♪] your last name is krzyzewski. took me a while to learn how to pronounce it. for like three years, you had a losing record. a lot of people were calling for my firing. then you won the national championship. mike: i said, "we are going to win." i don't know if i really believed that, but we ended up winning one of the greatest games in the history of college basketball. last year, you won your third gold medal. mike: to have those guys with medals around their necks and your national anthem being played and-- there's nothing better than that. what would you say are the most important lessons of leadership? at west point, i learned that failure was never a destination. woman: would you fix your tie, please? well, people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed, but okay. just leave it this way. woman: and they-- all right. [♪]

[david reading on-screen text] david: i began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. [david reading on-screen text] [inaudible dialogue] coach k, thank you for taking the time... you're welcome. ...to be with us. i called you coach k, but your last name is krzyzewski. right. when you were growing up, when did you learn to spell that name? you know, it took me a while to learn how to pronounce it. i remember-- we lived in chicago on the north side, my dad was from the south side, so when-- during christmas, we would go and visit relatives. and my uncle joe, who was a chicago policeman, whenever we would go and see him, the very first thing, and we open the door, he would say, "what's your name?" so before we walked in, i would say to my mom,

"mom, what's my name?" she said, "it's mike krzyzewski." and the reason he asked that-- because some of my family changed their name to cross. because of ethnic discrimination, they couldn't get jobs and that, so they... uh, they didn't want krzyzewski. and he wanted me to always have krzyzewski. and you never considered changing your name? no. although my dad used the name cross when he was in world war ii, and when he was an elevator operator in downtown chicago. again, he was afraid of not getting jobs. on his tombstone-- he died when i was a senior at west point. they aren't-- the government paid, and it was william cross. david: oh, really? mike: we had it changed when my mom passed away to say krzyzewski. so let's talk about how you got into basketball. you grew up in chicago. and when you were growing up, did you say, "i'm gonna be a great basketball coach?" or how did that come about? i was an all-state player.

and i went to catholic schools, and... i was the winning scorer in a catholic league in chicago for two years and was recruited. but, you know, my parents never-- my mom never went to high school. my dad went to two years. and so when i was recruited by west point, they could not imagine that a polish kid from chicago was gonna go to school-- could go to a school where presidents went to. david: right. and so i didn't really wanna go to west point, and-- david: because? mike: i didn't wanna-- i wanted to dribble behind my back, or, you know, throw bounce passes that were fancy, and i didn't wanna carry a rifle and-- did you have a division i scholarship offer from those places? oh, yeah, yeah. you know... i probably would've gone to creighton and wisconsin maybe, and, uh... but my parents kept putting pressure, like, they would speak in polish, and they would-- in the kitchen, that's where-- we never had a house, but we had a flat and--

and they would say-- they would talk in polish. [babbles] stupid. and you didn't know polish? i did not. they would never want me to-- i didn't know this till later. they didn't want me to take polish in grade school and high school so that i wouldn't have an accent. because they were afraid that i would be... oh, it wasn't because they didn't want you to hear what they were saying. probably, they had a number of different motives. okay. but they would put a few english words in there. [babbles] stupid, mike. finally, i said, "i'll go." and it was the-- it was the best decision i never made, you know, to go to west point. david: right. and it's really-- going to west point, it's the basis, the foundation of everything i am right now as a man. so when you went to west point, were the players--? better level than you thought they were? yeah. no, we were good. you know, coach knight, bob knight, a legendary coach, was the coach. we were, uh... we were a top 20 team one of the three years--

freshmen were not eligible at that time. we always had a winning record. we went to the nit. the nit was as big as the ncaa during that time. so we were good. you know, we were very good, and i got to be a point guard... okay. ...and captain of the team. so did people come along and say, "well, you have to go in the military, but you're good enough to play in the nba?" no, no. i was not good enough to play in the nba. did you know that or--? yeah, yeah. and, you know, it wasn't like that's what everyone's dream was at that time. my dream, coming out of high school, was to be a teacher and a coach. and-- and, uh... i was able to play a lot during my five years of service. i was a captain in the army, field artillery and-- but i got to play on a number of all-army and all-armed forces teams and travel around the world on temporary duty a lot during that time. so when you finish your military commitment-- you go to west point, you've a commitment of four or five years? five. five years. so you finish your commitment, then you got into coaching. where did you first coach?

