At the other end of I-40, Valvano knew he might be in for a relatively difficult season. He had never coached a game at State without Sidney Lowe, Dereck Whittenburg, and Thurl Bailey. It wasn’t as if State was without talent: Lorenzo Charles, Terry Gannon, and Cozell McQueen were now the heart of the team, along with Ernie Myers. In fact, the Wolfpack opened the season by easily beating Houston in the Tip-Off Classic in Springfield in a “rematch” of the championship game.
“I didn’t just lose my three best players,” Valvano said. “I lost the heart and soul of my team. It wasn’t like we didn’t have good players—we did. But those three had become special in a lot of ways.”
Valvano wasn’t that worried. He knew he had a big-time recruiting class on the way and all his key players would be back the following season. Plus, the Wolfpack could have gone 0–33 and Valvano still would have been a hero in Raleigh. The days of worrying about getting a win over Carolina were completely forgotten.
Mike Krzyzewski had no such luxury. He had no luxuries. There would be only one year left on his contract at the end of the season, and he knew anything resembling the 10–17 and 11–17 of the previous two seasons would make it almost impossible for Tom Butters to continue defending him—or employing him.
During the postmidnight meeting at Denny’s in Atlanta the previous March, Bobby Dwyer had mentioned the fact that Tom Sheehey, who had verbally committed to Virginia, might be having second thoughts and perhaps it might be worth seeing if he would take a late look at Duke.
Krzyzewski had cut him off in midsentence. “No, we’re not doing that,” he said. “First of all, we don’t do that sort of thing. Second, if we can’t win with these freshmen and Amaker, then we should get fired.”
Amaker was Tommy Amaker, the little point guard Krzyzewski had fallen in love with two summers earlier while watching him play in the Jelleff League. Amaker had once dreamed of playing at Maryland but had changed his thinking for several reasons: Lefty Driesell was more interested in Keith Gatlin, a six-foot-five point guard from North Carolina; he loved the idea of pairing in a backcourt with Johnny Dawkins; and he and his mom had both become enamored of Krzyzewski.
“I think more than anything it was his passion,” Amaker, who is now the basketball coach at Harvard, said many years later. “My mom liked him right from the start. He looked you right in the eye and there was never any doubt in his voice when he spoke. Plus, it was apparent how much he wanted me at Duke. My mom loved the idea because she loved him but also because it was such a good school academically.”
Amaker made an early decision to go to Duke, and throughout the long winter of 1983, the thought that Amaker could take over for Dawkins at the point and allow Dawkins to move to shooting guard was often a ray of hope for Krzyzewski and his coaches.
“We get better at two positions when Amaker gets here,” Krzyzewski would often say during late-night film sessions at his house. “He’s a better point guard than Johnny, and Johnny’s a better shooting guard than anyone.”
By then, Krzyzewski’s staff had changed. At season’s end in 1983, Bobby Dwyer decided he’d had enough of the life that had to be lived to be a bigtime recruiter. He was getting married, he wanted to start a family, and he was worn out by the road and the cutthroat nature of recruiting.
“I felt like Chuck [Swenson] and I had finally gotten Mike into the homes we needed to get him into with the Dawkins class,” he said. “It was the right time for me to get off the road.”
Dwyer left to take a Division III job at Sewanee College in Tennessee. At the same time, NCAA rules had changed (again) to allow schools to hire a part-time coach and a director of basketball operations. Tom Rogers, the retired army colonel who had talked Krzyzewski out of taking the Iowa State job, was going to be the director of basketball operations.
That meant Krzyzewski had two coaches to hire. Pete Gaudet, who had succeeded him at Army, had struggled to win games and was out of a job. Krzyzewski knew that Gaudet was as good as anyone in the country coaching big men. Plus, he thought Gaudet’s experience—Gaudet was four years older than he was—was something he could use on the bench. Dwyer’s job was filled by Bob Bender—meaning one coach’s son replaced another coach’s son. Bender had played on Bill Foster’s Final Four team in 1978 and had been working for Tom Butters. He wanted to coach. Krzyzewski offered him the chance.
