In a rare public speaking appearance, former Duke men’s basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski gave a talk at the Duke University Chapel Thursday night as part of the William Preston Few lecture series, which aims to bridge “faith and learning.” The lecture was moderated by Rev. Dr. Luke Powery, Dean of Duke University Chapel and Professor of Homiletics and African and African American Studies.
Since retiring, Krzyzewski has stayed busy. Outside of athletics, he is the co-founder of the Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics, a Professor of the Practice of Leadership at the Fuqua School of Business and has been on the board of directors at the V Foundation since its inception.
Krzyzewski began by discussing a key pillar of his life: faith. He grew up in Chicago and was raised Catholic by his parents. He has also been married to his wife Mickie, a baptist, for 56 years. But his journey with faith was not always linear.
At 17, he questioned his belief. It felt too restrictive, especially for a young high school basketball star.
“Everything was a sin,” Krzyzewski said. “You couldn’t think [or] move.”
Krzyzewski then shared how he got through it: After he sat down with Father Rog, the legendary head coach’s longtime religious mentor, his faith was realigned.
“He said ‘What’s wrong with you?’” Krzyzewski said. “I said ‘Father, come on man, you can’t do anything. How do you live?’ We sat down and he spent an hour with me and I started to understand. I get chills thinking about it.”
From there, the conversation shifted to Krzyzewski’s time at West Point. For the first time, he found himself surrounded by people of a variety of faiths.
“I found out going to West Point being with a whole bunch of different guys, different religions,” Krzyzewski said. “There are a bunch of roads that lead to good faith.”
Later Powery pivoted to discuss one of Krzyzewski’s books, where he dissects the power of words. The lecturer shared his two key words of the day. One was attitude.
“All of us here in this amazing chapel, we’re all the same because of one thing. We all have control over our attitude,” Krzyzewski said. “[If] we all left here with a great attitude, you’d have more smiles on your faces… [and] it doesn’t cost a darn thing.”
The second was why.
“If you’re lucky enough, you live your why,” Krzyzewski said. “I wanted to be a teacher and a coach and I’ve been that my entire life. I love what I do, but that doesn’t mean you love everything that you do doing what you love. There’s a price to be paid.”
He finds nowadays people are concerned more with the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of success than they are with ‘why.’
“Remember why you’re doing something, and ‘how’ and ‘what’ will be better.”
From all his years as an incredibly talented coach, Krzyzewski then shared a few important takeaways from the second key pillar of his life: leadership.
While he was at the United States Military Academy, he faced a six-week period in the summer called the Beast Barracks, designed to test people’s limits and emphasize mental strength. The mantra they used was “failure is not my destination.”
“Whenever you get knocked down, you get up, and you either figure out a new way you do it or you form a team,” Krzyzewski said. “Even when we were 38-47 my first three years, I believed we were going to win. And thank God President Sanford and Tom Butters believed that too. A lot of fans did not believe it at that time.”
While under the leadership of Bobby Knight as a West Point player, he learned the importance of preparation.
“You should have the will to win, but not everybody has the will to prepare to win… I love that,” Krzyzewski said. “So every time I went on the court with my team here at Duke or at West Point, I felt we were worthy of winning … and I learned all that when I was 18 to 22, how lucky can you be?”
Aside from his love of coaching teams, Coach K relishes watching teams develop. When he was coaching Team USA and worked with LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade, he offered some commentary.
“I don’t believe in the expression ‘leave your egos at the door.’ Why would I want you to come in and not be you?” Krzyzewski said. “But I told them to put them all under one ego umbrella, the US. If we do that and we have one ego, we’ll rule the world.”
After much reflection on his career, Krzyzewski realized that every time he turned down one opportunity, another one rolled around.
He pushed aside a job offer from the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004 as well as an offer from the Boston Celtics in 1990. When he entered his role with Duke, his starting salary was $40,000.
“Twenty-five years later, they’re offering 40 million, crazy right?” Krzyzewski said. “[But] I just couldn’t leave.”
This love for the college game paid off. Those next two years led him to winning his first national championships with Duke. But he also has something to admit about the choices he would’ve made.
“If I was that age now, I would have gone because college sports are just different,” Krzyzewski said. “Not the product, but it’s professional now, so if I’m gonna be the professional, I’d rather do it at the highest level.”
When thinking about the current landscape of college sports, Krzyzewski still has a lot of admiration for Jon Scheyer’s role.
“I said [to Scheyer] ‘You’re doing this a heck of a lot better than I would have done,’” Krzyzewski said. “Each year is different for him, this year is not like last year… I would have always said, ‘Man, it used to be that way’ and I said ‘It never used to be for you’”.
The evening then proceeded with audience questions. One individual asked how Krzyzewski handles stress. The key components for him are the two Fs — faith and family.
“Whatever the heck is happening, there’s a higher calling,” Krzyzewski said. “You want to be in touch with that higher calling because it gives you balance so that you can handle this stuff better.”
Eager to share more with the audience, the twelve-time National Coach of the Year discussed the three As of leadership. The first A is agility, where players are able to make good reads on the court.
The second A is adaptability, especially in regards to communication.
“God kinda had some fun with me in that I kept getting older and the guys I coached stayed the same age. I don’t know how it happened but it did,” Krzyzewski said. “I would ask my younger assistants ‘Tell me a couple artists.’ Then ask a guy, ‘Hey, are you listening to so and so?’ … So then players start to think ‘Hey, coach is pretty cool.’”
The final A is accountability. “People hear accountability and they think of something bad,” Krzyzewski said. “When you’re holding people accountable, say good things to them, but it’s also important to provide constructive criticism.”
The coach closed his talk with the advice that laid the foundation for the trajectory of his life.
The night before his first day of high school, his mother Emily told him:
“Michael, sit down. Tomorrow, make sure you go on the right bus.”
“Ma, I know the city,” Krzyzewski responded.
“That’s not the bus I’m talking about,” his mother said. “The bus you’re gonna have the rest of your life, or you’re gonna get on someone else’s bus. Only let good people on your bus and only get on the bus of good people.”
To this day, Krzyzewski has always been in search of good people to get on his bus.
As Krzyzewski closed his remarks, the crowd thanked him with a standing ovation, an unsurprising reaction to such a well-known speaker.