Coach K who? Duke’s baton now fully passed to Jon Scheyer
He brought his Duke program here 13 times, winning five national titles and becoming fully interwoven with not just the program, but the university as well.
Duke. K. It was one and the same.
Then, in 2022, after 42 seasons, he retired and — at least when it comes to Blue Devils basketball — all but disappeared.
Despite the program being run the past three seasons by Jon Scheyer, a star on Duke’s 2010 national championship team who later spent nine years as Coach K’s assistant, and Krzyzewski maintaining not just a residence locally, but an office on campus, the now-78-year-old has been to practice just a few times and didn’t attend a single game until this season.
It has all been part of Krzyzewski’s plan to step into the shadows and allow his old program to become Scheyer’s program by avoiding the hovering presence of a legend.
It is also, many believe, a reason that Duke is not just back in the Final Four, but the betting favorite to clip the nets Monday, under the 38-year-old Scheyer.
“Coach K has given me amazing room to be myself,” Scheyer said Thursday. “I think he understands, when he’s around, just the gravity and the people looking at him and all that. It’s been, like, a beautiful thing, very organic and natural with Coach K and I. The fact [is] we’re still tight as could be. ”
For Krzyzewski, this couldn’t be easy.
He was famously in control of every facet of his program through the years, calculating and seizing every last advantage. His life was basketball, especially Duke basketball. Scheyer said he regularly calls Krzyzewski for advice. K also occasionally speaks to the players when he runs into them around the basketball facility and has addressed the team each season.
Everything else, though, is hands-off, a fact that requires the discipline of a West Point grad executing a well-thought-out plan that K believed would most benefit Scheyer and therefore most benefit Duke basketball.
“Not many coaches truly want the program to succeed once they’re done,” Scheyer said. “I think part of his legacy forever will be the fact that he set our program up for such success, and we’re able to be in a Final Four in Year 3. It’s a credit to him and how the succession has gone down.”
The challenge of succeeding a successful coach has plagued programs and franchises for years. Maintaining greatness is always difficult. Finding successive elite coaches is, too. It can be particularly challenging when the replacement is a young coach in his first job, learning in the spotlight of expectations. Krzyzewski, for example, won 10 and 11 games, respectively, in his second and third seasons. Few paid attention.
Scheyer is 89-21 (.809) as a head coach, proving himself both on the sidelines as well as on the recruiting trail — with freshman sensation Cooper Flagg, in particular. Scheyer hasn’t taken the remnants of a Krzyzewski team to the Final Four; this is all his work. Just one player, senior center Stanley Borden, carries over from Krzyzewski’s final team in 2021-22.
“I think most people want to be the guy who follows the guy who follows the guy, right?” Borden said Thursday. “The first guy who followed the guy will take all the blame when things don’t go well.”
Krzyzewski said on his Sirius XM radio show that he and his wife, Mickie, will be attending Saturday’s semifinal against Houston. He did not attend a game during Scheyer’s first two seasons but returned this season, including sitting next to actor and Duke alum Ken Jeong at a game in Las Vegas. He hasn’t been to a NCAA tournament game yet, however.
“I’m planning on being there to watch ’em,” Krzyzewski said on the show. “I try to stay out of it publicly, just to give our program a chance to keep moving in its direction. But I want to be there for Scheyer. … Look, I want Duke to win. So I want to be there in support of them.”
That the news broke as part of Krzyzewski’s own radio program is a sign that he has hardly slowed down. He’s still extremely visible in national advertising campaigns and with speaking engagements.
Yet when it comes to Duke Basketball, there is no question who is in charge.
Borden said that there are similarities between the men — Scheyer, after all, still calls Krzyzewski, his “Coach” — but that the program has fully transitioned.
“They’re both deadly competitive,” Borden said. “I think they just have very different styles. The personalities are very different. … I can see the through line from one to the other. Coach Scheyer just spins it and says it and does it in his own way.
“What I can say from knowing Coach Scheyer, both when he was associate head coach then head coach, is that he is a basketball savant. He just sees the game differently.”
That is what has stood out across college basketball. Maybe it’s the lack of Krzyzewski sitting two rows behind the bench, or maybe it’s just that Duke (35-3) plays such a brilliant brand of basketball that this team in particular stands on its own.
“I’ll tell you how good Jon Scheyer has been: Nobody talks about him replacing Coach K anymore,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “I think that speaks volumes for him.”
Scheyer said he has appreciated that Krzyzewski has begun to feel comfortable coming to a couple of games and hopes K is in attendance Saturday.
“I want him to be proud when he watches us,” Scheyer said.
Maybe Krzyzewski no longer worrying about overshadowing his protégé serves as the ultimate sign that the mission has been accomplished and the baton in Durham has fully been passed.
