Let me begin this post by saying… I am a Tar Heel! And so, when I was sent an article attacking Duke’s head coach Mike Krzyzewski I had to go read it. It was not long what Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune wrote about the Hall of Famer. In many ways it was sharp and to the point, and as far as the game that made the Blue Devils take an early exit out of the Big Dance he was pretty right on, at least in my opinion. Having talked to some Duke fans they too would have wanted to see more of Jabari Parker in the game, even with three fouls.
But this article was not just about the single game, it was about the fact that the winningest coach ever in men’s basketball can not coach Parker. Which would also mean that he probably does not know how to coach other players coming to the college located in Durham. Many times I have heard the phrase “the game has passed him/her by”, and this article basically said the same thing. However it said it with a pungent attack about someone who has won plenty of things in his lifetime.
Do I agree with the comments about the game versus Mercer? Yes. with the reality of lose and go home, whether or not you are victorious you should have your best player out there. To those that say ” if he got his fourth then we would never have had a chance”. Well, you still lost, so what does it matter? Put your best players in and let the chips fall where they may. Furthermore, if you were able to win the game, having had your best player in his confidence would have risen plenty and that could have helped the team moving forward.
But as far as Coach K not being able to do his work the right way, well, to the media who writes, to the fan bases, to bloggers like myself here is the truth… what determines if the game has passed him by is: the recruits. Hard to say that the head man at Duke has had the game go by when he has the best class in 2014 coming into Durham. Just like it’s tough to say that the “one and done” has stopped working at Kentucky when John Calipari still keeps them coming into Lexington year in and year out.
At Syracuse each year that SU falls short of the fans expectation the “Boeheim should play man to man” attacks arrive. Of course that never came out when the team was undefeated for the first twenty-five games of the season. You go on some UNC boards and I seen posters, who have always criticized Roy Williams for not calling time outs being upset that he did not let Paige just shoot it up at the end.
Fans, like me, writers or bloggers, like me again, have opinions. And those opinions count for very little, if none, at the end of the line. It’s the opinion that the five stars recruits have that count. along with winning, that move the needle on whether a coach is doing his job or not. Case in point… if anyone thinks that Bobby Knight would have been thrown out like he was at Indiana had he still be bringing in the hardware, then I do not know what to tell you.
Winning heals all while playing. Getting top players does the same during the off-season. While Coach K might have loss some games, might have been out-coached in others, the reality is that overall, behind closed doors when no one is hearing, most fan bases would not mind him as their head coach. To say they he can not coach is a pot shot that might be enjoyed by the rival fan bases, but it is a sports slander that should not be allowed by a man of main stream media. So before we throw Krzyzewski, or any other coach that has had a good career, under the bus because of a couple of bad losses let’s look at the bigger picture. Then again we do not have to, fortunately the people that matter do that for us.
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