“I remember people saying to me, ‘What are you doing? You’ll be looking for a job in another year,’ ” Bender said. “I wanted to coach and I’d been around Duke watching Mike work, and I thought he knew what he was doing. I was single. I figured I’d give it a shot.”
The best news for Krzyzewski when practice started was that he no longer had to deal with a divided team. The seniors had graduated and Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Jay Bilas, and David Henderson were now the clear leaders of the team, along with junior Danny Meagher, the hard-nosed Canadian who had been the best player in the ’81 recruiting class.
Meagher wasn’t a star but he was an important player. He was physical and fearless, something Duke needed. And, a bonus, his style of play drove Dean Smith crazy. Meagher reminded Smith of guys like Dan Bonner and Marc Iavaroni. He complained to the officials about him all the time and insisted on referring to him in public as “May-har,” even though his name was pronounced “Mu-har,” and Smith knew that because Smith knew everything.
Once after a game, Smith referenced the fact that May-har would be playing the following summer on the Canadian Olympic team. “I really feel badly for my good friend Bob Knight having to play against May-har,” Smith said. May-har loved hearing that sort of thing.
Knight, who would be coaching the U.S. team in the ’84 Olympics, was probably not losing a lot of sleep at the thought of facing May-har or Meagher or anyone else playing for Canada. Smith thought he was a nightmare, which made Krzyzewski smile.
More important was the improvement of the sophomores. Duke didn’t have an especially challenging preconference schedule, but that didn’t mean it was going to win all those games (see Wagner). The opener was a difficult one. Vanderbilt had beaten Duke two years in a row, soundly a year earlier in Nashville.
The game was tight throughout, and it came down to Amaker standing at the free-throw line needing to make two shots to clinch the victory. He made both. Afterward, as Amaker was standing in front of his locker talking to the media, Krzyzewski walked by with a wide grin on his face. He patted Amaker on the shoulder and whispered in his ear, “I told you I’d make you a star.”
The second game of the season was even tougher than the first. Bruce Parkhill had put together a very solid program at William and Mary and had talked Krzyzewski into playing a game in Williamsburg—not normally a road trip that an ACC team would make. The game was every bit as difficult as the Vanderbilt game, if not more difficult. Duke survived, 70–68, when David Henderson hit a fifteen-foot jump shot with two seconds to play.
“In a funny way that was one of our biggest wins,” Krzyzewski said. “We had gotten into the habit of folding when things got tough. There was always an excuse. The year before it had been that the freshmen weren’t ready yet. Well, now they were sophomores. Amaker was never really a freshman—never played like one anyway. Hanging on to win against Vanderbilt was good, but winning a tough game like that by making a big shot on the road was better. It really gave us a boost.”
—
The Blue Devils charged through December and went to Hawaii for the Rainbow Classic with an 8–0 record. They lost their opening game, 78–76, to a very good SMU team and then won the next two games they played on Oahu. By the time conference play began they were 11–1. That was also a nice boost—especially considering the win totals of 10 and 11 the previous two seasons—but everyone knew the test would come once ACC play began.
Things started well enough—very well, in fact. With Amaker playing almost flawlessly against Virginia’s veteran backcourt of Othell Wilson and Ricky Stokes, Duke beat Virginia 78–72 in Charlotte
sville. Ralph Sampson was finally in the NBA, but Virginia still had talent—enough talent that the Cavaliers would make it to the Final Four three months later. Sampson had been 9–0 against Duke, and it was Krzyzewski’s first win against Terry Holland and UVA.
Which meant it felt like a breakthrough. Two more nonconference victories raised the overall record to 14–1, but then the backsliding began. First came a home loss to Maryland in Cameron, an ugly game punctuated by the students taunting Herman Veal, a Maryland player who had been accused of sexual assault. The students went over the line from funny to tasteless, throwing women’s underwear at Veal and chanting “R-A-P-E” at him throughout the game. All their behavior did was fire up a Maryland team that was probably ready to be taken down.
