Duke’s basketball museum is a stone’s throw from Cameron Indoor Stadium and it isn’t large enough to display all the blueblood baubles. There are more in the office of the man who oversaw the collection of those prizes for 42 years. What would be another program’s crown jewels adorn lesser-traveled hallways and underexplored corners.
Almost every square inch of real estate on his walls reflects an astonishing American life. There are awards of brass and bronze and glass and wood. Photos of him in jubilant victory with players and earnest gratitude with those who serve their country surround the room. There’s an end table with a perfect angle to shoot video supporting a heavy trophy and a cut-down net from some previous conquest. He says it’s okay to just move those out of the way.
It’s Thursday and Mike Krzyzewski is doing what he has done every week for the past 20 years. The right hand responsible for diagramming plays that won five national championships and earned three Olympic gold medal handshakes is making short strokes, marking up copy and taking notes for , his SiriusXM radio show.
He’ll never use it all and he’s never used it all. But this is what he does.
“You don’t just learn from the show you do,” he says. “You learn from the show you prepare to do.”
A nearby file cabinet is home to every practice plan he wrote. There are about 5,000. “That’s like 14 years of your life writing a practice plan?” Krzyzewski asks after some quick math. “In order to do what you love, you have to prepare for what you love.”
Today Krzyzewski wants to know more about the art of basestealing. He’ll be speaking to Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts in an hour. His co-host Chris Spatola is a Red Sox fan and currently taking some gentle ribbing. Memories are drifting back to a pinch runner timing up Mariano Rivera and 90 feet that changed everything.
There have been hundreds of guests through two decades, from managers to commissioners to Hall of Fame players, a who’s who being invited into his world. People like Marcus Freeman, Sue Bird, Andy Reid, Gregg Popovich and Maria Taylor hop on for a give-and-take about the privilege and pressure at the top of their professions.
It’s a good invitation if you can get it. His guests want to be on their A-game in the same way they notch it up for Howard Stern. Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said a few years ago that he was honored that Krzyzewski even knew who he was, let alone knew his name after an appearance.
“I would hope it's an honor for them to be on the show just like it's an honor for us to have them on the show,” Krzyzewski says. “Communication is not speaking,” he adds. “It’s speaking and listening. A lot of people don’t listen. A lot of leaders don’t listen. The show helps me listen even more.”
Perhaps nothing is more true about Krzyzewski than when he speaks, people listen. That is the very foundation of his legacy. There’s a level of concentration and focus to his words. Every few minutes he drops a bar steeped in aspiration that can be applied to endeavors either on the court or in the media space.
“Everybody should have the will to win, but not everyone has the will to prepare to win,” he says. “And if you combine those two wills, you’ve got a chance.”
The show creeps closer by the moment and he, Spatola and senior producer Ryan Balick move into the adjoining room that serves as a recording studio. It’s more unassuming in scale and decor yet still replete with reminders of how much weight the voice speaking into the main microphone carries.
Krzyzewski parcels his thoughts out with care these days, doing no other shows except this one. It’s his outlet, the only place to get his takes on not just basketball but life. It’s a far cry from the call-in coach’s show he did in the 1980s—which he quickly soured on because he thought there could be so much more.
“I did that for a few years and I said ‘this stinks.’” he recalls. “I was spending more time with the callers than I was with my family, you know? I didn’t like it all and I didn’t think it served a purpose.”
After he stopped doing that one, Krzyzewski was out of the broadcasting game for a long time. Then the idea of a true radio show with guests and space to go deeper materialized.
“It was my way of learning,” he says. “SiriusXM made the presentation and I said ‘let’s do that.’ I haven’t liked it. I’ve loved it.”
He’s grown more comfortable along the way. Just as those thousands of practice plans evolved with the sport—through experimentation and adaptation—so has the way his radio team readies.
They’ve tinkered with the format over the past two years after Spatola came on full time. Those two have casual chemistry on-air and off, and it’s allowed Krzyzewski to show his own personality, which very much includes an actively engaged sports fan. He had strong feelings about the College Football Playoff seeding. He has his eye on the surging Detroit Pistons’ surprising renaissance. There have also been matters of larger importance, areas to make a mark and move the needle. Just this year was a brainstorm with Kansas's Bill Self on how to improve the college game. A candid talk about NIL and its evolution with John Calipari. Whereas the remit for sports media personalities is to wave frantically for attention, Krzyzewski makes waves because his opinions have weight, not volume.
