Krzyzewski Influence Deeply Rooted in UCLA’s Lavin

How does it feel when the inheritor of the UCLA basketball legacy--someone who started writing you fan mail over a decade ago--calls you his idol?

“Makes me feel old,” a grinning Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said before the Blue Devils’ Pauley Pavilion workout Saturday.

Of course, UCLA Coach Steve Lavin, a 32-year-old bundle of kinetic energy and basketball precociousness, can make many people feel old, especially since he was churning out letters to some of the landmark men in the profession back in his student days.

For Lavin, who today leads the 17th-ranked Bruins against Krzyzewski--who turned 50 earlier this month--and the No. 6 Blue Devils, Krzyzewski’s blend of discipline, work ethic and empathy for his players is college basketball at its best--and most honorable.

“[Purdue Coach] Gene Keady, I kind of see as a mentor because he was the first one who opened the door for me in this profession,” Lavin said this week. “But Krzyzewski is more like a coaching idol.

“He’s somebody you really aspire to be like. I still want to be Steve Lavin, I don’t want to be Mike Krzyzewski. But, to me he’s a good father, he’s a good husband and he’s a good coach, and those are the only three things I’ve ever wanted to do in my life.”

A decade ago, when Lavin was attending Chapman College and anticipating a career in coaching, he fired off letters to the coaches he respected most--including Keady, Indiana’s Bob Knight and Krzyzewski.

To his surprise and joy, they wrote him back. Eventually, Knight let him observe a season of Indiana basketball, Keady hired him as a volunteer assistant, and Krzyzewski counseled Lavin for years, then considered hiring Lavin away from UCLA two years ago.

Lavin credits much of his basketball philosophy to Knight, Keady and Pete Newell, and points out that Jim Harrick opened the door widest for him by bringing him to UCLA and promoting him to No. 1 assistant after five seasons.

But which program and coach did he most want to emulate? The Duke way and Coach K.

“I’d see those Duke teams play and I think we were both--and especially Steve--enamored of just the quality of his team’s execution, how his teams played so hard, and how positive he was toward his players,” said UCLA assistant Jim Saia, a close friend of Lavin’s from college.

“I remember after he went back to a clinic back at Duke, he was sold with Coach K. He said if he ever got a chance to have his own program, he’d like to model it after Duke.”

Said Lavin of Krzyzewski: “He’s everything that’s good about college basketball. He’s everything that’s pure about the amateur spirit of the game. He’s one of those guys who’s just special.”

Lavin first met Krzyzewski during workouts for the 1989 World University Games, when Lavin was a volunteer assistant for Keady; and Lavin and Krzyzewski met up again during preparations for the 1991 Pan Am Games.

Krzyzewski said that Lavin came with a top recommendation--from former Menlo College coach Bud Presley, a family friend of Lavin’s and a defensive coaching legend.

“I knew if Bud gave him the OK, he was going to be a good guy,” Krzyzewski said. “Then as I got to know Steve, I’ve always been impressed with his honesty, his insatiable appetite for the game.”

Once Lavin took over the UCLA team in the wake of Harrick’s dismissal, Krzyzewski was one of the first people he turned to for advice.

“He could not have done too much of a better job in transition,” Krzyzewski said. “It appears that his team has adapted well to him. They’re as talented a team as we can play, and I think they’re playing so well together and they seem to be enjoying it. And to me, that’s good coaching if you can do that.”

Was Krzyzewski surprised that Lavin, an interim for the first three months of the season, got the nod permanently two weeks ago?

“That took some guts by the administration,” Krzyzewski said. “Sometimes the thinking is, ‘I can only bring in a so-called name coach.’ I liken it somewhat to my hiring at Duke.

“At 32, I got the head job at Duke.”

And the parallels, at least to Lavin’s friends, are hard to ignore.

“He’s got to pinch himself,” Saia said of the prospect of Lavin facing Krzyzewski as peers. “Could you ever imagine that we have a top-rated team and so do they and he gets to coach against him?

“I think when you’re in the midst of the battle you tend not to think about those things. But when he sits back at the end of the season, he might put in that tape and say, yeah, that was my UCLA basketball team going up against Coach K!”