End of an Era – Memories of Coach K from a Duke Graduate

Ben Pai is a proud 1987 Duke Graduate

I arrived on Duke’s campus in the fall of 1983. I almost wrote “summer” because it was hot as Hades when I got there. My freshman dorm was called Wannamaker, a cinder block structure on West Campus with no air conditioning. My roommate, Patrick Skinner, and I lived on the third floor, in room 318. It felt like the heat bounced off the concrete straight up to our room.

I remember making my bed the first day and sleeping on top of the bedspread for a month straight. I also recall leaving a chocolate bar out on my desk one day and finding it later melted, just sitting out on my desk. Skinner and I bought a fan, put it in the window, often ran it on high, and never turned the damn thing off.

It may be hard to envision today, but Duke’s basketball program was not in a great place back then. The head coach, Mike Krzyzewski, was entering his fourth season at Duke and he had a losing record there: 38-47. Duke was coming off back to back 17-loss seasons, and Coach K seemed to have a tenuous hold on his job. Many alumni and boosters wanted him fired. I was surprised at the state of the facilities at Duke. I expected everything to be gleaming. But Cameron Indoor Stadium was old, smaller, and lacked air conditioning also. It got extremely hot during games. The indoor gyms where we could hoop were old and unimpressive. Card Gym, next to Cameron, had just 2 full courts with wooden backboards and old, marked up floors. I spent countless hours hooping there. Underneath the gym was a grimy weight room that students could use. The IM building was a nondescript place that also had 2 courts but a floor of concrete with a rubberized tartan surface over it. I am pretty sure that place contributed to my knee tendinitis.

But there were building blocks in place on the hoop team. The 1982 recruiting class was considered the best in the country and had a year of experience under their belts. Down the hall on the third floor of Wannamaker lived fellow freshmen Tommy Amaker, a McDonald’s All American point guard from Virginia, and Martin Nessley, a fellow McD AA and towering 7-2 center from Ohio. Tommy moved right into the starting lineup, allowing Johnny Dawkins to play off the ball, where he would become Duke’s all time scoring leader upon his graduation. Tommy and Marty were good dudes. I remember a bunch of us walking to a party across campus the first week, and peppering Tommy with questions. I remember when Marty walked down the hall, he took up the entire place. He was tall enough to look over your door transom and say hello if you had it open.

During my freshman year, Athletic Director Tom Butters gave Coach K a contract extension, a decision met with raised eyebrows at the time. It turned out to be the single greatest decision in the history of Duke University.

That season, Duke went 24-10 and made the finals of the ACC Tournament and earned Coach K’s first NCAA Tournament bid. And laid the groundwork for what has become an unparalleled 42 year coaching career. I credit our freshman class for the turnaround.

Depending on your vantage point, and how much you love or despise Duke, Coach K has become the greatest (or second greatest) men’s college basketball coach in the history of the sport. I’m not even going to debate this with anyone. He has won five national championships and taken Duke to 12 Final Fours. He’s won 15 ACC Championships. For many years, his teams boasted perfect or near perfect graduation rates, before the advent of players leaving early for the NBA became commonplace.

Students could get into games for free by showing ID. My college years were salad days for ACC basketball. I was fortunate enough to be able to see iconic players like Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins of UNC. Five foot three future NBA star Muggsy Bogues of Wake Forest. (I later met both Jordan and Bogues the same night at a high school game.) The late great Len Bias from Maryland – in warmups you weren’t allowed to dunk so he’d jump two feet over the rim and drop it in…he also had a picture perfect jump shot. One day we played DC house music pregame and Bias lost himself in the music. My buddy Juice was furious – “Why are we playing this, Bias loves this, now he’s going to be fired up and kill us.” There was Mark Price and John Salley at Georgia Tech. I saw 5-6 Spud Webb of NC State dunk during a game – he did it on a breakaway with the same ease that you and I would take stepping off a curb. Lorenzo Charles, fresh off his NCAA championship winning dunk for State, came back the next season with a shaved head, rare and intimidating in those days, and a physique like Atlas. We saw great coaches on the opposing bench: Dean Smith at UNC, Jim Valvano of NC State, Lefty Driesell of Maryland, Terry Holland at Virginia, Bobby Cremins at Georgia Tech, and many others.

Duke made the NCAA tournament all four years I was there, and reached the NCAA championship game in 1986, my junior year. We lost by three to Louisville (Milt Wagner definitely charged but they called a blocking foul on Jay Bilas), a heartbreaking end to a season in which Duke set the then-NCAA record for wins in a season with 37.

