Columnist Dean Juipe: Krzyzewski finds himself in honored company

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, July 6, 2004 | 9:34 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

However informal, Mike Krzyzewski Appreciation Day made Durham, N.C., a euphoric place to be Monday. Rejecting an offer to take over the Los Angeles Lakers, Krzyzewski announced he would remain at Duke University -- much to the unrestrained delight of every Blue Devils fan.

Lauded for his loyalty and devotion to the program he built, Coach K played the role of pope as well-wishers curtsied and kissed his hand. After 24 years at the school, he has earned not only a lifetime contract to coach the Duke basketball team but the undying respect of friend and rival alike.

There's no disputing the strength of his character as well as the merits of his record: three national championships (1991, 1992 and 2001), 10 Final Four appearances, eight Atlantic Coast Conference championships, a cumulative record of 621-179 and the distinction of having no fewer than 12 of his teams achieve a No. 1 ranking.

But is this, as an ESPN panel discussed Sunday, perhaps the greatest coach of all time? Is the 57-year-old Krzyzewski the finest coach who ever lived?

It's a difficult concept to swallow, yet one that has its advocates. In an era when star players stay in college for only a year or two, Krzyzewski has continually kept Duke at or near the top in a sport that has tinkered with its rules and eligibility requirements to add greater parity.

Yet consider who he's up against on the short list of sports' greatest coaches: John Wooden, Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson of basketball lore, Scotty Bowman from hockey, baseball's Casey Stengel and football's Vince Lombardi.

It's easy to make a case for each (as well as a few others, particularly if coaches from lesser-profile sports are entertained).

Wooden was 218-42 as a high-school basketball coach before going to Indiana State and, in 1948, to UCLA, where he would go on to win nine national championships and compile a 664-162 record. The only man elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach, The Wizard of Westwood is also the only college coach with more than four national titles -- and the only one to coach a team through an 88-game winning streak.

Like Wooden with Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, Auerbach had Bill Russell as an imposing backbone as their Boston Celtics rolled to nine NBA championships during Auerbach's reign. He was 1,037-548 in a distinguished career that included the lighting of a victory cigar after each and every win.

Jackson equaled Auerbach's nine NBA titles before retiring as the Lakers' coach last month. Like Wooden and Auerbach, Jackson enjoyed the presence of superstars such as Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal as he turned both Chicago and Los Angeles into basketball dynasties.

Bowman, the winningest coach in National Hockey League history, won five Stanley Cups with Montreal before adding championships while coaching at Pittsburgh and Detroit and was routinely applauded for maximizing his players' abilities and passions.

Stengel, the ol' Professor, managed 10 New York Yankees teams to American League pennants and won seven World Series. Despite a stint as manager of the hapless expansion New York Mets, he finished his career with a record of 1,905-1,842 and he remains one of the most revered figures in all of sports history. He also had players such as Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra to help him along (and make sense of his philosophic ruminations).

Which brings us to Lombardi, who would likely win a fans' poll if the question was ever put to the general public.

Lombardi was fierce and calculating and a founding father of the notion that winning is everything. He took a franchise in a small Midwestern town and turned it into a football hotbed, as his Green Bay Packers won five NFL titles including two Super Bowls. Lombardi was always associated with winning teams, even as an assistant coach when the New York Giants won five division titles and one league championship during his five seasons there. At Green Bay (and later, briefly, Washington), he was 105-35-6 as a head coach and his teams won an astounding nine of 10 playoff games.

Coach K? Well, just having his name mentioned with these guys puts him in elite company. And maybe when it's all said and done in a few years, people will agree he is the best of the best.

But until each and every fan can spell his name without double checking and pronounce it fluently, it's hard to place him above such men as Lombardi, Wooden, Auerbach, Jackson, Bowman and Stengel -- each of whom enjoys a familiarity with sports fans that allows their names (as well as spellings and idiosyncrasies) to come easily to us all.