The coach almost did not hear the whistle because it was blown far from a basketball court by someone who had never called a foul on him before: his wife. It was January 1995 and Mickie Krzyzewski felt like a failure. Her husband, Mike, was a superstar basketball coach and she was afraid it was killing him.
He had led teams from Duke to seven Final Four appearances and to consecutive National Collegiate Athletic Association championships in 1991 and 1992 and became a poster boy for running a program with academic and athletic integrity.
But Mickie saw someone different -- a husband and father who was distracted, a coach who was obsessed, a man who was physically hurting.
Three months earlier, Krzyzewski had had back surgery to repair a herniated disk. The doctors told him to take several weeks of rest. He took one. By January, the coach was in pain, his wife was exasperated and the whistle blew in the Krzyzewski's kitchen.
Mickie Krzyzewski told her husband that she had made a doctor's appointment for him that day; Mike told her he had to go to practice.
"It was the only time I've ever done this in 30 years of marriage," she said. "I told him to go see that doctor or don't come home. Then I sat in that waiting room and prayed he would show up."
He did show up, and he was hospitalized for fatigue. Krzyzewski was told to relinquish his team and he did that, too, sitting out the rest of the season. From flat on his back he began an arduous rebuilding feat that has nothing and everything to do with basketball.
What is more remarkable?
That at age 52 Krzyzewski has assembled an extravagantly talented Duke team and has led it to a 34-1 record and 29 consecutive victories as it heads into the East Regional semifinal tonight at the Meadowlands? Or that earlier this month, before the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, he left practice early to see his daughter Jamie play in the opening round of the state high school basketball tournament?
In the Krzyzewski household, they will tell you it's the latter. This season's Blue Devils would not be the dominant team they are if their coach had not been banished from Cameron Indoor Stadium for the 1994-95 season and forced to examine the foundation, tearing down parts that had lifted him in the college coaching record books alongside legends like John Wooden of UCLA and Dean Smith of North Carolina.
Krzyzewski, the son of a Chicago elevator operator and an office building cleaning lady, had to learn that hard work needs to be paced. As a West Point graduate and former Army captain, he needed to understand that some missions were best led by his lieutenants. Most important, said his wife, he needed to realize that the "rules of humanness apply" to everyone no matter how many consecutive Final Four appearances -- five from 1988-92 -- you make.
Mickie Krzyzewski had tried to get her husband's attention in 1993. His colleague and friend, Jim Valvano, was dying of cancer and in a magazine article confessed how coaching had eclipsed his life and family.
"Jimmy is telling your story, Mike," Mickie told him as she handed him the article with Valvano's regrets highlighted.
But the coachaholic had not hit bottom. He did, however, in the the most helpless way during the second half of the 1994-95 season. While convalescing in seclusion at home on orders from his doctors and Duke University officials, Krzyzewski watched as the Blue Devil team he had led to a 9-3 start finished 13-18. Duke missed the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1984.
When he returned to work, Krzyzewski struggled to adapt. His mother, Emily, whom he called win or lose after every game, was dying of cancer. The Krzyzewski's hired a time manager who helped them put in a more efficient phone and computer system, pare and organize his news media and personal appearances and even put up a wall in the basketball office to isolate the coach from passers-by and unscheduled intrusions.
In the assistants Quin Snyder, Johnny Dawkins and David Henderson -- each a player on his past Blue Devil teams -- Krzyzewski had the staff to keep recruiting the championship-caliber talent Duke had had trouble getting.
No one could help him re-ground his family, however. Over the years, Mickie and his daughters -- Debbie, 28, Lindy, 21, and Jamie, 17 -- became the Blue Devils who never graduated. They ate meals with his teams, traveled to road games with them and boisterously rode the officials from behind the Duke bench.
But Krzyzewski brought them even closer after a conversation he had with Valvano before the former North Carolina State coach's death. Now, Krzyzewski made an effort to be part of their lives. He made sure he was home from the office in time for family dinners. He worked in the garden with them.
When Emily Krzyzewski died in October 1996, Krzyzewski experienced a tremendous loss, but also had the support to help absorb it.
As the coach regained his center, so did his teams. Krzyzewski went 18-13 on his return, followed by a 24-9 season, and a regional final appearance with last year's 32-4 team.
With his staff, Krzyzewski decided to recommit to an old strategy.
The staff would target "our kind of kids," and not only work them in the recruiting process but work even harder on getting to know them after they signed, through letters and phone calls. He had got away from that as he raced the treadmill to stay on top.
From Dawkins to Christian Laettner to Grant Hill to Elton Brand, Krzyzewski said that Duke players are linked by more than talent. "They come from homes where getting an education is important, where the parents or parent have taught them to respect authority," he said.
Pub Date: 3/19/99