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Retiring Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski permanently severed his 50-year relationship with fellow Hall of Famer Bob Knight, his Army coach and mentor, after an encounter at a 2015 reunion that one former Krzyzewski teammate called “a disaster,” according to a new book by New York Post sports columnist Ian O’Connor.
In “Coach K: The Rise and Reign of Mike Krzyzewski,” O’Connor reports the West Point reunion at the Pinehurst, N.C. golf resort to celebrate Knight’s first team turned ugly when Krzyzewski – apparently unaware that Knight was angry over several perceived slights — approached the three-time national champion at Indiana in an attempt to engage him in conversation, only to be ignored.
“Knight was sitting in a corner table…and Mike went over to him and got down on a knee just to see him eye to eye, and everyone else kind of continued their conversations,” said former Army player John Mikula. “Mike got up, walked away, and went over and stood outside the room and said, ‘That’s the last f–king time. That’s it.’ …And it was a disaster.”
Jim Oxley, Krzyzewski’s old West Point backcourt partner, recalled the scene.
“Mike came in and said, ‘How are you doing, Coach?’ And [Knight] barely even hesitated and continued with his story, that kind of thing,” Oxley said. “That was the start of it. That was one of many straws that broke the camel’s back. I remember Mike walking out of there saying, ‘That’s it. I’ll never do this again.’”
O’Connor reports Knight had been upset that Krzyzewski, who led the US to three gold medals, didn’t hand off his Olympic coaching duties after winning his first gold in Beijing in 2008, and that Coach K didn’t respond to his offer to scout international opponents for him.
In 2011, Krzyzewski broke Knight’s all-time Division I record for victories with win No. 903. He now has nearly 1,200.
The Krzyzewski-Knight relationship began to unravel at the 1992 Final Four, where Knight barely acknowledged a stunned Coach K in a drive-by handshake after Duke beat Indiana, and then completely ignored him when they passed each other to and from their postgame press conferences. Knight had a letter hand-delivered to Krzyzewski that night expressing his disappointment over a published report that said Coach K had been eager to establish an identity separate from his mentor’s. Knight had helped Krzyzewski land head coaching jobs at Army and at Duke.
“I’ve never seen Coach K hurt by anything like that,” said his longtime sports information director and current St. John’s athletic director Mike Cragg.
Krzyzewski, 75, is in his 42nd and final season at Duke. Knight, 81, lives in Bloomington, Ind.; his health has reportedly been in decline in recent years. O’Connor reports the two legendary coaches would attempt to reconcile more than once – Coach K had Knight present him at his 2001 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony – before the Pinehurst incident ended it all.
“He was finally done with Coach Knight,” said Coach K’s son-in-law and former Duke assistant Chris Spatola.
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