Three days later, the Blue Devils lost on the road to a very good Wake Forest team that would reach the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament in March. Even so, the 97–66 margin was embarrassing.
And then, Carolina came to town.
Duke hadn’t beaten Carolina since Krzyzewski’s first season, in the “Gene Banks game” that had led to Linnea Smith’s concern about her daughter’s future and the conception of Jamie Krzyzewski.
Carolina was 13–0 and ranked number one in the country. A week earlier, the Tar Heels had won at Wake Forest, winning by 8 on the same court where Duke would lose by 31 four days later.
On the day prior to the North Carolina game, Duke president Terry Sanford had written an open letter to the student body that appeared on the front page of The Chronicle. The students had—deservedly—taken a pounding in the media following the Maryland game, and Sanford decided enough was enough.
“We should be funny, but not tasteless,” he said. “Treat our opponents with respect but try to help the team win.” He signed the letter “Uncle Terry,” which was the way he was thought of by the student body.
The students responded. They showed up for the game wearing halos, lest anyone think they were less than angelic. When Carolina came onto the court to warm up, they held up signs that said “Welcome Honored Guests.” When Dean Smith walked to the bench, the Blue Devil mascot was waiting for him with a dozen roses.
Smith wasn’t amused. He had never found the Duke students funny.
When the game began, the students abandoned the profane “Bullshit” cheer that had become—and, sadly, still is—a staple in student sections around the country. Instead, when they didn’t like a call they chanted, “We beg to differ.” And, when a Tar Heel went to the free-throw line, instead of waving their arms as a distraction they held up signs that said “Please Miss.”
It was arguably the greatest performance by a student section in history.
Their team was almost as good. The game was filled with the kind of fury and intensity that can happen only in a rivalry involving teams and coaches who know one another well. The Duke players were tired of being embarrassed by North Carolina. The Carolina players weren’t about to let their undefeated run end against Duke.
The building was hot, the two coaches hotter. At one point, when the men working the scorer’s table didn’t notice a Carolina player trying to check in to the game and failed to hit the horn to alert the officials to the sub, Smith sprinted angrily to the table and tried to hit the horn himself. He missed—instead adding ten points to his team’s score. The crowd was booing, the scorer’s table crew was screaming at Smith, and Smith was screaming right back at them—accusing them of cheating.
No one was angrier, though, than Krzyzewski, who couldn’t believe Smith hadn’t been given a technical foul when he tried to hit the horn.
“They had to tee him up then,” he said many years later. “You can’t let a coach do that. It doesn’t matter if he had a legitimate complaint or not. He got away with it because he was Dean Smith.”
Carolina got away with the win because Michael Jordan played for Dean Smith and Duke couldn’t stop him in the final minutes.
“There were a lot of reasons that game was important,” Jay Bilas said. “The biggest thing was it was the first time we walked into the locker room after losing to those guys and we were pissed. The year before, I don’t think we believed we could compete with them. We were almost in awe of them even before tip-off. They were just so good.
“But after that game in Cameron, we weren’t intimidated anymore. It wasn’t as if we didn’t think they were great—we did. We just thought we were good enough to beat them.”
Krzyzewski was convinced they would have beaten them if Smith hadn’t been able to intimidate the officials. With eleven seconds left in the game and the Tar Heels in control, Krzyzewski called time-out for one purpose: to get a technical foul.
“If they weren’t going to give Dean one,” he said, “I figured they might as well give me one.”
Krzyzewski never stepped into his team’s huddle during the time-out. He railed at referee Mike Moser, repeatedly saying, “These kids deserved to win this game. You took it away from them.” Moser knew what Krzyzewski was doing and tried to wait out the rant. That wasn’t going to happen; Krzyzewski was going to make his point. When Moser finally teed Krzyzewski up, the students erupted in mock cheers: the officials, in their mind, had finally gotten a call right.
It didn’t end there. Even after winning, Smith was noticeably upset during his postgame press conference. When someone asked him about the behavior of the students, he waved a hand in disgust. “The schedule says we have to come over here and play once a year,” he said. “We do that, try to win like we did tonight, and go back to Chapel Hill. I don’t pay any attention to what they [the students] are doing.”
