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THERE ARE RIVALRIES, AND THERE ARE MOMENTS THAT EXPLODE OUR HEADS
Nothing could be more dramatic than Mike Krzyzewski, a true coaching G.O.A.T., trying to end his career with a national title — as blood rival North Carolina plays spoiler and America watches en masse
The ultimate rivalry, of course, would be Will Smith vs. Vladimir Putin, with Chris Rock dishing insults in both directions. Not far behind would be the self-driving Ubers that kill pedestrians. Or the Karen in the grocery line who shouts down the cashier over cat food. There are attack-dog lawyers who belong on the list. Ron DeSantis does, too, vs. the pretty-boy California governor destined to be his election opponent someday. I’d be remiss not to include the current iteration of Crips and Bloods.
All of which makes it more important than ever to have classic rivalries in sports, detached from everyday life madness. They are easier on the nerves, unless you’re directly involved, such as the Duke and North Carolina camps that will be equipped Saturday night with suicide prevention specialists and primal-scream therapy tanks. Think I’m kidding? For them, by comparison, Armageddon is a JV warmup.
Welcome to the head-exploding, surreal culmination of what always has been the greatest rivalry in college sports — sorry, Southeastern Conference football churchgoers, THIS just means more. I’d go so far, given the historic ramifications, that no rivalry game has been more monumental in our land, matched in recent times only by the Red Sox returning from the 0-3 dead to beat the Yankees and halt their World Series curse. Two elite basketball programs, the bluest of the bluebloods, sit 10.3 miles apart on U.S. Highway 15-501 and have played each other 257 times. Yet, somehow, they’ve never dueled in the NCAA tournament. North Carolina has won six national championships. Duke has won five, all under Mike Krzyzewski, who is retiring next week to a Napa Valley vineyard and the rest of his life.
If he and a lot of us had our way, he’d replace Mark Emmert as president of a reimagined NCAA, with Krzyzewski taking a memorable round of shots at his abysmal leadership that will resonate long after this Final Four. “I have many questions,’’ he said of Emmert, “and the first one is, where are we going? And who is in charge?”
Evidently, there is more than one scorching conflict in New Orleans.
Nothing much will be determined this weekend, only how one of this country’s coaching G.O.A.T.s departs his kingdom. If Krzyzewski wins the semifinal collision, he exhales and advances to Monday night’s title game knowing he got the best of his blood rival, leaving him one victory from an all-time triumphant ending. If Carolina wins under first-year coach Hubert Davis, who quickly has made us forget Roy Williams and Dean Smith, Coach K’s legacy won’t change, but his famous final scene is doused, which would give Carolina the eternal satisfaction of sending him off with a defeat and prompt similar celebrations among Duke haters everywhere.
He should stop trying to claim the story isn’t about him. “I didn’t do this season to have a storybook,’’ Krzyzewski said during his Thursday media session. “I did it because I wanted to coach one more year and I wanted to have a good succession plan for our program. We’ve won 32 games, and my guys have been terrific. So very thankful that I had this level of youngster this year. They really get along well.’’ Anyone who knows him, as I have since he was a rising coach whose name was impossible to pronounce or spell, realizes his passion is about to burn like never before. He cannot bear to lose his final game, though he says he hasn’t thought about ending his 42-year Duke career with a sixth walk up the ladder to the nets.
“I have not tried to do that,’’ he said, “because then I think you leave a hole somewhere in your preparation for the game on Saturday. I think you have to be all in on Saturday and then accept the consequences of it. And hopefully they're good for us. But I think in approaching it that way, whatever happens then I'll feel good about it.’’
Every legend produced by both programs will be psycho-engrossed by it all, including Michael Jordan, who hit a title-winning jumper for Carolina in the Superdome to kickstart his charmed life. In what only can be viewed as a motivational kick in the ass, a Jordan specialty, he sent word through a friend over dinner this week — hockey great Chris Chelios, who mentioned it on a Chicago radio show — that he “thinks Duke is going to beat them.’’ Disrespecting his own brood only will fuel hype for what ESPN analyst Jay Williams, a former Duke star, calls “the biggest game in college basketball history.’’