yeah, i went to indiana and was a graduate assistant. i was getting my mba at indiana. coach knight was there. and i was there for one year and didn't finish my mba. and i was fortunate to go back to my alma mater at the age of 28 and coach at west point. we took over a program that was-- had seven wins and 44 losses in two years. and i got the best start that you could get, you know, going there. so you coached there. and then duke was looking for a coach, and they interviewed you. and your coaching record, the year before you were hired, was, i think, nine and 16 or something. nine and 17. nine and 17. so it wasn't that auspicious. so why did they hire you? well, first of all, they wanted to make a great decision and-- okay. but, you know, from your business, a lot of times if you look at one line item, it doesn't tell the full story.

so we took over a program that was seven and 44. and after five years, we're 73 and 59. the athletic director at duke then was tom butters. and he took a chance on somebody he didn't really know. i mean, your record was explainable but not great. mike: right. david: did he know how to pronounce your name? mike: he did. you know, i hit it off with him right away. you know, i had-- i was ready to leave west point. when i was interviewing for the job at duke, i was already offered the head job at iowa state. and i wasn't, like, a leading candidate at duke, but a lot of people said, "well, just take iowa state." and i told the people at iowa state, and i said: "you know, you should look for someone else. don't wait for me. i'm going for it, you know, whether i get it or not. you know, um i'm gonna go for duke." all right, so you got it. and then the first couple of years were not wonderful. no. and then after three years, you had a losing record. you have, you know--

thirty-eight-- 38 and 47. thirty-eight and 47. so weren't people calling for your firing? a lot of people were calling for my firing, and we have a fundraising element here called the iron dukes. and during my first three years, i was able to establish a new fundraising element called the concerned iron dukes. and they were concerned about me being their coach. and-- but my athletic director, tom butters, and president terry sanford at that time, said when i was hired, "you have a lot of work to do. there's a lot of rebuilding here and just keep doing it." so i was never worried, whether i was naive or whatever. and the next year, we turned it around, and then it went crazy. and it's one of the reasons i've stayed at duke. they were loyal to me. i love duke, but i'm a big people-guy. you know, like, if, you know, you are honest with me,

you trust me, you believe in me, i'm gonna be committed to you, and that's how i felt about this university. so you turned it around, and then you won the national championship the first time in 1991. mike: right. david: but to do that, you had to beat a team that had crushed you in 1990, the unlv. what was that like preparing your team for that? well, they had won 45 in a row going-- a lot of people felt they were the-- one of the greatest teams in history of the sport. but we were good too. and the two best players stayed on the team, hurley and laettner. and then we added a player who was better than anybody in grant hill. and because unlv had beaten us by so much, i'm not sure they had the edge that we did. and so we ended up winning one of the greatest games in the history of college basketball. but it was not the championship game. so now, psychologically, we gotta get ready 48 hours and beat kansas.

and we were able to turn that around to where they were thinking of kansas. and we won our-- won our first one. but the next year, you came against kentucky in a semifinal. right. and that became one of the greatest games ever played. can you recount what actually happened at the end? it was really a back-and-forth game. and they went ahead, uh, 102 to 101. and so our guys called a timeout with 2.1 seconds, we're down by-- by a point. and when all the guys came in-- you know, i think the very first thing a leader has to show is that-- show strength. and so i met them as they were coming to the bench. and i said, "we're gonna win. we are going to win." now, i don't know if i really believed that, but i kept saying that, and then we sat down. and a lot of times, it's good to ask a guy to do something instead of telling him. so grant hill-- i said, "can you throw the ball 75 feet?"

he was gonna inbound the ball. and he said, "yeah, i can do that." and i said, "i want you to throw the ball, and i'm gonna bring laettner up to the top of the key." and i looked to laettner, who was very confident, very cocky, and i said, you know, "can you catch it?" and he said-- he said, "coach, if grant throws a good pass, i'll catch the ball." okay. and i said, "well, he throws it, you catch it. i'm gonna have two guys run this way. if you don't have a shot, hit one of them, and let's see what happens." so he threw it, laettner caught it, he dribbled once, david: right. which, you know, your heart sinks because-- he's not a famous dribbler? no, but there's only 2.1 seconds. he had enough... he had enough courage and knowledge where he put it in, and then he shot the ball, and it went in. commentator: there's the pass to laettner. puts it up. yes! [all cheering]

david: so you won the game, and you went on to win a national championship. the last championship you won, the fifth one, 2015, that was a team where you were playing freshmen. how did that happen? well, it was a most unusual year. three of the freshmen who went pro after that, they went early, they were one-and-done. they really didn't care, david, about their own stats. you know, like, if you can find people who are all into winning. you mentioned one-and-done. for those who are watching who may not be college basketball aficionados, that refers to the fact that today, you have to play, before you play in the nba, at least one year of college, right. and be 19. then you can go professional. are you a supporter of this one-and-done rule? it doesn't make any difference if you're supportive of it. we have no control over it. what you have to do, like you have to do in business, is adapt. so you're not only adapting to different players over the 40 years that i've been a coach in their cultures, but you're also adapting to,

