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NEW ORLEANS — At approximately 10:05 p.m Central Time, Dean Smith was reportedly high-fiving everyone and anyone around him up in hoop heaven, and Michael Jordan was gleefully shutting off the last showing of Coach K’s version of “The Last Dance.”
North Carolina had beaten Duke 81-77 in Tobacco Road’s Game of the Ages in the late Final Four semifinal Saturday night when Mike Krzyzewski failed to paint Carolina blue in an epic of a classic.
He ambled over on 75-year-old legs to Hubert Davis for the last handshake of his iconic legendary career, and began a slow, empty walk off the Caesars Superdome floor, accompanied by haunting sounds that hopefully for his sake did not remind him of Chapel Hill at its most defiant and most euphoric, unaware that his successor, Jon Scheyer, had gotten into a verbal argument with Carolina official Pat Sullivan and had to be separated.
So Coach K doesn’t get to go out the right way, doesn’t get to play Kansas on Monday night, doesn’t get to go out the way John Wooden did back in 1975 with his 10th national championship.
No one last climb up the ladder.
No one last smile.
No 1,203rd win.
No sixth national championship.
The North Carolina Tar Heels — especially Caleb Love and Armando Bacot — proved a tad too quick, too dogged, too clutch, too tough, too good.
Paolo Banchero had leaped high to bat an offensive rebound back out to Wendell Moore Jr., who buried a 3-pointer. Duke 74, Carolina 73, with 1:18 left.
Amid the din, Coach K sat. Scheyer stood and barked defensive instructions.
Last minute now.
Bacot fouled out. Love buried a 3-pointer. Coach K stood.
He was down by three with 10.4 seconds left in his career.
One last timeout now. Trevor Keels shooting two. Missed the second. Now Love at the line for two.
Coach K gave instructions for Jeremy Roach. Love made the first. Timeout.
Now 7.8 seconds left in Coach K’s career.
Love made the second.
Coach K got up from the stool, his career over.
“The winner was gonna be joyous and the loser was gonna be in agony,” a red-eyed Coach K said.
His players were crying on the court and in the locker room, and he loved them for it.
“It’s not about me,” Coach K said, “especially right now.”
With 5:18 left, Bacot had fallen under the Duke basket after stepping on Leaky Black’s foot and had to be helped off with his 19 rebounds. It was Duke 65, Carolina 65. Bacot returned limping on his ankle soon after. Of course he would.
Duke-North Carolina in the Final Four amounted to the heavyweight championship of one another, not unlike the Ali-Frazier 3, Thrilla in Manila.
They stood in the center of the ring and launched haymakers, one after the other. Duke wobbled North Carolina. North Carolina wobbled Duke right back.
Every punch, every possession, mattered; 70,000 eyewitnesses to history were afraid to blink. Villains on each side; heroes on each side. A test of will and skill; a test of grace under pressure, poise in the noise. Every Duke fan seemed to be a Cameron Crazy. Every Carolina fan seemed to sneer: How dare Coach K beat us now 40 years after M.J. won Dean his first national championship in this building?
Two basketball schools with proud and rich traditions desperate to win this game as much as any game they have ever wanted to win in their lives.
The roar was deafening, and it was relentless.
A giant cheer greeted Coach K when he appeared on the overhead scoreboard moments before Armageddon tipped off. He was wearing a blue top with black pants.
“It will be sad if he loses,” retired Adolph Rupp said before Wooden’s UCLA beat his Kentucky at the San Diego Sports Arena, “but he’s got enough of those darn trophies.”
Wooden didn’t have any Farewell Tour. His lasted two days following a Saturday announcement that he would coach one more game. Wooden had reportedly told UCLA athletic director J.D. Morgan before the season that he would retire at the end of the season.
Wooden addressed his team in the locker room with a cracked voice after winning the championship: “I’m bowing out,” he said. “I don’t want to. I have to.”
He was 64 years old. He had coached UCLA for 27 years. At the postgame press conference, he said: “I’m going to try and keep busy, occupied, and hope I have enough things so I won’t go stale. I won’t coach again, ever, but I always hope to be involved in some way with basketball.”
It was always easy for Coach K to tell his players and everyone else that it was not more important because it was North Carolina, because North Carolina is always important. But never more important than on this occasion. If you are Duke, if you are Coach K, you never want to lose to, say, Saint Peter’s in any Final Four. Left unsaid is that if you are Duke, if you are Coach K, you never want to lose to North Carolina in a Final Four, because it will haunt you forever.
Nothing that happened on this night could possibly have affected the man’s legacy. It was defined a long time ago. He adapted through the generations, whether his players stayed four years or they stayed one year. He endured, he stood the test of time.
When Coach K walked into the room, everyone knew it. And wherever and whenever he showed up, a damn good team seemed to show up with him.
He was Bobby Knight with empathy and compassion. He became the gold standard of his sport, with three Olympic gold medals to boot. He was a program builder and a young man builder.
His very last team honored him with the way it rallied down the stretch the way a Duke team is supposed to.
“I’ve been blessed to be in the arena,” Coach K said. “And when you’re in the arena, you’re either going to come out feeling great or you’re going to feel agony, but you always will feel great about being in the arena.”
We’ll never see the likes of him again.
“I’m not thinking about my career right now,” Coach K said.
Greatest of all time, sixth championship or no sixth championship.
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