DURHAM, N.C. — The Lakers called in June, but in October Mike Krzyzewski was back in Cameron Indoor Stadium, putting the Duke Blue Devils through basketball practice on a floor long since emblazoned with the words "Coach K Court."
In a nearby conference room, a young man painstakingly decorated plates for a heavy hitters' booster dinner, writing out some of Krzyzewski's motivational sayings in sauce around the plate rims.
Outside, signs on campus pointed to parking for the Coach K/Fuqua Conference on Leadership, a management seminar conducted by the school of business that included the announcement of a $2-million endowed chair in the coach's honor, the Michael W. Krzyzewski University Professorship in Leadership.
The Lakers offered Krzyzewski $40 million to become their coach.
These are the sorts of things they could not match.
Attached to Cameron Indoor Stadium is what amounts to Krzyzewski's ivory tower: The six-story Schwartz/Butters Athletic Center requires a fingerprint scan to open the elevator doors on the top floor, where the Hall of Fame coach's offices overlook the plaza known as Krzyzewskiville.
"The Laker thing -- it seems like eight years ago," Krzyzewski said.
"I'm happy to be coaching at Duke.... I didn't think I could appreciate it more, but I do, what I'm doing here and the people I'm doing it with."
Having his name on a court, his words on a plate and his fingerprint electronically memorized are not reasons to turn down a job.
But those things are symbolic of a status the 57-year-old Krzyzewski has at Duke that he could never have in the NBA: He is more than a coach, and he works for an institution that is known for more than a basketball team.
"How many basketball coaches in America are on faculty?" asked Duke President Richard Brodhead, referring to Krzyzewski's role as "executive-in-residence" for the Duke Center of Leadership and Ethics.
He added, "There is a way in which the real question is this: Do you want your work to be continuous with the larger work of human education and human development? Or do you want it to be something absolute, by itself?"
Shelden Williams, a bruising Duke forward, could never quite imagine Krzyzewski with the Lakers.
"Coach K wants his environment controlled," Williams said. "I'm a big Laker fan, but what happened there with Kobe and Shaq, it was silly. That's little-kid stuff. Basketball should be more professional."
