Originally Posted by
davekay1971
Jason's post hits the nail on the head. I was having some of the same thoughts, and was going to save them for after the season.
Basically, here's my thinking. There's very little that makes Duke being one of the nation's best programs year after year a guarantee. While we have an administration, an athletic department, and an alumni base all committed to maintaing a successful basketball program, achieving that success is no guarantee. Achieving the kind of success we've had for going on 30 years is almost impossible. How do I know it's almost impossible? Because the only program I can think of that has been as good as Duke for as long as Duke is, unfortunately, the one 8 miles down the road. Syracuse, Kansas, and Kentucky come close, but both have had notable down-times in the last 30 years (Kansas and Syracuse less so than Kentucky). UCLA had a marvellous run under Wooden, but it was about 15 years. Similarly with Indiana under Knight (closer to 20 years), UConn under Calhoun (20 years and uncounted questions of integrity), etc. The landscape of college basketball is filled with programs that were once great (State), once bordered on greatness (Maryland), could be great (Baylor), are great or really good right now but who knows about five years from now, etc.
At Duke, we've enjoyed an almost unparalleled run of success. It isn't the name Duke, or the fact that we went there, or the gothic wonderland campus, or really even a motivated athletic department and alumni base that makes it happen. Heck, there are plenty of nice colleges on pretty campuses with motivated ADs and alumni bases out there.
To my mind, there's one thing, and one thing only that has made THIS run at Duke possible (giving full credit for the Bubas years and Foster's marvellous 78 team). That's Coach K.
We all know, or should know, the state of Duke basketball when K arrived. The ACC was owned by Dean Smith and Carolina. They were the crown jewel. Up in College Park, Lefty was going strong. State had peaked and dipped but was still good. UVa was a powerhouse under Terry Holland. Duke was a mess, although a mess with a proud history. Sound familiar, State fans? In fact, look at State when Jimmy V stepped down. They quickly went into a decline, and have struggled mightily, for going on 20 years, to right the ship. Because they couldn't find the right coach (yes, I know, Sendek had them competitive, but, as I will always argue, State has the right to want to compete on even footing with Duke and Carolina, and Sendek wasn't going to get them there).
Duke got monumentally lucky with K. He could recruit. He could coach. He had integrity. More than anything, and something there's no way Butters could have known, the man could motivate. By 1986 he had Duke competing for a national championship, and the program has been at the top of college basketball's food chain ever since.
There's a reason that we all fret about who the next coach is going to be. K is in his 60s. As active and dedicated as the man is, one day he's going to retire. There is no guarantee, none whatsoever, that Duke is going to maintain this level of consistent excellence once he does. Realistically, the odds are against it. Oh, Duke's probably not going to fall like State did. K's coaching family is too smart and too big, and there are plenty of smart young coaches outside of his coaching family that would saw off a leg to coach at Duke. But the reality is that nobody in the history of college basketball has done what Mike Krzyzewski has done. That means it's damned hard to do, and damned hard to maintain once he's retired.
Think about what that means, that nobody in history has done what he has done. Wooden had more titles, and no one will catch that. Must have been fun to be a UCLA fan for those 12 years. Dean Smith, Bobby Knight, Adolph Rupp...Krzyzewski has surpassed them all.
It's been great to be a Duke fan for the last 28 years and counting (taking it back to 84, when the program really began to turn around)
We all know the numbers, the accomplishments, so I'm not going to recount them. But, for those of us who get frustrated, get ticked, wish Coach would do this or do that differently (and that would be all of us, including yours truly), take a moment to step back, before the tournament begins for Duke, and think about that fact. We've all been able to be fans of the single most successful coach in the history of college basketball. There is no guarantee whatsoever that Duke's success will continue, at this level, 10, 20 years into the future. Not that we shouldn't still get frustrated, get ticked, and wish Coach would do this or that differently. But it's also important to really treasure something that is, in all likelihood, once in a lifetime.