The tale of how Tom Butters ended up trusting his gut and hiring an Army coach with a losing record, knowing the mockery and derision that would follow, has often been told over the intervening four decades. So has the role of Steve Vacendak, Butters’ trusted aide, the man who first suggested Mike Krzyzewski to Butters in 1980 and would later race to RDU to stop Krzyzewski and his wife from leaving town after their on-campus interview.
Forty-two years later, there’s very little mystery left in how Krzyzewski ended up at Duke. Or how Bobby Knight actually pushed a different former assistant, Mississippi coach Bob Weltlich, for the job. Or how Iowa State was ready to hire Krzyzewski if Duke didn’t.
As Krzyzewski arrives at his last game on Duke’s campus Saturday, the story of how he arrived on that campus retains little mystery.
