An Oral History of Mike Krzyzewski's 1,000 Wins

Gil Corrano, Sports Reporter, The West Point Gazette
“I covered his first game as a head coach – Army versus Lehigh – in 1975. Army had been 3-22 the season before and no one was expecting much out of this new first-timer. But they beat Lehigh by 27 points in the season opener. Afterward, I caught up with him and asked him how it felt, you know, to be turning things around. I’ll never forget it; he looked me the eye and said ‘Now I have to win 999 more.’ I remember that I laughed, because I thought it was a joke, but then he held up a walnut and crushed it in his fist and let the shattered shell fall to the floor. I could see even then that he was motivated.”

Jim DeSalle, Duke Athletics Staff, 1980
“The weekend after we made Mike’s hiring official, I took him out for a drink to talk to him about his future at the university. I kidded him that his name was hard to pronounce, that it looked like some sort of crazy vanity license plate meant to convey a phrase with all the vowels taken out. He didn’t like that; he smashed a Michelob bottle on the bar and held the jagged glass to my neck. He was wild-eyed and screaming ‘Everyone will learn to say my name! Everyone!‘ The whole bar got quiet. It was weird, but I could tell he meant business.”

Linda Preston, Owner and Operator of Linda’s Playplace, Durham, NC
“In 1982 we filmed a PSA at our facility about kids and exercise, and Coach Krzyzewski came to film a piece on being a good sport. Everything went well on-camera, but off-camera one of the kids told Coach that he liked basketball even when he didn’t win. Coach Krzyzewski got really mad; he started smashing lego structures with his hands and kicked a ball through a plate glass window – and he told the kid that winning was the only thing. He ran outside shrieking and ripped some monkey bars out of the ground and did like $2,000 worth of damage. The kids were all crying and scared. One of those kids was Clay Aiken.”

Karl Malone, Member of the “Dream Team,” 1992 Olympics
We had just won our game against Panama and I hadn’t played as well as I could have; I was walking out of the arena and a taxi cab ran over me from behind, then stopped, backed up and ran over me again. Coach K was hanging out of the window of the taxi yelling ‘You will not take this win from me! You will not take my wins away from me!‘ I was really injured badly and was like ‘You’re not even the head coach! This doesn’t even count on your record!’ People were running around like ‘No mas! No mas! Detener the automóvil!‘ But we went back out there and brought home the gold.”

J.J. Redick, Duke University Basketball Player, 2002-2006
“We lost a game at Maryland in 2003 and after the game, I told Chris Duhon that we’d get them next time. Coach overheard it and picked up a brick – I don’t even know where he got it – and threw it at me, screaming that it would have been his 650th win and we screwed it all up for him. Then he stopped the bus on a bridge and made me get into a burlap sack, tied it with rope and pushed it into the Patuxent River. I almost died but I barely escaped from the sack before I froze to death. I guess I just didn’t have the drive, back then, that I needed. Coach gave me that drive.”

Bobby Knight, former Indiana Head Coach
“I remember after that 903rd win, where he broke my record. He visited my home and rang the doorbell. I came to the door to ask who it was and he said ‘Coach, it’s me, Mike. I wanted to talk to you about how much you’ve meant to me and what an inspiration you’ve been.’ I think he thought I’d be happy to see him, but instead I asked him to take one step back and then I pulled the lever that activates a trap door on my porch and he fell into the hole I had built to capture trespassers. People aren’t supposed to even get that close to the house to begin with.”

Mike Krzyzewski, Duke Head Coach
“There will be others who win more, but it’s kind of neat to be the first person to 1,000.”

Jim Boeheim, Syracuse Head Coach
“I don’t know who did this, but someone threw a rock through the front window of my home last night with a note that read STOP WINNING GAMES OR ELSE. I’ve turned it over to the authorities for a proper investigation, but I have my suspicions.”