Krzyzewski Is Tasked With Reviving the Gold Standard

U.S. national team coach Mike Krzyzewski hopes to return America to the top of international basketball. (Mike Blake - Reuters)

LAS VEGAS -- Something about Mike Krzyzewski in Las Vegas is so incongruent: The high priest of the college game in the middle of Sin City, where NBA egocentricity, AAU street runners and sneaker-company vermin are all competing for attention and hotel rooms this week.

Amid this carnival of hoop culture, something about Krzyzewski running practice on Jerry Tarkanian's former campus -- the Duke do-gooder in the back yard of the NCAA's ultimate bad dog -- feels out of kilter.

"I had a thought kind of like that when the bus came in the first day of practice," Krzyzewski said. "The battles that we had for those two years with UNLV. And now we're actually practicing here. I didn't share that thought with anybody, but I thought it was interesting."

It's actually necessary. Krzyzewski was brought in to prepare and coach the U.S. national team. But on a deeper level, Coach K is supposed to perform an exorcism of endorsement-driven selfishness, to rid the game of its AND1-gotta-get-mine mentality in hopes that the United States might one day share the basketball again and perhaps not get beat by Olympic powerhouses like Puerto Rico. When you lose to a U.S. territory at the Athens Games, something has gone awry.

Krzyzewski is supposed to make LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade care about winning gold in Beijing, stage of the next Olympics in 2008, but he is also charged with altering how we perceive our elite ballplayers.

"I do feel that all of us have a responsibility to make the game better through this experience," Krzyzewski said. "It's not just about winning."

He kept going on with his basketball idealism, how this brainchild of keeping players in the national-team system for three years could help fix what ails the game on many levels.

"It'll be a process," he said. "We develop this at this level of play, then the stature of U.S. basketball will grow within our country. Potentially, there won't be so many shoe-company and AAU camps in July. Maybe there's USA basketball camps."

"I don't know if we're lost, I just don't think we've kept up internationally with the game," Krzyzewski added. "The NBA game is a good game. But with kids skipping the process of going to college, or shortening it, we haven't filled the gap of skill development and the nuances of the game. I'm not saying the guys are bad, but how to play with one another, the different footwork things that you would learn along the way, somehow these kids get started with AAU in the summers and . . . "

Krzyzewski cuts himself off, saying he has nothing against the Amateur Athletic Union. Why? Because he knows the cattle-call summer tournaments put on by the AAU are ultimately where his next recruiting class will come from. He can't kill the sneaker-company vermin too much, either, because he and Duke have made multimillion-dollar deals with that devil.

Yes, Coach K in Vegas, fixing the game and the players who play it, is a nice angle. Many of the game's greatest players appreciate the way he walks patiently up court to talk with them rather than at them; he has managed to combine old-college-try authority with a deference to NBA lifestyles and personalities that has caught on in less than a week of practice.

But it's not altogether reality -- and Krzyzewski knows it.

Krzyzewski's hands are tied in ways unimaginable in Durham. Players' friends, family, former coaches and the occasional hangers-on ring the periphery of the practice court. One of LeBron's friends here is a likable guy known for organizing high-stakes card games among players. NBA-sponsored cameras follow the team around like a reality show, waiting for that next utterance from players who come and go as they please.

"It's not anything I would -- or should -- change, because they're comfortable with it," Krzyzewski said. "Whether it's being miked, having NBA Entertainment around or anything. I wouldn't allow that for Duke because my kids would be distracted. They would absolutely not pay attention to anything, whereas these guys do that all of the time. They're men. I'm the one who should be making those adjustments."

Krzyzewski has no illusions that he can work his Duke magic and single-handedly change the culture of basketball in the United States. For him, this job is a tremendous arrangement, almost like fantasy camp for college coaches who might want to coach at the next level but don't want to give up their small-town fiefdoms and university control. To keep this NBA job, Krzyzewski is not beholden to any one superstar; he can replace that malcontent with another superstar. And because he does not coach in the league, he doesn't have any agenda beyond building a team. Plus, unlike Larry Brown, Krzyzewski will not disassociate himself from his players when they fall apart against Lithuania in a qualifier. Part of who he is involves going down with the ship.

And if he brings home gold in 2008, the great Coach K -- not Pat Riley or Phil Jackson or any other big-name NBA coach -- is the man who reestablished international dominance, who fixed all that ails America's game.

Wish him luck. Between these AAU, Nike and Reebok characters loitering in the lobbies this week, you just hope Mike Krzyzewski remembered to bring his rosary beads to the desert.