second year they had a better recruiting class, a very good recruiting class, in fact, but that in Mike’s third season, nineteen eighty-three, the team was divided, seniors and freshmen resenting one another. They lost a game early in the season to Wagner at home, and the drum beats were getting louder that the alumni thought that Shizshowsky was a bad hire and you had to go back. The two real heroes of this story, other than Mike, are Tom Butters, the Athletic Director, and Steve Visendak, who was the number two guy in the athletic department, who had been a star at Duke in the nineteen sixties under Vic Bubis, played on Final Four teams there, and it was Vissendak who first brought Shozshowsky to Butters’ attention. Butters knew that Bill Foster was going to leave for South Carolina end of the nineteen eighty season, and he put Vissendak in charge of the coaching search because Vissendak was a basketball player and there were a bunch of names that were out there. Bob Weltlick was at Mississippi. Bob Knight was pushing him hard. Weltlock had played, coached under Knight, as had Skrzyzewski. Of course, Bob Wenzel was Bill Foster’s number one assistant and helped build the program. People forget that the year Foster left, dud Gloston the Elite Eight. They were good, but most of their key players graduated off that team. Not all, but most. And there was a guy named Paul Webb who had had great success at All Dominion. In fact, the day that Duke hired its new coach, The Durham Morning Herald had a story saying that the new Duke coach’s last name would start with a W: Wenzel, Webb, or Weltlick. But Vissendak had met Shizhevski when Shishewsky was coaching at Army. He was living in Annapolis, went and spent some time with him as he was preparing for a Navy game, Army-Navy game, and was blown away by him. He was very young, but very much in command of his team and was clearly, in Steve’s opinion, a great defensive coach. So he brought Skrzyshewski’s name to Butters. Butters had never heard of him, literally, had never heard of him. And he said, “Okay, what was his record at Army this year?” And Vissendak said, “Nine and seventeen.” And, “But I can’t hire a coach at Duke who was just nine and seventeen at Army.” But Vissendak convinced him to meet Krzyzewski, and he did twice and was blown away by him and said to Vissendak at one point, “I think this is the next great coach.” And Steve said, “Good, hire him.” “I can’t hire a coach from Army with a nine and seventeen record.” And that.

Is, indeed, true. Nine and seventeen at Army isn’t exactly what you want to bring to an ACC program that had just gotten to the Elite Eight. True, they were losing many of those star players who got him to the Elite Eight. But, my goodness, nine and seventeen from Army, no powerhouse when it comes to NCAA basketball, that’s for sure. When we come back, more of this remarkable story of how Coach K’s career almost didn’t come to be here on Our American Stories. Here aret Our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith, and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told. But we can’t do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love our stories and America like we do, please go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue with Our American Stories. We last left off learning that Duke Athletic Director Tom Butters saw Coach K as the next great basketball coach. Talk about some vision, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. And a coach from Army with a nine and seventeen record. Let’s return to a friend of Coach K’s and sportswriter of twenty-three New York Times bestsellers, including the one he wrote about Coach K, The Legends Club. Here’s John Feinstein.

