Coach K and Bobby Knight: A season on the bench

BLOOMINGTON — Early in the fall of 1974, Indiana University coach Bob Knight called his team together before a preseason practice. Next to him stood a slim, unassuming man with jet black hair. He was barely older than Knight’s players.

“We didn’t know who he was,” said John Laskowski, a senior on that team. “We knew that he played for coach Knight at Army. We knew he was from Chicago.”

The man, Knight said, had just left military service and was looking to start a career in coaching. He would serve as a graduate assistant and was to be afforded the same respect as any other coach.

His name was Mike Krzyzewski.

“I kept in touch with coach Knight during my five years in the military, and I also played a lot of ball and coached in the military,” Krzyzewski said in comments provided to The Star by Duke University. “I wanted to coach.”

Duke declined a request for an interview with Krzyzewski for this story, but provided comments from the Blue Devils' coach about his year in Bloomington.

Knight's 1974-75 team would go undefeated until the Elite Eight, losing to Kentucky by two points. Had star forward Scott May not broken his arm, members of that team attest today, the Hoosiers would’ve won a national title. It proved the jumping-off point for the 1975-76 team that went 32-0, the last college basketball team to finish undefeated.

While it was one of the affirming moments of Knight’s legacy, that season also marked the beginning of the career of his protégé, a man who would eventually match or surpass many of Knight’s own accomplishments.

In truth, memories of Krzyzewski’s one year in Bloomington (he left to take Knight’s old Army job the next season) are scattered. The only photo of Krzyzewski contained in the university archives is from his time as an assistant on Knight's 1979 Pan American Games team.

He enrolled in IU’s business school to pursue an MBA, a decision he said was born of a desire to not only learn about coaching, but also the business side of the profession, and how to manage the myriad demands of a head coach.

“I loved my year at Indiana,” he said.

Some players remember him. Laskowski has kept in touch over the years. Steve Green, another senior on that team, remembers occasional conversations. Kit Klingelhoffer, who worked in media relations at Indiana for more than four decades before his retirement, said players “would remember (Krzyzewski) much better than I would.”

The grad assistant position was not then what it is now. Players recall Krzyzewski spending much of his time learning and observing, though he was involved in practices.

He got one big moment midway through the season, well after the Hoosiers had established themselves as one of the country’s best teams.

According to Laskowski, one of Knight’s customs for team-wide scrimmages was to pit the first team against the second team. He sometimes turned control of one or both units over to assistants.

One day, he handed Krzyzewski the first team. The top-ranked Hoosiers gathered around a young man who would eventually become a hall-of-famer.

“I think (Krzyzewski) was very surprised at this opportunity, his first chance to really coach this team that was really good at the time,” Laskowski said. “We huddled around him, and he didn’t really say anything.”

Knight saw Krzyzewski’s hesitation. He tore over to the huddle.

“Mike,” Knight shouted, according to Laskowski, “I give you the No. 1 team in the country and you have nothing to say to them? Now, you get in there and tell them what you need them to do!”

Green and Laskowski both remembered one prevailing theme of Krzyzewski’s presence that season.

Knight was famous for using former players as models of success current Hoosiers needed to follow. With his early Indiana teams, he often boasted about how much smarter, tougher and harder-working his Army teams had been.

“What was interesting about Mike was, all the stories we had heard about coach Knight and his Army players, this was really the first time we got to be around one,” Green said. “They were kind of like rock stars, like legends, because what we had heard was how demanding their practices were.”

One day before practice, Green fell into conversation with Krzyzewski.

“We were undefeated, No. 1. Had really hit our stride by that time,” Green said. “Mike said to me, ‘Geez, coach Knight never worked us this hard.’

“It was this statement of how hard you guys work and how hard he’s working when you’re doing so well. And I remember looking at him and thinking, ‘What? We were under the impression no one ever worked harder than you guys.’”

Laskowski was more straightforward: “It was the first guy we’d seen who survived four years with Bob Knight. That was encouraging in itself.”

As coach at Army, Krzyzewski won 73 games in five years. In 1980, he took the head job at Duke, and the rest — more than 1,000 career wins, five national championships — is history.

His bond to that '74-'75 team never withered.

Several years ago, Laskowski found himself passing through Durham with his children. He wondered if an old IU grad assistant might have time to catch up.

So Laskowski dropped by Duke’s basketball office, only to find out Krzyzewski was in a meeting. He came back later, and ran into the same problem. Krzyzewski and his assistants were behind closed doors. Would it be all right, he asked the receptionist, if he poked his head in. He was given the go-ahead, in the most if-this-blows-up-you-are-on-your-own terms.

Laskowski opened the door. Every head in the room turned to him. Assistants wondered who would risk Krzyzewski’s anger by interrupting a meeting.

“He says, ‘John, how are you? It’s so good to see you,’” Laskowski said, laughing. “The staff must be thinking, ‘OK, this guy is OK.’”

Krzyzewski took his visitors back to his office, where he took pictures and talked with Laskowski’s children.

“He told the kids, ‘I want you guys to know that your dad and his teammates were so nice to me, and I learned so much about coaching,’” Laskowski said.

Today, Krzyzewski’s brief stop in Bloomington is buried.

He doesn’t appear in the official team photo that hangs in the west hallway of Assembly Hall. A Google search using keywords like “Krzyzewski” and “Indiana” turns up one relevant picture, of a young man with black hair swept to one side, wearing a bright red polo shirt and white pants, sitting next to the pre-eminent coach of a generation. Eventually, both would be able to claim that title.

His season on the bench next to his former coach taught him valuable lessons in handling a basketball team competing at the highest level of its sport.

“He adapted how he taught the defense, the man-to-man defense, and he really adapted in how he ran offense,” Krzyzewski said. “You can change, and it’s OK. You don’t have to use the same things over and over. I loved seeing that.”

Krzyzewski’s part in that '74-'75 campaign is lost on many, even some ardent IU fans. But not everyone.

“We’re all so proud of him,” Green said. “It’s one of those things you never would’ve imagined. But many of us are Duke fans for that very reason. He’s part of the family.”

To those who lived it with him, Krzyzewski has just as much claim to that season as anyone.

Tom Abernethy, a junior on that team, put it simply.

“He was,” Abernethy said, “a part of probably the best team in Indiana history.”

Follow Star reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

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