THE EXPENDABLES

 

Full caveat: I like Duke basketball and I think Mike Krzyzewski is a great coach and has shown class and humility his entire career.

That being said, I have a really bad taste in my mouth from his actions at the end of his team’s loss to Oregon in the NCAA Tournament.

Not, because he lectured Dillon Brooks about sportsmanship. Not totally because he lied about it, when confronted with an obvious discrepancy with the player’s account.

No, my biggest complaint is the fact that even the sainted Coach K – by his actions – showed that players are universally treated as lesser humans than coaches or athletic directors or NCAA administrators.

Follow me if you will.

There may be no person associated with sports who is more revered and loved than Coach K. He is widely considered to be not only one of the greatest coaches in history, but also considered one of the best people associated with sports.

Yet, when confronted with evidence that seemed to contradict his own words, the first course of action he took was to offer a lie at the expense of a 19-year-old’s integrity. Period.

Why? Why did he do it? I don’t think it was because he’s suddenly become a bad person, or because Mike Krzyzewski has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the sports world for decades. And I don’t think he did it because he was embarrassed at being caught red-handed.

I think he did it because despite his stellar reputation and celebrated character, Coach K threw a player under the bus, because whenever it comes down to coach vs. player, coach is always in the driver’s seat and player is always under the wheels.

Coaches own the manor and players are the help.  And who are you going to believe: the lord of the manor - a gentlemen who literally has a court named after him and is known around the world by a single letter – or some small forward from the University of Oregon who 99% of the country didn’t even know prior to the start of March Madness?

And If Coach K was ready to leave tire marks across a player’s chest, can you imagine what true bad guys like John Calipari or Rick Pitino would do? My god, they’d probably claim they told Brooks what a great game he played only to have him spit in their face and scream: “go to hell!”

Thus is the current landscape of big-time college basketball. Players are like disposable cameras: you need them to make a shot and take a shot, but once that’s done, toss em’.