“We have only one rule here: Don’t do anything that’s detrimental to yourself. Because if it’s detrimental to you, it’ll be detrimental to our program and to Duke University.” As the team gathers together in our locker room for the first time, I try to get my only rule out of the way fast. I won’t dwell on it because I’d rather not ruin the moment. This is a great day—a day that I’ve been looking forward to with anxious anticipation for months. You can feel the excitement in the air. You can see the spring in everyone’s step. Even though the preseason begins around the first of September, it’s really like springtime—time for birth of a new team. All the players come in fresh. They bring whoever they are to that first meeting. They bring innocence with them. And they’re ready to grow. Looking at the young faces in front of me, I see myself more than thirty years earlier. And I think back to 1969. “I want to tell you a story,” I’ll say next. “It’s a story about how I first became a basketball coach.” - Coach Mike Krzyzewski, Duke University; Author of Leading with the Heart Comments are closed.
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