Originally Posted by
jimsumner
Great story. We call it "Getting K'd."
But let me share a K story from the beginning of his Duke tenure that supports this statement.
K's first Duke team had four seniors inherited from Bill Foster; Gene Banks, Kenny Dennard, Jim Suddath and walk-on Larry Linney. We all remember Banks and Dennard but maybe not Suddath. He was a skinny 6-6 lefty from the Atlanta area. Pretty good shooter, pretty good athlete but not strong enough to play inside and not skilled enough to play guard. Which meant he backed up Banks and Dennard, which meant he didn't play a lot.
Fast forward to the week before Senior Day, which turned out to be a memorable win over Carolina. The Durham paper ran profiles on the seniors. I'm not 100 percent sure of the writer, so I won't mention names except that I'm pretty sure it wasn't Al Featherston. Anyway this writer suggested that Suddath hadn't really lived up to his potential, wouldn't be a substantial loss and so forth.
Now, Krzyzewski hadn't recruited Suddath and in some respects didn't have any significant investment in Suddath's reputation. But Suddath was and is a great guy--he became a minister--who worked hard, did what he was asked and was a valuable leadership presence on the team.
So, Krzyzewski very strongly defended Jim Suddath and his contributions to the team. Just like you said, he stood up for his guys, from the very beginning, not just the stars but everyone. And that was evident from the very beginning of his stay at Duke.