College Town Has Dukes Up Over Coach K

The news from the other side of the United States landed in this old tobacco town like word of an impending natural disaster, or close to it.

The calamity? The man everyone in these parts knows as Coach K may be history. Going to Los Angeles, perhaps, to coach professionals in the National Basketball Assn.

As the long Fourth of July weekend began, it dominated local headlines. And it was the No. 1 topic being chewed over at the polished wood bar of Devines Restaurant & Sports Bar, where 19 framed photos of longtime Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, who may be bound for the Lakers, are on display.

“I think it would really be a bad decision,” offered bartender Jim Haney, 24. “Not that it would tarnish his legacy. But here he’s the biggest celebrity in town. Go out to L.A., and you’ve got Jack Nicholson riding the bench behind you.”

Leroy Joiner, 51, who teaches in an adult education program, admitted to ambivalent feelings between sips of Diet Pepsi. He loves rooting for the hometown team, he said -- but he also attended graduate school at USC, lived 15 years in Los Angeles and thinks the Lakers badly need the leadership Krzyzewski has proved he can deliver.

“Coach K is the premier coach at the college level. The Lakers are arguably the premier franchise in the NBA,” said Joiner. “A great fit.”

Last week, the Lakers announced they were in talks with Krzyzewski, 57, concerning the head coaching job vacated by Phil Jackson after the team’s humbling defeat by the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals.

“It was the buzz,” said Glen Meynardie, 26, who was in a bar in downtown Durham when the first bulletins of the negotiations were being aired by ESPN. “Everybody was talking about it.”

That night, Duke’s new president, Richard Brodhead, who was in the first day of his job, grabbed a bullhorn and joined in a hastily organized rally on campus to urge Krzyzewski to stay. “There’s no K? Ain’t no way!” scores of Duke students chanted.

By the beginning of the weekend, shock and disbelief over the possible departure of the winningest coach in Duke’s history seemed to have been replaced by hope and resignation, in roughly equal measure.

“My gut says K stays,” the lead headline reassuringly read in Saturday’s Herald-Sun, Durham’s daily newspaper. The gut in question belonged to Duke assistant coach Steve Wojciechowski, who played for Krzyzewski as a student and has known him for a decade.

Jo Palmer, 20, a rising junior from Montgomery, Ala., said the rumors making the rounds on Duke’s magnolia-shaded campus were that the coach had been offered $8 million a year to move to Los Angeles. Palmer, one of the few students to have remained at Duke during the summer because of an on-campus job, took a break from sending messages on her laptop to consider the consequences if Krzyzewski accepted.

“I definitely want him to stay,” the public policy major said. “But you couldn’t fault him for leaving, or at least for talking to the Lakers. He has built a dynasty, and there still would be excellent staff if he decided to go.”

In his 24 years of coaching here, Krzyzewski has become the true Duke of Durham, as likely to draw an admiring crowd at egghead haunts like the bookstores on Ninth Street as in “K-ville,” the tent city named in his honor that is erected by students before home basketball games, when tickets are doled out on a first-come basis, and some rabid fans line up for weeks.

A West Point grad, Krzyzewski has led his teams to three national championships and 10 Final Four appearances. He has compiled a 621-179 won-lost record, and is praised by Duke’s director of athletics, Joe Alleva, as nothing less than “the best coach in the country.” In a statement last week, Alleva said both he and Brodhead had met with Krzyzewski to urge him not to leave for the Lakers.

“It can’t be allowed to happen. He is Duke basketball,” said John Stanney of Oviedo, Fla., an engineering consultant and longtime Duke fan. He came Saturday to Cameron Indoor Stadium, where Krzyzewski’s Blue Devils play, to shoot baskets with his 15-year-old son who was at Duke for a summer school program.

Banners commemorating the Krzyzewski’s three NCAA championships hung limply from the old 9,300-seat arena’s rafters. A plaque in the lobby thanks Coach K for the “joy” he has brought Duke. Stanney was awestruck, like he was entering a sacred place.

“I’m in heaven,” he said.

One group of people has made it clear they would not be sorry to see Krzyzewski depart for new opportunities: the fans of Duke’s archrival, the University of North Carolina. The Tar Heels, just a short drive down U.S. Highway 15-501 in Chapel Hill, have lost to Duke in 14 of their past 16 encounters, an unspeakable humiliation in this basketball-crazy state.

“I think it’d be a great idea to send Coach K to Los Angeles,” said Marcus Bethea, 67, a longtime Tar Heels fan.

Krzyzewski has been falsely reported before to be headed for the NBA, to coach the Bulls in his native Chicago or to be reunited with a former Duke star in Detroit. That is a good enough reason for some in Durham to believe that this worrisome prospect, too, will pass.

“He has been tempted so many times,” said Wander Lorentz de Haas, 45, a clerk at the Regulator Bookshop near campus. In 2001, Krzyzewski signed a lifetime contract with Duke, scheduled to run though 2011, when he reaches the university retirement age of 65.

As a private institution, Duke doesn’t have to disclose faculty salaries, but Krzyzewski has been reported to earn between $600,000 and $800,000, making him the highest-paid university official, above even Duke’s president. A lucrative endorsement from Nike and speaking fees boost his earning power even higher.

“He’s gotten everything out of Duke he wanted,” said Lorentz de Haas. But he and other locals also ticked off reasons Krzyzewski could be ready for a radical change in his life. The university has just gotten a new president. Coach K’s children are now grown. The Atlantic Coast Conference, against his wishes, has expanded. It’s getting tougher to stop college-age talent from bolting to the NBA.

Then there is the sense of professional challenge. Could the Duke faculty member labeled by many sports writers as the most brilliant strategist now active in college basketball have decided it’s finally time to see how he fares in the pros?

Only one coach in history has won both NCAA and NBA championships, Larry Brown, a former coach at the University of Kansas, who just led the Pistons to their upset over the Lakers. Some here suspect the hypercompetitive Coach K might be willing to give up his big home, lionized social status and the security of a lifetime job at one of the South’s most prestigious universities to try his luck at equaling or surpassing that feat.

“That’s the only reason I can see him doing it,” said Stanney. “It’d be a travesty if he left Duke.”