THE CULT OF COACH K IS SO ENDURING, A FINAL CONQUEST ISN’T NECESSARY

Already established as the preeminent basketball coach of all time and a legendary American leader and teacher, does it really matter if he retires with a sixth national championship at Duke?

     He calls it a brotherhood. It’s closer to a cult, the religion of Pope K, and it’s chilling that his sixth-floor office overlooks a gothic revivalist gymnasium adorned with the stained glass, quarry stone, archways and brass railings of a cathedral. Mike Krzyzewski wrote in a grade-school assignment, as a son of Catholicism in a working-class Chicago neighborhood, that he wanted to be a priest or an accountant.

     In a way, he became both.

     He has celebrated his version of basketball mass at Duke for 42 seasons, and, in the process, he has accumulated more achievements, collected more reverence, spread more influence, imparted more wisdom and made more impact than any coach in the history of the sport. That would include the college game and the NBA — John Wooden, Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich and the rest — as I’m convinced Krzyzewski would have won championships on the next level had he accepted one of several offers, such as a lucrative flyer from the Los Angeles Lakers that would have wed him to Kobe Bryant’s final 12 years. He has won five national titles and led three Olympic teams loaded with moneyed egotists to gold medals, but by remaining at a smug private research university, he was able to perform a continuous sermon that outlasted eight U.S. Presidents, touched five decades, inspired a nation and enriched countless lives. And unlike some of those presidents and many of his contemporaries in a cesspool industry, he has avoided any explosion of scandal, protected from evil and disgrace in his self-swaddled cocoon.

     It’s appropriate, actually, that his final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium ended not with a coronation but a loss to blood rival North Carolina. It will allow him one last chance to teach. Only Coach K could turn a sad moment into a powerful memory. Gathered on the court with his family, consoled by wife Mickie and his three daughters and waves of grandchildren, he spoke to the audience after a defeat that crushed the brotherhood, the students and even Jerry Seinfeld. Yep, the quirky comedian was among notables making the scene in Durham, where the average ticket price topped $5,000 and kids sleeping outside for free tickets in the famed Krzyzewskiville campground created a $20-million real estate bubble, reported the Wall Street Journal.

     As tears flowed in all directions, a student yelled, “We love you, coach!’’ Krzyzewski was having none of the adoration.

     “No, no, I don’t love me right now. I’m sorry about this afternoon,’’ he said, interrupted by more encouragement. “No, no, NO! Please everyone be quiet! Let me just say, it’s unacceptable. Today was unacceptable, but the season has been very acceptable. The season isn’t over, all right?”

     The cult was now a mob scene, stoked by a pep talk that will go down in lore if Paolo Banchero and the Blue Devils usher him into retirement with a sixth championship. Turning to the 96 former players who ventured to the cathedral, Krzyzewski said, “We didn’t play well. And there are times when you didn’t, either. Hopefully today — for this program right now — is a great learning experience. First of all, look what you’re a part of. Are you kidding me? We need to fight for Duke, we need to fight for the brotherhood, and we need to fight with all our might the rest of this season.

     “Then I’ll be ready to get the hell out of here.”

     You don’t have to like Coach K. Haters are everywhere, disgusted by a perceived self-importance, and they’ll insist to their graves that Duke cheats like everyone else when a money-grabber like Zion Williamson shows up on campus. But you’d better damn well respect him. His methods have endured, even when hard-core authoritarianism no longer works in sports, because he was smart enough to adjust and adapt. As basketball evolved, Krzyzewski evolved. Oh, he still tortured his players, such as the night he ordered them to his house after a loss and took turns railing on each, telling Jayson Tatum he should quit because his head already was in the NBA clouds. “There’s some PTSD there,’’ JJ Redick said as he chatted on his podcast with the Boston Celtics star. “This is bringing back all the memories.’’