The following day, a Tuesday, the team was honored on campus and thousands came out. Some of the team spoke. A lot of people cried. David Henderson said, of not winning the title, “It hurts like hell.”
I actually went to my first couple of classes that day but all my professors canceled class. One of them came in, saw us, smiled, and just waved us out of there without a word. It was a day of mourning and celebration at the same time.

Eventually, Coach K went to the Final Four seemingly every year (Christian Laettner became the first player in NCAA history to start in four FFs) and finally won the first of his five titles in 1991.
I “met” Coach K once. I found myself outside Cameron Indoor Stadium one day. I had probably been playing pickup ball next door at Card Gym. I noticed a side door open and heard the familiar sound of balls bouncing so I went inside. The doors to the basketball court were open, so I stood at the door and watched.

It was right before a practice, and the team was warming up on the court. Johnny Dawkins and David Henderson played one on one. Mark Alarie and Jay Bilas shot free throws. Other players stretched and did the kinds of things one did before practice starts.

Someone walked down the hall and passed where I was standing.

It was Coach K.

He was carrying a film projector and VCR tapes (this was the mid ‘80s after all). I figured I was about to get kicked out of there. Instead, Coach smiled and said hello, and continued on down the hall.

That scene would never happen today. For one thing, instead of having to practice on the court where they play their games, Duke now has a separate, modern, standalone practice facility, with biometric and number coded locks to doors. A random student like me would have no chance of wandering onto the practice court. Instead of VCR tapes, the team uses state of the art video technology. K is an icon now, not a dude who would lug a film projector.

All of the praise is not to say he’s without fault. He curses frequently, loudly, and often. He can be petty and arrogant and touchy towards reporters, especially after losses. He’s hypercompetitive and extremely stubborn. I have disagreed with his substitution patterns at times, especially earlier in his career. I hated when he went to “stall ball”, although it rarely resulted in completely blowing a lead. I have felt he should use his bench more often. I think Grayson Allen should have been suspended for 3 games and not one. He has berated student reporters, which felt overbearing and crossed a line to me. I have often wondered if there is anyone in his circle, outside of his immediate family, who challenges or questions him professionally.

But on balance, the good he has done far exceeds the negatives. What he has done for the program, the school, the game itself (dude saved USA Basketball), is tremendous. Multiple stories are coming out now about how he has helped former players and others, especially in times of need.

“He’s like my father,” said former star Quinn Cook, whose own father died many years ago.

“With his support, I am closing in on 7 years of sobriety…and I’m convinced this does not happen without his phone call,” said Marty Clark, a reserve guard from the nineties who struggled with alcoholism for 2 decades.

A former student manager tells the story of losing his brother in 9/11; upon returning to his apartment that night the phone rang, and it was Coach K. They had not spoken in three years, but K had heard what happened. He eventually endowed a manager scholarship in the manager’s brother’s name.

There are a few things in life about which I am irrationally passionate: My wife, children, and family.
Fishing, which I can do for hours, in any weather, lightning and rain and personal safety be damned, without taking breaks.

Poker.

And basketball. My parents were fans of the game, and often watched the New York Knicks, and I became hooked on hoops as a little kid. From the time I could hoist a ball into the hoop, it was my favorite sport and consumed me. I should probably have picked a different sport, as I never grew past 5-8 or 5-9, and weighed 140 pounds as a high school senior. But the game just took hold of me, and I didn’t heed my parents’ gentle attempts to steer me towards golf or tennis.

Naw man, I had to hoop. Something about the teamwork, movement and symmetry of the game resonated with me. The subculture, too. Everything about it. I always loved the whole democratic nature of pickup hoops: wait your turn, and if you want to keep playing, then win. Lose and you sit. Pedigree didn’t matter, and who you were didn’t matter. Your race or skin color or personal appearance didn’t matter. Win or sit.

I have also always thought you could tell a lot about a person by how they hooped: are they willing to do dirty work to contribute to winning? Do they hog the ball and shoot all the time or are they willing to pass? Can they play defense, will they set picks, do they hustle? What happens on game point, does a person run to the ball or run away from it? I once invited a person I was scheduled to interview to join my weekly pickup game, so I could learn more about him (he was selfless; I hired him).

I played organized ball starting in grade school, played CYO and AAU leagues as a teenager, eventually became a high school player, and even captained my HS team as a senior. I was decent but not great. Could shoot, could move, knew the game, had no fear, and was competitive to a fault. I had two other advantages: I was left handed (for whatever reason that screws up most defenders), and being small and Asian, I got zero respect when I stepped on the court. That was usually good for 2 or 3 buckets before the other guy knew what hit him. But I was small and lacked strength. There weren’t any college offers for a 5-8, 140 pound Chinese American point guard who put up a modest 11 points a game against lesser competition. So I knew I had to settle for being a normal college student.

