Brownlow: Coach K's final Duke team relishes villain role, even if he doesn't

By Lauren Brownlow, WRALSportsFan columnist/reporter

Former Wake head coach and noted philosopher Jeff Bzdelik once said, "You give respect by showing no respect."

Bzdelik would have had come away from Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski's final game in the Smith Center assuming that he respects the Tar Heels a great deal.

No building has had a higher level of collective hatred for Krzyzewski than the Dean E. Smith Center, where at least 19,500 of the 21,000 in attendance despise both he and his program. You can almost feel it. But he has been the face of and visual target of their hatred for so long that he and Duke are one in the eyes of most Tar Heels fans of a certain age.

Krzyzewski himself does not seem to care how disliked he is, and has never really cared much about that. He does care what people think about his players, though, and his family. He'd rather take all the hate you have to throw at him then even accidentally deflect a bit of it towards someone he cares about.

After chants of "DUI!" were directed at Paolo Banchero throughout the game, Duke was up by so much at the end that Krzyzewski's grandson, Michael Savarino — who was the driver during Banchero's citation, and was also cited — heard the boos raining down on him as he stood at the scorer's table.

He did something his grandfather might not have done, but some of his grandfather's best players would: he broke into a wide grin.

Not every great Duke team has loved being hated. Some of them seem more amused by it. But every now and then, you get a Duke team that has a nastiness to them, an edge that shows they don't care if they're in a hostile environment or if they're already up by 20-plus. They still might dunk on your head and tell you and your fans to be quiet afterwards.

"The main thing I'd say about this team is the bigger environment, really the more our team comes to play," Wendell Moore Jr. said after the game. "We've got so many guys who just love the big environment, the big spotlight, the big crowds.

"I mean, the thing is we love being the villain. We love playing on the road. We love when a whole stadium is against us because we know we can silence the crowd. I mean there's no better feeling than really silencing an opponent's crowd."

Some athletes have an almost pathological need for that kind of hatred. They'll look for it if they can't find it. It is their lifeblood. Those types of players are often as loved by their own fans as they are hated by others. But a lot of the greats have been that way. Just look at Michael Jordan.

But Krzyzewski? He's never seemed to care that much about being hated. But he does not like the idea of his players or his family being hated. Him? He can handle it.

When introduced before the game, he was booed loudly and with all of the passion the Tar Heel faithful had left inside of them for the most visible representation of their most hated rival for the last 40-plus years. Some students chanted "F*** Coach K".

"No, I'm used to that. I mean, somebody just told me this was my 96th (Duke-Carolina) game. So at least half, probably 40 — well, 42 of them have been here in Chapel Hill, not always at the Smith Center. So I'm accustomed to that. I expect that. So I got what I expected and I'm always ready for it."

But he bristled when told about Moore's quote about being the villain.

"I've never even heard that. 'The villain'? I don't know where he came up with that. Maybe he, meant — I don't know what meant," Krzyzewski said. "We never use the word 'villain'. Usually someone is trying to play their best game against us. So we just want to be ready for whatever our opponent's best shot is. And I don't think that's being a villain. I think that's being prepared."

Fine. Krzyzewski is genuinely impervious to the hate.

But to silence a crowd like the one at the Smith Center, one that has been eagerly anticipating this game for at least 10 days, one that knew it had one last chance to show its disgust for him and his program? A group that, collectively, felt like it was trying to will their team to go on a run and get back in the game with everything inside of them? One that wants your team to FAIL not just in this game, but in every game, more than arguably anyone else?

It has to feel amazing to have that many people wanting to see you fail on that big of a stage and not only not failing, but flourishing. And not just in spite of them, but BECAUSE of them, in a way. Those are the teams and players that drive opposing fans the most insane.

It was the first Duke-Carolina game in Chapel Hill for much of Duke's roster.

It didn't look like it.

"We watched kind of a motivational video last night, we showed them the atmosphere (at the Smith Center) and some highlights from games. Our sophomores had not played in this environment either, so it was more to let them know what a Duke-Carolina game would be like in the Smith Center. That was the main thing that we wanted to get across," Krzyzewski said.

"I thought that helped. Our guys love playing in big-time atmospheres, but this one is a little bit different for this game."

A little bit.

And if Duke keeps this level of domination up, Coach K's final season might end up as special as five of his other teams have been.