Years later, when the subject of that night came up, Smith was still upset.
“Maybe they were funny on occasion, but more often they were rude,” he said. “They treated our players badly a lot of the time, went over the line, and I didn’t forget that. They liked to call attention to themselves. I never thought that was the right way for fans to behave.”
Krzyzewski’s view of the events of the evening was, not surprisingly, different. He had no issues with the students or with his team’s performance. He was angry at Smith and angrier at the officials.
“There’s a double standard in this league,” he famously said. “One for Dean Smith and one for the rest of us. It’s not right.”
The “double-standard” comment caused a furor. Most of the media in North Carolina—not surprisingly—raced to defend Smith. One columnist called Krzyzewski a “classless loser.” Others speculated that he was a desperate man who saw his job slipping away. About the only columnist who didn’t side with Smith was the Durham Morning Herald’s Keith Drum.
He wrote that both coaches had behaved badly. Smith, he said, had no right to charge the scorer’s table and hit the horn the way he had and certainly should have been teed up—at least once. Krzyzewski, he said, was out of line by claiming the officials had somehow stolen the game for North Carolina. “Michael Jordan,” he wrote, “beat Duke last night. He wore Carolina blue—not stripes.”
Drum must have gotten it right because both coaches called him the day after the game to complain about the column. Smith accused him of being pro-Duke because he had defended Krzyzewski. This was a major crime to Smith since Drum had gone to North Carolina. Krzyzewski, after debating with Drum at length, finally concluded, “Aah, you’re just another Carolina guy.”
Drum was fine with that. He was just another Carolina guy to the Duke coach and pro-Duke to the Carolina coach. All in all, a good day’s work.
—
While the “double-standard” debate raged—almost all of it in-state anti-Krzyzewski and pro-Smith, Krzyzewski had a bigger problem: his team was now 1–3 in the ACC with N.C. State coming to town on Thursday. The Wolfpack wasn’t anywhere close to being as good as the year before but was still good enough to be a tough out for Duke.
“What made Duke good, really good, was their ability to take you out of your offense,” Tom Abatemarco said. “They would play passing l
anes, get out after your guards, extend their defense. Especially once they got Amaker, it was really hard for a point guard to get a team into its offense. So, we didn’t run any offense.”
Actually, State had one offensive set: use Amaker’s aggressiveness against him, get the point guard into the lane, and dish to the wings when Duke’s inside help came after the point guard. On occasion, Amaker would upset that strategy by stealing the ball or deflecting a pass. But, often as not, someone from State would end up with an open outside shot.
“And we could shoot,” Abatemarco said. “We could always shoot.”
There was also another issue for Duke—the students…again.
They were up to their old tricks when the Wolfpack showed up. Lorenzo Charles, the dunking hero of Albuquerque, had been charged during the off-season with holding up a Domino’s Pizza delivery man. He hadn’t stolen any money—just pizza—but, not surprisingly, the story of his arrest received a good deal of attention.
And, just as unsurprisingly, the Duke students weren’t going to pretend the incident hadn’t happened. Shortly before tip-off, a Domino’s pizza delivery man showed up at the State bench with an armful of pizzas ordered, he claimed, by a Mr. Charles. Valvano quickly defused that by paying for the pizzas and then handing them out to students sitting a few rows behind the bench.
Naturally, the students weren’t finished. When Charles was introduced, they filled the air with empty Domino’s boxes. Nowadays, the boxes never would have gotten inside the building.
“It was a huge mistake,” Mark Alarie said, able to laugh about it many years later. “I took one look at Lorenzo when we lined up for the tip and said, ‘Uh-oh.’ He had this look on his face that told me I was in for a long night.”
Charles had added ten pounds of muscle to his frame during the summer and had become N.C. State’s best player. That night, guarded by a very good defender (Alarie) he was unstoppable. Every time State needed a basket, he got it, either out of the offense or on an offensive rebound. He finished with 35 points and 11 rebounds and State won, 79–76.
The Legends Club Page 20