We've had a brutal relationship, Mike Krzyzewski and I, but we're about to make amends. I can just feel it. And by make amends, I mean, I'm about to forgive and forget all his ridiculousness.
Maybe even forgive and forget my own ridiculousness.
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| This is Mike Krzyzewski's chance to earn a fist-tap from Doyel. (AP) |
Coach K is going to win a gold medal. I just know it. And when he does, I'm going to let bygones be bygones. No more snarky columns from me. No more gratuitous cheap shots. No more hijacking his conference calls. I've done it all, and it felt good.
Vengeance has been mine, even if in his insulated world he didn't know it was happening. He probably didn't know. That would be so like him.
For the next month, though, we have the same goal. He's trying to win a gold medal as coach of the U.S. men's basketball team, and I'm rooting like an SOB for him to do it. Journalists aren't supposed to pull for a team they write about, but for the next month I'm all about the U-S-A.
Maybe younger people today don't feel the same -- good Lord, that's the first time I've referred to a generation "younger" than my own -- but if you grew up in the 1970s when patriotism and national pride were everywhere, you understand how it feels to see an athlete in the red, white and blue.
The U.S. uniform is enough to absolve Krzyzewski of his inherent Duke-ness, a condition marked by terminal smugness and an absolute inability to comprehend that people do not like you and it has nothing to do with envy. For the next month, Coach K isn't the guy from Duke. He's the guy leading the United States. Which means he's my guy.
And if he wins? If he brings back gold in my marquee Olympic sport? He'll be my guy forever. Don't say a word about Coach K if he wins a gold medal next month. Not even when the 2008-09 college basketball season begins and he starts pulling his usual Coach K krap. I won't hear it. A gold medal in this sport at this point in history would earn Coach K a lifetime "get out of jail" pass from me. He'll be able to do no wrong.
And up to now, he's been able to do no right. Not in my eyes. Hey, just being honest. Not since 1999, when he attacked a book project of mine, has he received the benefit of the doubt from me. I can see it now. I can admit it, too. That's progress. You should charge $90 an hour for this kind of therapy. I'm starting to feel whole again.
It started in March 1999, when a book deal fell into my lap. An obscure publishing house in Kansas -- like there's any other kind in Kansas -- wanted 50,000 words on Coach K and the Duke program. Here was the cash advance. Here was the deadline. Take it or leave it. I took. And then I asked to interview Coach K for the book.
He refused.
Fine. Mine was an unauthorized biography, and he had his own book coming out a year later. He didn't want to help mine compete with his, and I get that. Really. But he took it several steps further. He wrote a warning letter to my bosses at the Charlotte Observer, saying my book would harm our relationship. And he had one of his publicists reach out to former players and coaches at Duke, essentially asking them not to speak with me.
