Jay Wright was two lackluster years into his tenure at Villanova in May 2003, so far from being considered the best coach in college basketball that the assertion would have seemed laughable, certainly not a credible candidate for the job that had just become available in his hometown.
Larry Brown had done what he always did. He had left, resigning as the 76ers’ head coach and director of basketball operations, bolting for better money and a better team with the Detroit Pistons. At the time, Wright didn’t have the experience, the cachet, and certainly not the desire to jump to the NBA and try to coax compliance and excellence out of Allen Iverson. But Billy King, the Sixers’ president and general manager then, had the ear and trust of someone who did. So King picked up the phone, dialed Mike Krzyzewski’s number, and offered him the chance to coach the Sixers.
“I asked Coach, ‘Before I start this search, would you be interested?’ ” King, a Duke alumnus who played for Krzyzewski from 1984 to 1988, said Monday. “And he said, ‘No, Billy, thanks. I’m good.’ I figured I had to ask. Thinking back on it, oh, my God, if he’d said yes, I don’t know if the Duke alumni would have ever invited me back.”
King was among those fellow alumni Saturday night at Cameron Indoor Arena, joining another 95 of Krzyzewski’s former players — “My brothers,” King said — for Coach K’s final home game as Blue Devils coach. North Carolina’s 94-81 victory compelled Krzyzewski to remind a sad and surly crowd afterward: “Today was unacceptable, but the season has been very acceptable. And I’ll tell you, this season isn’t over.”
Once it is, though, Krzyzewski’s retirement will mark the departure of the sport’s most recognizable name and most powerful, popular coach. Particularly if Krzyzewski manages to finish his career with a run that pushes him past 1,200 career victories and to his sixth national championship, there will be a void atop college basketball, and the coach who now comes closest to filling it is Wright. John Calipari, Rick Pitino, Bill Self: Wright has as many or more NCAA titles than any of them. He has been free from the scandals that have tainted their careers, and he has pulled off the same difficult and time-consuming trick that Krzyzewski did: elevating a locally oriented private university into a national basketball powerhouse.
“Jay has built a program basically like Coach K did at Duke,” King said in a phone interview, “where it is a certain type of player with good character, who plays hard, plays team basketball, generally stays three to four years. The other players are able to teach the younger players what Villanova basketball is all about. I learned from Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, those guys, and then as I got older, I passed it down. Now seeing his players who come back and have a bond with the program is very similar.
“The biggest thing where they’re very similar is it’s not about Jay Wright. It’s not about Coach K. They get a lot of accolades, but it’s about Villanova basketball and Duke basketball. That’s what they preach.”
From his four years at Duke to his 15 years as an NBA executive to his 20 years as a resident of the Philadelphia area, King has had a long, up-close gaze at Wright’s rise and the way it resembles Krzyzewski’s. An 1,800-point scorer over his career at Park View High School in Virginia, King didn’t decide to go to Duke out of some appreciation for and knowledge of the program’s history and tradition. The Blue Devils had gone a combined 21-34 over their previous two seasons under Krzyzewski when he began recruiting King. “It was all Coach K,” he said. “His belief in me gave me belief in him.”
By King’s sophomore year, Krzyzewski’s sixth season there, Duke was the No. 1 team in America, winning 37 games and advancing to the national championship game, and it took Wright just three years before Villanova started its first great stretch under him: five straight seasons of at least 22 wins, four Sweet 16 appearances, the first of his three Final Fours.
“For Coach K and Jay, they recruit the players who fit them personality-wise,” King said. “Through the recruiting, they get to know the family and the kid, and they say, ‘That’s my type of kid.’ Some people may look at a Collin Gillespie and say, ‘OK, he’s good, but he’s not going to help me right away.’ Jay looks at him and says, ‘I can help that kid. He’s my type of player.’ A lot of these guys who have gone to ‘Nova, it’s guys willing to work. If you’re willing to work, you’re going to get better at Villanova or at Duke.”
You could also feel fairly secure that your head coach, for all his success and all the scuttlebutt around his future, would be your head coach throughout your college career. Krzyzewski turned down offers from the Celtics, the Lakers, and several other NBA teams, choosing instead to maintain his kingdom in Durham, and Wright has reached the stage of his career when such overtures seem pretty pointless to him, too. The time for him to go was earlier, but the circumstances were never better than those he already enjoyed.
When Brown returned to the Sixers’ front office in 2007, for instance, he showed up every day at Villanova’s practices, so impressed by the discipline and basketball principles imparted there that he kept lobbying King to hire Wright. But the Sixers were stuck in such a rut — having traded Iverson to the Denver Nuggets, treading water in the Eastern Conference — that King did the right thing for Wright by never broaching the possibility with him.
“Where that team was at that point and time, it would not have been good for Jay,” King said. “I’ve told Jay I don’t think he should ever go to the NBA. I think he’d be a great NBA coach, but he wouldn’t enjoy it as much as coaching at Villanova.”
No chance. He’s an institution now, in charge of a big-time college program in a bigger-time pro town, without the external pressures that Doc Rivers or Krzyzewski or so many of his peers face. Starting thursday night at Madison Square Garden, Jay Wright goes after his fifth Big East Tournament championship, gets another opportunity to reaffirm his standing in the sport as the successor to the man who sits on its throne. “What Jay has built,” King said, “is the best program in college basketball.”
Then Billy King paused for an addendum born of loyalty and love.
“One of the best,” he added, “because Coach K’s still there.”
