It would have been only natural for Mike Krzyzewski to feel relief after his Olympic basketball team beat Spain to win the gold medal Sunday, especially after enduring a three-year gauntlet of expectations, pressure and redemption.
But that emotion never overcame Krzyzewski, he said Wednesday at a press conference. And he doesn't plan on allowing relief to seep into any future Duke celebrations, either.
"Sometimes being here at Duke, because we've been very, very successful and won a lot... [people] expect you to be perfect," Krzyzewski said. "It's like, what, we haven't gone to the Final Four? What, we haven't won a national championship? It's very spoiled and it ruins it a little bit-really, a lot-and so part of that then becomes you win and sometimes you're just relieved to win.
"At the end of the Spain game, where most people would say, 'Weren't you relieved?' No, I wasn't. I was exhilarated. It was euphoric. It was the way it should be, and that's the way it's going to be for the rest of my career at Duke."
Krzyzewski-who did not rule out a potential second stint as Team USA coach on "Pardon the Interruption" Wednesday but deemed it unlikely-discussed the ways in which his time leading the national team changed him as a person and as a coach. His experience with legions of foreign media, including donning a microphone during games and opening the last 30 minutes of his practices, were different from his routine at Duke.
But the principal change seemed to be his insistence on seizing the day, a philosophy that appears to be rooted in nabbing gold.
"So whatever you want to do, whether it be the student newspaper, local, national [media]... you can throw all that stuff out-it ain't going to work," he said. "Live the moment. Write about the moment. Because I'm not going to cooperate with any of that other stuff. For the rest of my career, I'm not going to do that relief thing. I'm going to go after it, I'm going to do it. And if somebody doesn't go to the Final Four during their four years at Duke, then that's just too damn bad.
"But our team is going to have fun. It's going to be represented, and we're going to have an opportunity to grow just like our Olympic team did."
Criticism of Krzyzewski's Team USA involvement has swirled in the last three years, as fan circles and the media have called into question whether the staff's national team responsibilities have affected the Blue Devils, who have lost on the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament in the past two seasons.
The fact that Team USA won the gold medal will almost definitely help the University and the basketball program, but Krzyzewski said the end result was irrelevant.
"Doing those two things at the same time afforded me an amazing opportunity to grow," Krzyzewski said. "For Duke, for me, for our country, for the kids I coach-I'm a better coach for them and a better person as a result and was while I was coaching.
"It's just that because we didn't go to the NCAA Final Four the last two years because we had two young teams and because we got beat, all of a sudden there's a reason?... That was wrong. The people who wrote about those things, they were wrong."
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