DURHAM, N.C. — Mike Krzyzewski said it himself on Thursday: “In sport, you never know what’s going to happen—so the spontaneity of emotion and performance, it’s one of the great things about sport. It really is reality TV, and reality TV is not reality TV. Sport is, and that’s the beauty of it.”
That’s the beauty of it, and that’s the wreckage of it, too. Storylines get ruined. You want to ensure a happy ending? Go to the movies. Go to a sporting event and you take your chances. The spontaneity of emotion and performance can send things flying off in any direction.
Sport can script a perfect end scene for a team and a man, but there is another team involved and that team might not go along with the script. That other team might tear the thing up and author its own ending. The other team might rise up in a sweltering cauldron of emotion and show no reverence for the legend who is coaching his last game in one of the cathedrals of the sport. The other team might remind everyone that they represent a pretty good program, too, with decades of tradition, and might let it be known that they didn’t come to town to serve as ceremonial cannon fodder.