you know, when guys leave, and the age of a team, how you teach your culture. so, you know, we-- grant hill, laettner and hurley, if they were here today-- i know mrs. hill and mr. hill would not want-- would not sa-- but their son probably would've gone after a year. but now that's changed. it's a different-- different thing. well, let's talk about recruiting. i work harder at recruiting now than i've ever worked because you have to do it more often. and to recruit the top players-- you don't know if they're gonna be one-and-done, but they'll go eararly. the cha-- the really good ones are gonna go early. so that means you have to do it over and over. and it's not so much what you do in the home. before you ever get to are home, it's what you do at social media, the texting, the... you know, how you communicate, the relationship building. relationship building is so much different now than it was then. and that whole landscape has changed dramatically

where, you know, many nights you go home, and you're texting 17-year-olds. there was a coach that you became close to, who's a coach at nc state, north carolina state, jim valvano. how did you become close to him, and why are you still involved with his charity? well, he and i played against each other in college. coached-- against each other at west point and iona. and then we came down here the same year. he coached nc state and duke. and we didn't really like one another. you know, very competitive young turks going after one another. and then jim left coaching and went into broadcasting, and we got closer, and then he got cancer. and when he had cancer, it was incurable. and he spent about the last five months at duke hospital. and i would visit him a few times each week, and we became literally brothers. and during that time,

he founded the v foundation for cancer research, and he asked me to be on the board, and i've been on the board since then. but for him, it was almost like you're part of divine intervention. like, somehow this guy, knowing that he was gonna die, used that to establish something that might help beat cancer. it was-- i'm still amazed that he was able to that. and the time we shared together during that is treasured time. let me ask you about the overall program you built. yeah. now you have a situation where duke is considered royalty in college basketball, but as a result of that, because you're so successful, a lot of people root against you. do you take that personally? no, i never take any of that personally. i think that's useless to do that. you can't run your life based on that.

and i think, though, those people respect you, and they respect me and my program. you know, our sport's a very intimate sport. you know, you're playing in your shorts, and people can see you, they're right on top of you. so it's not like what the papers say as much as, like, during, uh... during a game where people can say the worst things imaginable. i can't say them on the show. and they have to be hard-nose enough, you know, to take that. i get that too, but, you know, i'm older, i can laugh it off. i can see five guys in the front row in some of the arenas who look like doctors or lawyers, and they're giving you finger signs and telling you different things, and you're saying, "whoa, you know, where did that come from?" now, let's talk about the olympics. yeah. last year, you won your third gold medal

on behalf of the united states. the biggest honor, david, is representing your country. you know, i love duke. you know, college basketball has been my life, and-- but when you w a gold medal, world championship or the olympic gold medal, it's the whole world. and we respect the world. basketball around the world is unbelievable. and to have those guys with medals around their necks and your national anthem being played and-- there's nothing better than that. initially, you were an assistant coach to the 1992 so-called dream team. dream team, yeah. now, for those who don't follow basketball, college basketball players were the ones who played in the olympics before because of the rules of the olympics. 1992 was the first time there were professionals who played. and those who played were michael jordan, magic johnson, larry bird, among others. what was it like to have coached that team? it was literally a dream. and it really set off an explosion worldwide

for basketball. international pro players played anyway. and now manu ginobili, marc-- paul and marc gasol, when they were 7- or 8-year-old, are watching, and it exploded. to be with them would be like if you were in music, and you had the best singers all on one team, the best musicians and true professionals. so when you coached that team 11 years ago, you won the olympic gold. what was it like saying to professional players, "let me tell you how to do something"? well, you say how you-- "this is how i want you to do something" a little bit differently than you do to college players. one is that they're professionals. the other thing is they have a wealth of experience. so when i'm coaching college kids, they're gonna adapt to me. i'm teaching them to change their limits to get better as a unit and individually. when i'm with lebron james and kobe bryant and chris paul, and all these guys,

they're already accomplished. i wanna know their best practices, and then my best practices and what we do, it becomes our best practices. so we do a lot of adapting so that-- i think, david, a keyword is to create ownership. you know, where everybody owns it. and where they feel like they're not playing for the u.s., they are the u.s. and in order to get that feeling too, we incorporated a lot of work with our military so that they could get a feeling of what it was to serve our country. and no greater part of our society than the military to teach that. so the three olympic teams that you have coached, how would you compare them to the dream team? well, the dream team, in their prime-- there are 11 hall of famers on that team. christian laettner is the only-- he's a college hall of famer. in their prime, there is no team like that. you know, the beijing team was really good and could hold their own.

