E-mail a friendMike Krzyzewski
airdate April 30, 2009
Under Mike Krzyzewski—known to his fans as Coach K— the Duke men's basketball program has become one of the nation's most successful. His teams have had high graduation rates, played in 21 NCAA tournaments and 10 Final Fours and won three national championships. Last year, he also led the U.S. men's team to Olympic gold. The 12-time National Coach of the Year is a former assistant coach at Indiana University and head coach at his alma mater, the U.S. Military Academy. He was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in '01.
Coack K talks about inspiring professionals to play for national pride, not money. (2:40)
Full interview. (14:39)
Mike Krzyzewski
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Coach K to this program. The Duke basketball coach is one of the most successful and visible figures in all of college athletics. Twelve times he's been named national coach of the year, and of course last year in Beijing Coach K led a U.S. team of NBA all-stars to the gold medal.
That experience is the basis for his new book, "The Gold Standard: Building a World-Class Team." Coach K, an honor to have you on this set.
Mike Krzyzewski: Thank you. It's a real pleasure to be with you.
Tavis: It's good to see you, man. One of the things that jumps out in the reading of this text is how you started three years in advance to prepare for this victory.
Krzyzewski: Yeah, it's a long time. It's a long time.
Tavis: That's a long time, yeah.
Krzyzewski: Well, Jerry Colangelo, who is trying to build a whole program together, the former owner of the Phoenix Suns, when he and I met we felt that the thing we'd hadn't given is enough preparation time. And for a team to evolve you need time and competition, and so we wanted to get three-year commitments from the coaching staff and the players.
Tavis: I want to, throughout our conversation, in the time I have, as we did on the radio show, continue to pull things out of the book that I think can be applied to our, everyday people's, daily lives.
Krzyzewski: Right, that's what the book is about.
Tavis: Absolutely. On this issue of preparation, talk to me about how important that is if we're going to achieve whatever it is we're setting our minds to?
Krzyzewski: Well, a lot of people think that even if they do things over and over again they forget that they have to prepare over and over again. You do this show, you prepare. Just because you've done 12 straight good interviews, on the 13th you don't say, "Well, I'm going to be good on that one."
And the people who are consistently good have high standards -- the gold standard. And like a Kobe Bryant -- Kobe Bryant doesn't take for granted that he's the best player or one of the two best players in the league. Every day, he works at it. And that's one of the things I was astounded by with all these top-notch players is their preparation.
And if they're preparing to stay at that level, whatever level we're doing our jobs at we should be able to prepare that way, also. A key thing in the development of our Olympic team was that in 2006, that first summer, we lost to Greece in the world championships. It wasn't exactly the same team, but I coach the team, I'm responsible for it. It was the worst day of my life -- I was coaching the United States team and we lost.
Well, I needed a guy like Jerry Colangelo to say, "Look, it's going to be -- we're going to be fine. We need to learn from it." And I also needed a call from my oldest daughter -- I was in Japan, ready to just punch myself right in the mouth. I was just really down.
And she said, "Dad, you're living a fairy tale, being an Olympic coach. Remember, in a fairy tale, everything doesn't happen right, but the ending is good." And it made me feel good, knowing that.
And so you need people around you, Tavis, who remind you that it's okay to try to get better, and sometimes you'll get knocked back a little bit, but keep trying to get better.
Tavis: Can players do that for coaches?
Krzyzewski: Players can do that for coaches too if you have a relationship. I think it's one of the things with when you're coaching professionals. If you have a good relationship -- like one of the games, I said something -- I did something strategically that was really kind of dumb and I called time-out right away.
And I get them together and I said, "I'm sorry, that was really dumb." And the guys said, "Don't worry about it, we're cool." And sometimes to admit -- first of all they know that it wasn't real smart. (Laughter.) So I'm just saying the obvious, but a lot of times someone in authority won't say, "Well, look, I messed up this time."
And it shows that you're human and you give an opportunity for that other person to say, "You know, I'm okay." Just like you want to do it as a coach when a player makes a a mistake. "Look, we're still cool about that. We can do better."
Tavis: We talk so often; there's so many books written about teamwork. Let me ask you the flipside of that notion, which is what you think the most misunderstood thing is about how to get the most out of a team. The thing that people take for granted or the most misunderstood thing about teams.
Krzyzewski: Well, I think first of all there's something out there that says you have to be amazingly tough or hard on them, that people don't want to give it to you. They want to give it to you. I think what you need to do is create an environment where they're trusting -- they trust you enough where they will give it to you.
And if you can inspire them to do their best, it's better than yelling at them to do their best, and that form of leadership takes on a relationship-based type of foundation and I think people are changing in that regard. When I study leadership that's the part of leadership that I've tried to focus on, and with the book that's what we tried to focus on.
I wanted us to be friends, where we trusted one another.
Tavis: You and the player?