Duke basketball became my all consuming sports passion.

I’ll stop everything I am doing when Duke plays. I’ll spend good money and drive for hours to go see them play. I’ll fight anyone who throws factually inaccurate or intellectually lazy takes out there regarding the program, coach, or players. Duke games affect my mood, blood pressure, and how I interact with people (in the short term, anyway).

I own a lot of Duke gear, as much as anyone around will attest. I frequently wear blue. My car is blue. I refuse to own or touch anything that bears the baby blue colors of UNC, Duke’s archrival. If I see a car on the highway with a UNC sticker, I feel like I have to pass them.

Yes, the rivalry. To me, it’s the greatest one in sports. You would probably have to live in this area to fully appreciate it. Walking around in public wearing Duke gear, strangers will either razz you or give you a thumbs up. Around here, typically the former. You are forced to pick a side. You can’t pull for both teams. Public school versus private school, sky blue versus royal. Dean Smith and UNC owned the early years of the rivalry. Everyone else in the ACC was trying to reach their level. K is the only one who was able to do that. It’s always been ironic to me that the things people say about Duke – “Duke gets all the calls!” – are the exact same things we all used to say about UNC.

The rivalry gets people riled up in ways that even I can’t comprehend, diehard that I am. Fans of both schools have behaved badly at times. Duke students routinely used to chant “bullshit” after unfavorable calls, until K and the administration shot that down. Earlier this season, as Coach K walked out of the tunnel before his last game in Chapel Hill, many UNC fans chanted “F**k Coach K,” loudly, audibly.

Nobody on the UNC side did anything to stop it, nor did I notice any apology or acknowledgement that it even happened. (Had Roy Williams still been coaching and heard that, he would have grabbed a microphone and told them to knock it off; K would have done the same had it happened in Cameron).

In the leadup to tonight’s game, K’s last one at home, I was struck by the animus against him on social media. People feel that, in announcing prior to the season that he would coach one last year, he was trying for an attention-grabbing farewell tour. They didn’t think that perhaps this was done for recruiting purposes, so players would know whether K or someone else would coach them. Or that this is a military style succession plan, where K cedes more responsibility to his successor, Jon Scheyer, letting him address the team much more often during timeouts. The hatred on social media from non-Duke fans seems to be as prevalent as praise.

Maybe they hate him as a person. Not sure what he did to these people. Maybe they hate Duke and what it stands for. I don’t know. I can’t stand UNC sports teams but I have never hated any of their coaches as people. Everyone is flawed of course. But Dean Smith seemed honorable to me; did a lot for civil rights. Roy Williams seems like a good dude. He and K are friends, and K became more friendly with Dean later on in Dean’s life. As Dean suffered from dementia, K and his wife Mickie visited him when both families happened to be vacationing near each other. Duke held a moment of silence before a game after Smith’s passing.

Anyway, I can’t control the way I am about all this. It’s hardwired into me by now. There is no good way to make me not care about this team. I wish the games didn’t consume me as much, really. But there is nothing I can do to change that. At the same time, it’s the kind of thing that makes you feel alive, too.
During every game I will get anywhere from 100 to 500 text messages, from a variety of different friends, family and various group threads. Every game. I respond to most of those texts.

I comment on game threads in a Duke fan page. In the moment, we can lean towards hysteria and extreme pessimism. But when the boys are clicking, it’s euphoric. I’ve tried little things, life hacks, like not watching the beginning of some games or sometimes not changing plans if they coincide with a game.
But I will always know the damn score in progress. I record every game. Some things are impossible to quit.

So I guess this is where I’m going – later today, Coach K will coach his last game ever at Cameron Indoor Stadium, against archrival UNC. This is his Senior Day. Forty two years at Duke will come to an end after this season. A pretty damn good era. We have been spoiled by K’s success.

I was fortunate enough to attend a couple of games this season, but I won’t be able to get in the door for this one. Average ticket price for this game on the secondary market exceeds $5,000 per ticket.
Not sure how I’ll react to the game. I don’t know where I’ll watch, or with whom. It will be an emotional day for us diehards. There is still this postseason to come, and the chance to go deep in March, but it is the beginning of the end of an era. Coach K is all that many of us have known about Duke hoops.
I try not to deify anyone, but it’s hard to imagine him not sitting on that bench anymore.
Anyway, thanks for the memories, Coach. LGD.