Do realize both teams have flaws. Don’t confuse the starpower of this collision with past clashes that featured future NBA icons. But the narrative couldn’t be more dramatic or spellbinding, set up by a stunning Carolina rout that spoiled Krzyzewski’s farewell party at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Coach K has spent the week telling his young, talented team, which has grown up considerably as a testament to his leadership powers at 75, that revenge shouldn’t be the objective. He has been a broken record, in fact: This Final Four is a celebration of the sport, with Villanova and Kansas joining the blueblood gala.
“You can’t go into it (thinking) rivalry or payback,” Krzyzewski said. “We want to win a championship. If we go in with the other two things, we’re not going to win. I haven’t looked at it as us vs. North Carolina. I’ve looked at it as, ‘we’re playing in the Final Four,’ so the history of (the rivalry) I have not paid attention to. It’s the most amazing day in college basketball to bring four champions together and to play for another championship.
“I know there’s going to be TV, radio, a Duke guy, a Carolina guy, and they’re going to be talking stupid stuff to one another — and that means nothing. But that’s what sport for fans is about. It’s not for coaches. And it’s not for players. Let’s just stick to what we’re doing.’’
What it means, in a 2022 context, is that players in their late teens and early 20s must shut down all tech devices. Is that even possible, given the swirl of anxiety? “When you say ‘noise,’ I don't think they've ever -- I don't think a youngster looks at noise as pressure. They look at it as noise. They like a lot of noise. That's why they like mentions and comments. Their pool is not very deep, but it's very expanded,’’ Krzyzewski said. “And so when we say, listen to one voice — like I talked to them this week. I said you only have so much room, mind space where you can get in depth about anything. You can put a lot in your mind but not necessarily deep. So, can you not put in your mind things you will not get deep about and get really deep about what we're doing? And not that they couldn't, because it's harder now. The further you go, it's harder for them. And we've talked about that. But they don't feel pressure. I'm amazed at that, trying to remember being that age. I would have felt pressure and nervous and maybe a little bit afraid. They're not. They are not. I admire that in them. It's not anything we taught them. They brought that to us.’’
Carolina’s team is more experienced, as Duke’s starting five averages 19 years of age. But Davis has the same problem. “I told the guys, you’ve got to turn down or turn off the noise from the phone, the family and the friends and the fans,’’ he said. “And focus on what’s ahead of us.”
What’s ahead is a night that would approach viewership records if the game wasn’t on TBS. By agreeing to let its broadcast partners alternate years of Final Four coverage, the NCAA’s money grab comes at the expense of whopper ratings. It’s just another example of leadership that wanes atop a governing body that was forced by a Supreme Court ruling to let players be compensated via names, images and likenesses. Krzyzewski is as mortified as anyone by the abysmal reign of NCAA president Mark Emmert, who happened to start a press conference as Coach K was finishing his. There was just enough time for one last crack about Emmert’s disturbing lack of progress on Title IX equality that should have been addressed decades ago.
“Good luck with the next one. I am sitting at the edge of my chair in anticipation,’’ Krzyzewski said. “Well, I hope you all bring up … I have many questions. Not that I'm saying (Emmert) shouldn't be (in charge). But what are we doing? What are we doing to make sure we're taking care of all divisions under your roof — men, women, all sports, those that make money and those that just make men and women out of people. And probably that's more important than the other, but you have to do that. So there's balance. And we're understanding that everyone cannot be treated the same. That doesn't mean everyone's not treated fairly. And it's a new day that should have been a new day decades ago. So we've got a lot to make up for."
First and foremost, he has arrived to play Carolina one last time, blood and hubris and final memories at stake. That cannot be downplayed. “The rivalry is real,’’ Davis said. You have two elite programs (10) miles apart, same conference, consistently putting out great teams and programs on and off the court and in the classroom and in the community. So for the first time ever matching up in the Final Four is historic.
“But my thought process and my communication to the players has been none of that. The reason being, it doesn't help us Saturday. What helps us Saturday is our preparation, our practice, and how well we play. The historical factor of us for the first time meeting in the Final Four — the rivalry, Coach K's last year, my first year, that's insignificant to us.’’
Rivalries tend to wane in sports, particularly in the pro leagues, where stars change addresses too often to maintain longstanding heated grudges. Traditional friction tends to play regionally these days, not nationally. But all over America, people still care when Duke is playing North Carolina on a hardcourt, and this time, they’ll do more than care. They will make appointments to clear out a Saturday night.
It’s a hell of a lot more fun, after all, than Ukraine and The Slap.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question 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.