Recently they’ve added a portion where they react to the interview, drawing out more and tying up any loose ends that were passed over on the rundown. When Rick Pitino was on earlier this year, the two coaching legends never got to the fact that they squared off in arguably the most famous college basketball game of all time, ended by a shoulder shake and well-aimed shot from Christian Laettner.
“He solicits other people’s opinions and is open to feedback,” observes Spatola. “You have to be really secure to do that.”
“At the base level, Coach is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met,” he adds.
At no time does one feel like Krzyzewski is straining to live up to that praise. There’s no push to prove he’s the smartest person in the room. The deepest stuff comes out subtly and without ceremony and he takes every opening to give credit to his teammates.
From content calls with Spatola and Balick to riffing in the moment, he has once again found himself as a collaborator toward a common goal. There is, however, one important difference from basketball.
“It’s a lot better because now when I compete there’s not another person trying to stop me from what I’m doing,” he says.
They eventually reach Roberts on the line and the two friends catch up briefly off-air. Right before the red light goes on he asks Roberts perhaps the only question that matters for coaches—and one that wasn’t in the dozens of pages sprawled out on the table.
Is his team healthy?
It’s showtime and Spatola sets the scene, rattling off Roberts’s bonafides. hits the ground running. Krzyzewski has more than they could ever get to in an hour sprawled out before him and yet he remains adroit, following up on whatever catches his interest, pulling on a thread or pivoting to something on the fly. Being thoroughly prepared doesn’t mean one should be overprepared. Krzyzewski admits he likes to play point guard, making reads in real time to go in other directions. It’s compelling to watch him while applying an editorial rubric. He asks open-ended questions. He makes a few quick-thinking and smooth transitions that serve as a reminder that he’s been doing this awhile and that he’s intentional at being good at it.
Ten minutes fly by and Krzyzewski realizes he hasn’t yet congratulated Roberts on the World Series captured with the Dodgers last fall. He prompts his guest to talk about the difference between this one and the 2020 crown earned in emptier stadiums and victorious streets. Along the way Roberts compares and contrasts hoisting the trophy as a player and a manager, concluding that the one earned managing meant more.
Things have changed since Krzyzewski’s first show in 2005. JJ Redick has gone from exploring new territory beyond the arc at Cameron to his own media endeavor to coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. Jon Scheyer has gone from recruit to protege to Coach K’s successor on the Blue Devils bench. College basketball’s best player and likely No. 1 pick in the NBA draft Cooper Flagg currently lights up the cathedral next door. He’ll be asked about the freshman phenom’s choice between an NBA future or returning for another year in Durham.
It’s not the easiest topic to weigh in on. And it underscores the challenge he faced while doing this weekly rite while he was marshaling an intensely scrutinized program. Win or lose, no matter what was happening with his team, Krzyzewski produced an episode.
Balick, a senior producer who just happens to be a lifelong Duke fan, observes that the show went on after early Blue Devils’ NCAA tournament exits. “Those were two of the worst days of life,” he says.
There’s a sense from those on the show that some of the incredible amount of energy that went into coaching has found a new home. Krzyzewski has always been all-in but now he’s all-in.
“I think he is smelling the roses,” Spatola. “There’s a growing appreciation and openness to the moment.”
“I don’t coach anymore,” Krzyzewski says. “So when you have these people on, they’re current in what they are doing. And just like my players kept me young, my guests helped me stay current.”
Sixty minutes pass and another episode is in the books. There have been several hundred now. Twenty years of diligent preparation spurred by a curiosity that still burns bright in its 78-year-old host. Krzyzewski wonders aloud how the heck these two decades happened but he also believes that what he has is one-of-a-kind. He’s proud of the prolonged run and its reach.
“Since I was 16, I wanted to be a teacher and a coach,” he says. “The platform that I’ve been so very fortunate to attain, it can be used to help people. Like our show, where you’re sharing knowledge because of that platform. And you’re getting knowledge too.”
He gets a lot of correspondence from people who tell him that they’ve taken inspiration from something he’s said and incorporated it into their lives. Whether that be sports, business, whatever. Like leadership itself, its lessons are malleable.
"That makes you feel good,” he says. “Obviously winning games makes you feel good too. It’s just having a purpose and being purposeful in a really good way.”