Yesterday Duke stopped in the NCAA semifinals, and Mike Shashevsky officially retired. Throughout his coaching career, in addition to leading Duke to sweep the NCAA, he also led the U.S. men's basketball team to rebuild his dignity in international competitions, and this article takes you back to his coaching career in the national team.
In addition to leading Duke to sweep the NCAA, Mike Shashevsky also led the U.S. men's basketball team to rebuild its dignity on the international stage. After leading Duke to three NCAA titles, coach K took on a more daunting and global challenge: learning how to manage and motivate NBA superstars and leading the U.S. men's basketball team back to become the ruler of international basketball. Bryant and James showed him a path.
Coach K's method of motivating players at Duke cannot be used by NBA superstars who are competing in the Olympic Games. Elton Brand, who played for Duke in the late 1990s, recalls that while at Duke, Coach K once offered to fight a player. "I'm sure he's going to win," Brand said. Of course, he was referring to the coach, not the player.
Coach K, a graduate of West Point, has often been able to destroy a underperforming Duke team for years with just a few words. On one occasion, Duke suffered an away streak in an ACC division tournament, and the angry coach K nearly tore his players apart in the locker room, and he didn't ride back to his home at Virginia Tech until 4 a.m. "You bastards, you don't deserve to wear a Duke jersey at all," he is said to have growled at the players.
After a loss, Coach K scolded point guard Jay Williams for not executing a well-designed tactic, and Coach K thought he had spent more time thinking about whether to skip into the NBA. As a result, Williams immediately roared back and punched the coach. Duke player Reggie Luck, who was present at the time, argued that the tension and embarrassment of that moment was only comparable to the moment when Obama and Hillary Clinton ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2007.
But in 2003, after Williams suffered a near-fatal car accident that ruined his NBA career, coach K rushed to the hospital for the first time and appeared next to him in the moment when his former disciple opened his eyes. Williams' agent Bill Duffy has said he's never seen a coach so fully engaged in the rehabilitation and post-operative care of a player, "it's like taking care of his own son," Duffy recalled.
In short, coaching the old K coaching style works well in the NCAA. "He's the best at controlling the players and always getting the players to accept his philosophy," said Syracuse University coach Jim Bonheim. ”
In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the American Basketball Association had expected that the old K coach would not copy his example at Duke to coach the NBA superstars. As a result, U.S. Basketball Association President Jerry Colangelo chose coach K instead of Spurs coach Popovich to lead the U.S. men's basketball team out of the ruins of the 2004 Athens Olympics. The team coached by Larry Brown was embarrassing on and off the field. According to a staff member of the U.S. men's basketball team, then NBA president David Stern was puzzled: "How did we end up like this?" We must make a breakthrough in the Olympic Games. ”
Coach K was hired to reinvent the team culture of the American Basketball Association and win the gold medal. His old rival at the NCAA, North Carolina coach Dean Smith, also highly recommended him as the only college coach who could take on the task. However, many basketball veterans still think that it is crazy to choose the old K coach instead of Popovich.
In the process of preparing for the Olympics, coach K realized that he was not at Duke anymore, and he could not expect the superstars on the team to adapt to him, he had to adapt to them.
This was evident in a match against the Lithuanian men's basketball team in Seoul before the start of the 2006 World Championships in Japan. In that game, Coach Old K and Magic center Howard disagreed over the blocking demolition. "It wasn't a personal vendetta," recalls Battier, who played for Duke before and also played in the U.S. men's basketball team, "but that's the coaching style of coach K." You could say dwight wasn't used to someone nagging in his ear. His expression was like, 'How old are you?' ’”
"Coach K is good at looking at words, and when he saw the expression on Dwight's face, he immediately said to himself, 'Oh my God, I can't do that.'" I can't treat these players that way. In the second half, Dwight didn't come as Coach K had asked, and I guess he was a little angry. Coach K also had a vivid lesson that day, which was, 'I can't treat these players the way I coach Duke players.' ’”
Therefore, when the U.S. men's basketball training camp opened on July 20, 2008, coach K had a good idea of how to get along with professional players. Bryant once said that if he went to college, he would choose Duke; later he also thought about having coaching the Lakers with Coach K, and he also maintained a good relationship with Coach K's wife, Mickey. Therefore, people who have been close to the U.S. men's basketball team are not worried about Kobe's relationship with coach K. Bryant also arrived in Las Vegas 2 days early and knocked on the door of the old K coach's quarters, volunteering to defend the ace defenders in the opposing squad and promising to destroy them.
People were more worried about the relationship between Coach K and James, who had never worked with a college coach. In Japan, James, Wade and Anthony have all been criticized by Coach K and Coach K and Coach Klangelo for violating the dress code of the US men's basketball team, "wearing a tight T-shirt and wearing headphones". The elder Colangelo recalled, "LeBron said to me, 'Man, we're not going to do that in Cleveland.'" I said, 'I understand, you always do whatever you want.' Wade said something similar, 'You don't have to be so harsh, we're all adults.' I replied, 'I'll tell you what to do, and we'll follow Pat Riley's example in Miami.' ’”
This skirmish did nothing to ease tensions between James and Coach K, not to mention that James had already suffered a major international defeat under Coach K, and in the semifinals of the 2006 World Championships, the Greek men's basketball team hit the widely regarded U.S. men's basketball team with one block after another, which was the same as the way he and Coach Brown lost in Athens. Once, Coach K visited Akron, Ohio, for two consecutive summers, a place where James and his single mother lived together, just to better understand the Cavaliers as a homegrown supergiant.
They also kept in touch. When the old K coach won the 800th win of his NCAA coaching career, James sent a congratulatory message, and the relationship between the two showed signs of improvement. But when the Las Vegas training camp opened, according to an U.S. men's basketball official, "there are still some players who have doubts about coach K." Battier said the same: "Especially for players who have not played in the NCAA, the professional league and the national team are very different. In the NBA, coaches work with salaries and don't have any personal relationships with players. If you get along well with the coach, he may ask you for a drink, but you don't expect to get life lessons from an NBA coach, which is the old K coach's specialty. ”
However, will James accept the life lessons that coach K taught to 19-year-old college players? James, who was 23 at the time, was still seeking his say as a player, and according to a source in the U.S. men's basketball team, "He didn't always steer the team in the right direction." LeBron had to learn to be a killer. He's a good performer and Bryant is a killer. ”
Undoubtedly, coach K is more in favor of killers, or at least a strong team leader. Before the first training camp in Las Vegas, american Basketball Union officials revealed that coach K had pulled James aside and told him: "I will allow the players to express their thoughts and emotions, and I also need you to say something." ”
"No problem," replied James, "I'll do as you say." (Supine Brace/Mao Mao, compiled from Sports Illustrated)