but there's no team with accomplishment, and if-- all in their prime, that was better than the dream team. but did you ever think you could lose the olympics? oh, yeah, yeah. i mean, you-- i think we can lose every game. you know, if you don't think you're gonna lose, i don't think you prepare well enough to win. and in the pros, they don't play one-and-done. right. it's-- so in your mind, you can play poorly in a game and get a chance. they are no second chances in olympics or world championships. when you're in the olympics with the basketball team, can they walk around the city, or they just have to stay, as you did, on a boat? because it's too complicated to stay in the village. well, we can-- we never stay in the village and neither does the women's team because of the security. and it's all about security. so in rio, we were on a ship because there weren't enough hotels and that. but whether we were in london or beijing, we would always be in a hotel that had immense security.

you know, it's started with the dream team. we took over a whole hotel. and whenever we went somewhere, there were motorcycles, helicopters, machine gun, security, just-- because you're a target. and you can't really put those guys in that position in an olympic village. when you are coaching an olympic team today, would you say it's possible if we only had college players to win the olympics? no, there's no way. there's absolutely no way our college kids could beat the international teams. the international teams are too good. they're, you know... a number of the international teams would be playoff teams in the nba. and, you know, about 25 percent of the nba is international. and... no way because you're playing men-- we would get killed. if you had to pick among the pro players that you have coached and witnessed, who would you say is the most competitive player

you actually have ever coached? wow, well, they're all-- they wouldn't get to where they are, you know. probably the two biggest assassins where when they look at you, you feel like, "okay, i'm gonna lose to this guy," were jordan... i think jordan is the best player ever, and kobe bryant. and their preparation and their ability to just focus on... is off the charts. but, i mean, you can take, you know, lebron james being one of the most talented and smartest, chris paul, durant-- durant's been the leading scorer for the u.s. in the three competitions he has-- david: right. mike: he has played in. david, one of the things i've admired from all those guys is they-- they understood it wasn't about them. you know-- you know, hear expressions like, "leave your egos at the door." and i always told them, "don't leave your egos at the door

because i want you to be a lebron and kobe. but when you bring them in, can we play for one ego? can we play for the u.s.?" and thank god, they did. in the five competitions, a total of 39 different nba players have won gold medals or multiple medals. and they changed really the course of how basketball was looked at in our country and worldwide. it's uplifted everything about baetball because not only have they won, but the way they won. as you've been coaching, what would you say are the most important lessons of leadership that you've learned? the very first thing is that, you know, in order to get better, you change limits. and when you change limits, you're gonna look bad and you're gonna fail. and at west point, i learned that failure was never a destination. in other words, when you are knocked back, you know, figure out why, and then change. the other thing is that you're not gonna get there alone.

you know, be on a team. you know, surround yourself with good people and learn how to listen. you know-- you know, don't-- you're not gonna learn with you just talking. and when you do talk, converse. don't make excuses. you know, figure out the solution. and you don't have to figure it out yourself. and, you know, to me, that's what we've tried to build our program on for the 42 years now that i've been a coach. what you've done in the community is you've started a program named after your mother, right. emily krzyzewski center. what does that do? well, it's 10 years old now, and it really services about 1500 kids a month, but a little bit over 200 of them are in k-through-college programs. they come from 40 different schools in our area where they don't get the quality of education, and we help all of them get to college. and every one of the kids

that had gone through the program has gone to college, has gotten aid. and we've also started a program to help all kids in our area navigate the intricate system that-- to apply to a college, to get aid. because so many of the first generation kids and their families don't know how to do it. it's been fantastic, and i'm really proud. and i was first generation, you know, college for my family, and-- so was i. yes. and-- and also to honor my mom, to let all those kids know that-- you know, the love of parents, and stuff that your parents did to put you in a position, maybe to take advantage of some of these opportunities. so final question, what would you like to have as your legacy, or what do you see as your legacy for having done what you've done in your career today? you know, i let other people define that.

i just like to work hard every day, and i love what i do, and... and make every day like it's my first day. but with the experience of 42 years. and that i-- that i was hungry every day. and i gave everybody my best shot, and i include-- i-- i've always wanted to be a part of a team. and, obviously, i wanted to lead that team. and, you know, what a-- what an interesting life it is to be a leader. [♪] ♪ be more pbs

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