Coach K: Making the TV rounds
Posted: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 3:12 PM
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Coaches
Coach K the author made the rounds this week.
What? You didn’t know Mike Krzyzewski could write?
The Duke coach has written or co-written more than a half dozen books on coaching schemes, season recaps and Duke in general. His last two (The Gold Standard: Building a Wolrd-Class Team and Beyond Basketball: Coach K’s Keywords for Success) go beyond the court.
It’s a page from John Wooden’s textbook – translate your coaching philosophies into a model that can be used in the business world or as motivational team-building techniqes. In short, extend the Coach K brand out from the college hoops world.
Thus, the appearance on the Colbert Report Tuesday night.
I never get a lot out of Colbert’s interviews, though this one did have an occasional chuckle.
The better Coach K interview was Monday on Charlie Rose. (That’s what happens when you get the late shift on the desk. You flip through channels after the late SportsCenter and run across something like this.) That shouldn’t be a surprise given the interview is 25 minutes longer than Colbert’s and isn’t on Comedy Central.
A lot of it focuses on his Olympic coaching experience last summer (which is the focus on his latest book), but there are some interesting moments when Krzyzewski was asked if hhe was still getting the best players, if the program wasn’t as good as it used to be and the pressure on reaching Final Fours.
And it was cool to hear Krzyzewski talk about how impressive LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and the rest of Team USA was focusing on winning the gold, putting aside personal goals and working as a team. (In fact, he sounded overly impressed with LeBron, as a leader and a once-in-a-lifetime talent.)
It’s almost enough to make me want to read the book. Almost.
