K gets down to business

Krzyzewski opens Duke's basketball practice to business leaders

DURHAM -- Duke men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski juggled tasks at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Tuesday afternoon -- coaching the 2007-08 Blue Devils and providing some insight into his leadership style for the 200 or so business professionals who watched.

They were invited guests, as participants of the 2007 Fuqua School of Business and Coach K Leadership Conference.

Krzyzewski is eager to share his ideas and demonstrate his leadership style, even if it means opening up his normally closed practices, in part because he has an eye on his future.

"I'll probably end up teaching leadership [at Fuqua]," said Krzyzewski, now in his 28th year at Duke and 33rd year of college coaching. "Because it's what I do. I'm a teacher. I teach basketball, but I teach more than that. I teach what I know about leadership. And when you teach, you learn. It's fascinating."

If seeing Krzyzewski as the figurehead for a business conference seems like a stretch to outsiders, that hasn't been the case at Duke since 2002, when the conference began, or in 2003, when former Fuqua Dean Douglas T. Breeden pushed to establish a leadership center and named it the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics (COLE).

Conference panelist Bernard Mullin, president and chief executive officer of the Atlanta Spirit, which owns and operates the NBA's Atlanta Hawks and the NHL's Atlanta Thrashers, said Krzyzewski's reputation reaches beyond the sports world into the business world because he has been successful over a long period of time.

"He's golden," Mullin said. "He's one of the major reasons why I'm here. ... I think everyone understands, in business, that sports is about as competitive as it gets, and everyone is going after the same prize. ... At the pro level, everyone wants to emulate the San Antonio Spurs. At the collegiate level, it's Duke."

One of the goals for the three-day event was how best to develop leadership, then pass the baton to new leaders.

Passing the baton is not a pressing issue for Krzyzewski, who has said he doesn't know when he'll retire from coaching.

"I haven't set any timetables," he said. "I see myself going for a while. [I won't retire] in the near future or the next couple of years."

Krzyzewski, 60, still burns with passion for coaching and teaching because in the past six years he has kept himself invigorated working on things beyond sports.

He already was a popular speaker with the Washington Speakers Bureau and at Fuqua in his role as "executive in residence" at COLE.

In 2005, he began doing national television commercials and, in 2006, he helped open the Emily Krzyzewski Family Life Center, named for his mother, in Durham.

Krzyzewski's third season as a radio host begins today on XM channel 144 at 9 a.m. and again at 3 p.m. Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, who plays for Krzyzewski on the U.S. national team, is the guest.

Krzyzewski said guiding the U.S. program, with senior men's national team director Jerry Colangelo, back to international prominence is the more pressing transition for him right now.

"We're living a change in leadership right now, and it's international what we have to do," Krzyzewski said.

He said he planned to talk about his experience with the U.S. team, a venture that will conclude with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, in his keynote speech to the conference on Tuesday night, then get back on the court today.

"It's very appropriate [to talk about changing leadership] right now," he said. "But as far as everything else, by doing all this, I'm sure I'll be prepared for something [after coaching]."