NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. — At the age of 69, Mike Krzyzewski has already won five NCAA championships and two Olympic gold medals as a head coach.
The Duke and Team USA head coach has never won both in the same basketball season but that could all change across the next nine months.
Team USA will be the favorite to take home gold at the Rio Olympics next month, while Duke has already been installed by many outlets as the preseason No. 1 team in college basketball for 2016-17.
On April 3, it’s possible Coach K could be cutting down the nets with the Blue Devils in Phoenix eight months after he won gold in Rio.
Team USA will reconvene next week in Las Vegas for training camp and will then make stops in Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago and Houston before departing for Rio.
Though some big-name players (see: LeBron James, Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul) opted out of the Olympics, the team still features Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony and Kyrie Irving, among others.
“I’ve coached Kevin on three different teams — on a [USA] Select team, then he was in Istanbul [the World Championship team] and London in ’12 [for the Olympics] so Kevin’s easy to play with,” Krzyzewski told me last week at the Peach Jam, where he was recruiting. “It doesn’t have to be about him and it is about him.”
With Durant having stunned the basketball world by joining the Golden State Warriors, he will now be training and playing with two future teammates in Draymond Green and Klay Thompson.
Asked if he thought that would help the Warriors going forward, Coach K said, “When you have a guy who’s that good and it doesn’t have to be about him, he’s good having everybody else do something good.”
Was he surprised that Durant chose the Warriors?
“I’m not surprised at anything,” the coach said.
As for Irving, his former point guard at Duke, Coach K said he was pleased to see him win an NBA championship last month with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“He’s healthy and he’s in great shape,” Coach K said of the former St. Patrick’s High School star who is helping to fund his alma mater. “He played with the best player in the world [James] and he played and won a championship and he was as important as anybody in doing it. And to do all that by the time you’re 24 is pretty darn good….I knew when I saw him in high school he was going to be a great player.”
He added: “Kyrie is very, very intelligent and poised. Besides the handling the ball, he can shoot the heck out of the ball. He makes layups. he can play with the ball but he can play off the ball. He’s as good a guard as there is right now.”
As for Duke, the Blue Devils were installed as a 9/2 favorite to cut down the nets in Phoenix by Bovada, and are just about everybody’s pick to win it next year.
They return Grayson Allen, Luke Kennard, Matt Jones, Chase Jeter and Amile Jefferson, while adding a top-2 recruiting class featuring Harry Giles, Jayson Tatum, Javin Delaurier, Frank Jackson and late-addition Marques Bolden. (Fellow freshmen Antonio Vrankovic and Jack White are expected to red-shirt, a source said.)
The 6-foot-10 Giles and the 6-8 Tatum are projected top-5 picks by DraftExpress.com.
Asked how deep his team looked, Coach K said: “We’ll see. I won’t know until we get them and start practice. Harry’s not ready to play yet and I’m not a coach that has preconceived notions or a system that I’m going to plug them into.
“I’d rahter see how they play in our preseason and then work on a system that would be personalized for them. That’s the fun I get out of coaching but also makes it better for them.”
He added: “It will be a deep team unless there’s injuries, thank goodness. We didn’t have one last year.”
The way both of his teams are shaping up, don’t be surprised if Coach K cuts down the nets in both Rio and Phoenix this season.