Krzyzewski: Yes. And I also wanted my fellow coaches -- I never called my assistant coaches assistants. I mean, Jimmy Boeheim's in the Hall of Fame, from Syracuse. Mike D'Antoni is the coach of the Knicks. Nate McMillan is the coach of the Trailblazers. They're not assistant coaches.
And so to give them a forum where they could talk and the guys heard their voices, and so it's not just trusting me, it's trusting us, and we trust you. And all of a sudden you're a very close group. It's a neat thing.
Tavis: What's the difference, Coach, in the difference between inspiring boys at Duke and inspiring grown men who happen to be multimillionaires?
Krzyzewski: Yeah, it is different. I think a little bit on a superficial level you can inspire youth easier. They spike it right away. Most adults are not -- like these professional players? They weren't playing to make money. They were playing because they wanted to represent their country, and that's the thing you have to keep filling their heart with and their mind with.
Remember, we're playing for U.S.A. Remember how that national anthem is going to sound. And then you don't just say that, but we would actually produce some videotapes -- little, short tapes. One of the tapes we produced is -- well, we had a 1983 all-star game. Marvin Gaye --
Tavis: Here in L.A., at the Forum.
Krzyzewski: Yeah, that's right. Sang the national anthem. Our first practice this past summer, before we started a practice I had a big TV set, big screen on the side, and I said, "Come on over here." And I said, "Every team has a fight song," and I said, "So I want to play our fight song.
"And your fight song's going to be played before every game that we play in China, and it'll be played twice on August 24th on the gold medal game -- once before and once after, when our flag is being raised and they're going to put gold medals around your neck."
And I said, "This is our fight song." And all of a sudden, Marvin Gaye comes on there singing the national anthem and we had little scenes of them practicing or doing from previous years, so it showed them with the anthem, Marvin Gaye singing.
Our guys today will tell you what our fight song is -- it's our national anthem. We're taking them to New York and having our picture taken in front of the Statue of Liberty on a ferry, and all of a sudden they look behind and they say, "That's the Statue of Liberty." I say, "Yeah, man, you're playing for our country."
If you're playing -- you're motivated right now.
Tavis: Even with my million dollars.
Krzyzewski: Yeah. (Laughter.) Because you want to be that.
Tavis: Yeah, I get it, I get it.
Krzyzewski: You want to be special and don't just accept what they're already given, although it's good. They can give more and they want to give more. Just create an environment where they can.
Tavis: To your point, finally, here, by creating an environment where they can, you talk in the book about the process of letting them in with the decisions that had to be made about the team.
So it wasn't just you and the co-coaches telling them it's going to be this way, but you actually allowed the team to be part of the decision-making process.
Krzyzewski: Yeah, that's really a smart thing to do. They're the experts. I don't defend the screen, I don't set a screen, I don't make the shot -- they do. And so say we're playing Argentina and we're talking the day before and going through our (unintelligible) report and you say, "Okay, we've got Ginobili. He's pretty good. He's one of the top 10 players in the world, and he's the guy, maybe, that we have to beat in order to win a gold medal. How do you guys think when you guard him in the NBA?"
And so Kobe might say something, Darren Williams say something, Dwayne Wade says something. And I said, "Okay, let's take that all and this is how we're going to do it, then, based on what you're saying." They're probably saying everything that we would want to say, but they might say more. But the fact they said it, it's ours, it's not mine.
They want to win and they actually feel the game because they're playing it. And when they share that knowledge with the coaching staff, who studies it real hard too, then it becomes our way of winning.
Tavis: Tell me quickly how you -- because I know everybody has this question, I suspect; most everybody -- how do you manage all those egos?
Krzyzewski: Yeah -- with a smile on my face, I'll tell you that. (Laughter.) If you're going to do something on the -- you'd better have a big ego, as long as that ego isn't a selfish ego. If you share your big ego with another big ego, then we have a bigger ego.
If you don't share it or you're like -- you have animosity or anything towards another person with a big ego, then it's going to hurt you. But our guys shared their egos and then we had one -- the U.S.A. basketball team. And that was a really good -- it makes me smile just thinking of those guys.
Tavis: I'm sure thinking of Duke winning it next year will make you smile, too.
Krzyzewski: Now that would be a good -- (laughter) that would be very good.
Tavis: So what can we expect from the Blue Devils next season?
Krzyzewski: Well, we have great kids in our program. We'll be ranked in the top 10 in the country and I just want us to stay healthy. I hate when a kid gets hurt. And last year we were pretty healthy for the first time in a few years, and we want to keep doing that.
Tavis: I'm sure eight miles down the road, they don't want to hear that. (Laughs.)
Krzyzewski: I know. They don't want to hear -- hey, they just won a national championship, so congratulations to them.
Tavis: See, you got to love this guy. How can you not love a guy that congratulates "those" guys eight miles down the road? But he's a great guy and we all love him. Coach K. The new book is called "The Gold Standard: Building a World-Class Team," by the coach of the gold-medal-winning men's basketball team in Beijing. Coach, good to have you on the program.
Krzyzewski: Thank you, man, I appreciate it.
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