Coach K needs time to evaluate things before being asked what the next step for his basketball team is. Or maybe he just needs to be coming off a win.
Following Duke’s loss to Louisville Saturday night, Krzyzewski was asked a basic and reasonable question from a student reporter. But instead of just answering the question, Coach K used it as an opportunity to lecture the young journalist.
“Hi coach,” the student began to ask. “I’m just curious as to what the next step forward is for the team as you guys move into another week of basketball?”
Coach K couldn’t answer the straightforward question, instead demanding time to evaluate the game before eliciting his response. Krzyzewski pressed the reporter for his major and hardest class at Duke, attempting to compare it to the position he’s in, which includes nearly $10 million per year to coach the school’s basketball team.
“Say you just had the toughest econ test in the world,” Krzyzewski responded, “and when you walked out, somebody asked you, ‘What’s your next step?’ See what I mean? Do you have some empathy?”
Does Krzyzewski have a philosophical issue with the question or would his response have been different if Duke won their game against Louisville? If Duke was a top-10 team coming off a strong victory, is Krzyzewski still looking for empathy from a student reporter?
It certainly wasn’t the most direct ask from the likely nervous student journalist, but it was a softball question that could have prompted Krzyzewski to at least give a similarly generic response. Instead, the Duke basketball coach attempted to lecture the student about why it wasn’t a valid question and why it didn’t warrant an answer.
The student journalist was Jake Piazza and it was the first postgame question he ever asked the Duke basketball coach. Piazza didn’t get the insightful answer he hoped for, but the student journalist certainly received more attention than he could have anticipated.
Brandon Contes is a former reporter for BSM, now working for Awful Announcing. You can find him on Twitter @BrandonContes or reach him by email at Brandon.Contes@gmail.com.