Butters did hire Skrzyzewski, and, in fact, he shocked the basketball world. It was completely unexpected. As I said, he’d been nine and seventeen at Army, and Knight, interestingly, was pushing Weltlick for the job. Butters had spoken to Knight about who he should hire, and Knight had told him Weltlick. And Butters said, “Well, what about Mike Krzhevsky because Steve Sendek had brought him up?” And Knight said, “Well, I don’t think this is the time for Mike, but he’s got all of my good qualities and none of my bad,” which was a very accurate statement as it turned out. But the other thing is that when Shizhevski got the job, he literally had to spell his name for the media at his opening press conference, and he said that one of his goals as a coach was for his players to be able to spell his name by the time they graduated. Of course, this is in the days when players did actually graduate. The next day, the student newspaper at Duke, The Chronicle, which is where I started my career, had a headline that said, “Not a Typo: Shozhevski,” and most people had not heard of the guy. I mean, basketball junkies like me had heard of him and knew him, but nobody in the ACC had any idea who he was. And, again, it took a lot of guts for Tom Butters to hire him at that moment. And, in fact, after Shrzewski’s third year, when Butters didn’t fire him, he got death threats, literally, from boosters. And, in fact, I met with Tom Butters when I was working on my book, The Legends Club, on Shrzewski, Jim Valvano, and Dean Smith, and he brought with him a box, and in the box were letters, and one stack of the letters were from boosters in nineteen eighty, written in nineteen eighty-three, nineteen eighty-four, saying, “Fire him or I will never give another dollar to Duke.” In the second stack of the letters, which were letters sent in nineteen ninety, after Duke had turned it around and Shrzyzewski had become a star, and he was offered the Boston Celtics job by none other than Read Hourback. And the letters were from essentially the same group who had written in nineteen eighty-three, eighty-four, saying, “Get rid of this guy,” saying, “Whatever you have to do, whatever you have to pay him, do not let him leave.” And, fortunately for Duke, it wasn’t about the money. Mike felt he hadn’t won a national championship yet, and so even though he’d grown up as a Celtics fan and worshiped Read Hourback, he said, “The job’s not done yet,” and turned it down, and, of course, won his first national title the next year. And that’s how much it turned around. When Mike was offered the Lakers’ job in two thousand and four, he was offered forty million dollars for five years, and he wasn’t going to take it, but he had to give it some thought. Given them money, and it was the Lakers, and he called Butters and he said, “What do you think, Tom?” And he said, “I think you should give me a ten percent finder’s fee if you take the job.” And Mike said, “Okay, I’ll send you four thousand dollars because his first-year salary was forty thousand dollars.” And so they flailed for three years, and in nineteen eighty-three, Mike’s third year, they lost their last game of the season, one hundred and nine to sixty-six, to Virginia in the ACC Tournament. Ralph Sampson, if you walk up to Mike Shesky right now and say, “What was the score of the game against Virginia in the ACC Tournament nineteen eighty-three?” he can tell you what it was in an instant. He’s never forgotten. And the fourth game that night, first night of the ACC Tournament, was Georgia Tech and Maryland. And I was the Maryland beat writer for the Post, and Bobby Dwyer, who was Mike’s number one assistant at the time, who had come with him from Army, came into the Omni, the old arena there, which is now long gone, and found me and Keith Drumm, who was the sports editor of The Durham Morning Herald at the time and was probably the only member of the North Carolina media who hadn’t attacked Shayzewski and hadn’t called for him to be fired. North Carolina media, then as now, is made up largely of North Carolina graduates. School has a great journalism school, and many, if not most, stay in the state. Keith had also gone to North Carolina, but he liked Shazhevski, liked and respected Dean Smith, too, but he liked Shazhevski and thought he was going to be a great coach someday. Keith ended up being an NBA scout, so his level of understanding of basketball was different than most sportswriters. So Dwyer came to the press table where Keith and I were sitting and said, “When this game is over, you both need to come with me back to our hotel.” And we said, “Why?” And he said, “Because Mickey, Mike’s wife, is in the room crying because she’s convinced they’re going to get fired. All the alumni and boosters have Tom Butters backed up against a wall in the lobby, demanding that he fire Krzyzewski immediately, and Mike is pacing around trying to figure out who to kill first because he’s so angry with everybody.” And so when the game was over, Keith and I, it was after midnight by then, got in the car with Bobby, and we drove to the perimeter of Atlanta where Duke was staying and went to the hotel and it was pouring down rain, and we drove to a Dennis nearby. It was Mike, it was Bobby, Keith, me, Tom Mikel, the sports information director, Keith’s wife, Barbie, and Johnny Moore, who was Tom Michael’s assistant, and we walked into the Dennis. We sat down and they gave us water, and by now it’s two in the morning, and Tom Mikel held up his glass and said, “Here’s too forgetting tonight.” And Shizshowski held up his glass and said, “Here’s to never blanking forgetting tonight.” Blanking’s one of his favorite words, for the record. And so we all, we didn’t laugh because he was dead serious. And then the discussion went on, and Dwyer mentioned that Tom Sheehy, who had verbally committed to Virginia, a very good player, might be thinking twice about that commitment and maybe they could get back involved and try to recruit Sheehy. And Shoshowsky shook his head and said, “No, no. First of all, we don’t do that.” “Second of all, if we can’t win next year with these four freshmen, allery, Billis, Dawkins, and David Henderson, and Tommy Amaker, who is coming in as the point guard, then we should get fired.” And in many ways, that statement to me, having known Mike for as long as I have, that’s who Mike Sizshewsky is. It’s never someone else’s fault. Mike Krzyzewski has always taken the approach, “What did I do wrong? How do I get better?” Now? Some of that is his West Point training, because when you’re a pleave at West Point and an upperclassman speaks to you, you’re allowed three answers: “Yes, sir”; “No, sir”; “No excuse, sir.” And Shizshewski’s life has been built on, “No excuse, sir.” I’ve never met a coach who uses failure to his advantage more than Shishchevsky, and that night was a perfect example. So the next year, of course, with those five guys I mentioned, they went twenty-four and ten. They beat North Carolina with Michael Jordan in the ACC Tournament, and that was the turnaround.

And you’ve been listen seeing to John Feinstein tell a heck of a story about how Coach K’s career at Duke almost didn’t happen. After year three, still not winning. At the Heart of Tobacco Road, the heart of ACC basketball country, Coach K loses to the University of Virginia and Ralph Sampson’s team by an epic, epic blowout, one hundred and nine to sixty-six. It does not get worse than that. And losing it, in of all places, in the ACC Tournament, everyone was sure that was it. The boosters were coming after Coach K. Everyone was. The wife was crying, and he was just mad. And who was he mad at? He was mad at Coach K in the end, and he was taking responsibility and ownership for that loss as he was taught to do at West Point. Three answers to a question at West Point by an older person—and that is an older student, folks—when you’re a freshman, a senior has to be addressed as “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” or “No excuse, sir.” And as John Feinstein said, “No excuse, sir,” those were the words that Coach K lived by. And, by the way, I love that scene in that Dennis. It’s pouring rain and there’s one coach toasting and forgetting the game. And what does Coach K say, reflecting his true character, his competitive nature, and a little bit of his Irish Catholic, well, let us just say, fanciful nature? With some swear words, he says, “Here’s to never blanking forgetting tonight, never forgetting.” And that’s what animated Coach K. That loss, that failure drove so much of his life. When we come back, more of this remarkable piece of storytelling by the great American sportswriter, John Feinstein. Here on Our American story, and we continue with Our American Stories and with John Feinstein.

From there, again. They made the tournament the next year, and in nineteen eighty-six they went thirty-seven to three, went to the national championship game, lost, I will say, on a bad call. Krzewski would never say that, but I will, and became the college basketball’s next great dynasty. It’s my opinion that the only coach who you can put ahead of Krzyzewska Mount Rushmore is John Wooden. But five national championships, thirteen Final Fours, more than Wooden even, and ACC championships. And I mean, he went to twenty-three Sweet Sixteens. That’s just stupid. Twenty-three! And in every one of them because in the old days, of course, you know, before they expanded the tournament, conference champions went straight to the Sweet Sixteen. But starting in nineteen eighty-five, you had to win two games to get to the Sweet Sixteen and six to win the championships. So twenty-three Sweet Sixteens, are you? I mean, Dean Smith—