‘Five-Point Play’ tells story of team in state of ‘madness’

By KAMNI KHAN

Executive Editor

With March Madness in full swing, Five-Point Play, Duke University head coach Mike “Coach K” Krzyzewski’s (Sha-shef-ski) commentary on the team’s 2001 championship season, gives college basketball fans an inside look into one of the nation’s top men’s programs.

As the Blue Devils prepare for another trip to the Final Four this year, the book shows how they were able to reach their peak last season, going 35-4 overall and becoming the conference regular-season and tournament champions, en route to capturing the regional and national championships.

While Leading With the Heart showed readers Coach K’s personal drive, Five-Point Play strictly focuses on the squad—its weaknesses, strengths and cohesiveness as both a team and a family.

The latest book also stresses the significance of his coaching ideology—the fist—and its five components: communication, trust, collective responsibility, caring and pride. According to Krzyzewski, when a team concentrates on these principles, it is guaranteed success; one missing factor, however, contributes to a faltered program.

The journey starts during preseason, where Coach K and his wife, Mickie, traveled to Hawaii for a reunion of the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, where he was an assistant coach under Chuck Daly.

In his typical style, the 11-time NCAA Coach of the Year made the initative to first cheer on the two pillars of the squad—Shane Battier and Jason Williams—during their practice sessions with U.S. Select, which was helping the 2000 Olympic team prepare for its competition.

The conversation that takes place between the captains and the coach is the underlying factor for the team’s success, as Coach K challenges both Battier, who is now a forward for the Memphis Grizzlies, and Williams, currently a NCAA Player of the Year candidate, to destroy any rivalries that may be invoked by outside forces in order to play together as a cohesive unit.

Readers eventually learn that the speech ties the two leaders during times of adversity as they shift away from the media’s image that they are their own competition and instead find ways to support each other.

Months later, Williams went five-for-21 on Valentine’s Day 2001 as the Blue Devils were handed a 91-89 defeat by the University of Virginia. The 6’2” guard, a native of Plainfield, N.J., comments that after the loss, Battier approached him in the locker room and the unspoken words between the two hammered home a message for Williams. He recalls that as Battier looked him in the eyes, he was thinking, “‘Don’t you dare cry . . . You didn’t play your heart out tonight.’ . . . And I realized Shane was right.”

Along with the preseason section, Five-Point Play provides a game-by-game synopsis of the Blue Devils’ season; it is divided into different stages of the championship journey: preseason NIT, early regular season, ACC regular season, the final regular-season game, the ACC Tournament, NCAA Tournament East Region and the Final Four.

Each game receives a statistical overview, and then readers are given a personal perspective of the competition, including Reunion Weekend, when members of the 1991 championship squad, including Bobby Hurley and Christian Laettner, traveled to Clemson, S.C. The teams from both years celebrated the 85-64 victory by forming an extended huddle, and in Coach K’s eyes, it allowed the younger players to realize that they had the capacity to become national champions.

During away games, it was the crowd’s cheers of “overrated” that inspired Williams’ shooting sprees, guaranteeing Duke road victories against Maryland and Monmouth, most notably. The season-long mission of providing team support to the players, regardless of the level of their athletic abilities, would lead to Nate James and Carlos Boozer emerging as key players.

In addition, quotes from the Blue Devils add an extra personal touch for readers since they are placed in various occasions during the season.

When the team’s practice uniforms were left in Durham as it traveled to Atlanta during the opening round of the ACC Tournament, the players purchased T-shirts at the concession stands and wore them during warm-ups. Mike Dunleavy Jr., son of the former NBA coach and player, felt “a little naked out there. We just had this little T-shirt, and it didn’t fit too well.”

The book is a must for any Duke fan since the 237 pages are an easy read, and especially because it brings back numerous memories of the team’s stellar season. Whether you’re taking a long flight to a tropical destination or just sitting at home during Spring Break, be sure to invest in your copy of Five-Point Play.