     But the most important decision of Krzyzewski’s career was to extract the best attributes of his fiery mentor, Bob Knight, and disregard the worst — the relentless bullying, the constant fear of physical abuse, the choking and head-butting. Their subsequent relationship divorce, which revealed Knight as a false friend and petty piece of feces, enabled his ascension to the heights of his profession while Knight was self-destructing in shame. And it allowed him to relate to teenaged players as they became more empowered, from the one-and-done mechanism that forced him to play the short-term recrutiing game like John Calipari. Coach K could have tapped into the NBA anytime he wanted, but he preferred his own kingdom, his own brotherhood, even when ailments made him think twice about mortality.

     He is getting out just before the trap door slams on him, at 75. With his sport caked in sludge and veering into perilous legal-gambling seas, no one blinks when Auburn is slammed with major sanctions and giddily remains in the national title hunt, with scoundrel coach Bruce Pearl revered on campus and rewarded with new riches by the administration. The best high school players soon will be heading straight to the league — LeBron James, who hailed Krzyzewski as “the G.O.A.T.’’ in a congratulatory weekend tweet, wants to play with son Bronny in the NBA instead of sending him to Duke or Ohio State. The coaching game is best left to the youthful and energetic, which explains why Jon Scheyer, 34, won Pope K’s blessing as his heavily burdened successor. College hoops must separate itself from the NCAA, but that can’t happen until March Madness TV deals with CBS and Turner expire in 2032. You think colleges want to pass on a $1.1 billion annual pot?

     “I don’t even know who you talk to about it,” Krzyzewski said last week. “It’s like a bunch of ships out there, but where do you port, where do you dock? It’s a troubling time, really. I’m probably not on top of it like I would normally be. To be quite frank, I don’t want to think about it anymore. It’s been very frustrating, kind of a failing in my time, that we were unable to have a bigger influence, me and my brothers in coaching.”

     He also was torn up inside when it was time to choose his heir. The Duke administration wanted Harvard coach Tommy Amaker, one of Krzyzewski’s original star players and a former assistant. Along with having a prestigious Ivy League pedigree, Amaker is Black. But rather stunningly, Pope K stepped in and asked Amaker to reject the job, perhaps because he is approaching 57 and hasn’t been around Duke’s program since 1997. Those are valid reasons, given Scheyer’s youth and his current seat beside Kryzewski, but the decision left Amaker “heartbroken’’ according to Ian O’Connor’s book, “Coach K: The Rise and Reign of Mike Krzyzewski.’’ That night, he couldn’t coach in the second half against Wake Forest. His daughter, Debbie Savarino, told Wright Thompson in his classic profile for ESPN: “He 100 percent has that guilt. ‘Did I do something that caused any harm that would bother Tommy? I love Tommy. He’s one of my boys. I don’t ever want anything to hurt my guys.’ ”

     The fanfare around his Cameron climax, which Krzyzewski described as “surreal,’’ raises questions about whether his players will be overwhelmed by pressure to produce his sixth national championship. “It sucks we lost,’’ said Banchero, projected as possibly the top pick in the NBA draft. “We’re looking forward to going on the road and making up for it.’’ One stop in the journey likely will be Chicago, site of the NCAA Midwest Regional later this month, where a new cycle of commotion awaits in an arena just down Damen Avenue from his childhood home.

     But when considering his massive volumes of work, including almost 1,200 victories and 12 Final Fours, does it really matter if he wins one last time? It would be a magnificent and fitting story, an ending he deserves, but you sense the journey itself is more important to him than how it finishes. “I’m glad this is over,’’ he said Saturday night, eyeing the ACC tournament in Brooklyn. “Let’s just coach and see what happens in the tournaments.’’ This is the sort of crapshoot year when any one of 15 teams could win it all, and who wouldn’t love a championship game featuring Duke and Gonzaga — the program that has tried to channel all things Coach K?

     Besides, haven’t we already witnessed his famous final scene? Mike Krzyzewski painted the definitive self-portrait, inside his cathedral, when he showered Mickie and his family with appreciation. He and his wife have been married 53 years, a miracle in any walk of life.

     “There's no way you can understand the commitment my family has made to me. You don't do this without that level of support,’’ he said. “Because my family allowed it. They knew I loved it. And I love them. I never heard my daughters say, ‘You love basketball more than me.' Because it's not true. I love my family more than basketball ... but my family loves basketball."

     Seems he has won the ultimate championship. He can go now.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.