NEW ORLEANS — In the waning seconds of the 1,438th and final college basketball game Mike Krzyzewski would ever coach at Duke, he was not going to show the world what it wanted to see.
When seasons end, they end harshly. That’s all coaches really know, except for the lucky few who get to hold the championship trophy. Sometimes that realization is long in the making. Often, especially in the Final Four, it happens so fast that it’s impossible to process until much later.
But whatever was going through his mind as he sat on a stool with the same half-scowl he had shown through most of the final 80 seconds as an all-time Final Four game fell apart for his team, Krzyzewski accepted that he couldn’t do anything more. North Carolina had beaten Duke, 81-77. His coaching career, perhaps the greatest ever in the sport of college basketball, was over.
Whether you adored, despised or simply respected the man for his accomplishments, it was a moment that demanded for one last reaction, one last image for the world to hold onto as he exited the stage, having lost his last game to the rival program that has helped frame his greatness.
Instead, after 42 years at Duke and five national championships, his only trophy was keeping a stiff upper lip.
“It’s not about me,” he would say later. “Especially right now.”
It had been a common theme of Krzyzewski’s goodbye tour to claim that it wasn’t about him, when we all knew it really was. Saturday, for the first time, it…
