Krzyzewski went on to recount a moment during an exhibition game against Australia, when Kobe Bryant began taking “Laker shots, not U.S. shots.”
“They were bad shots,” Krzyzewski said. “And LeBron [James] comes in front of me and he looks at me—there’s gonna be a mutiny right now. He looks at me, and I said, ‘Don’t say anything. I’ll take care of it.’”
Krzyzewski said that he stayed up “all night” that night, because he knew that he had to “hold one of the best players in the world accountable.” The next morning, he called a meeting with Bryant.
“And he’s got these piercing, beautiful eyes…He’s an alien, really. He and Michael Jordan were the two aliens…just crazy good,” Krzyzewski said. “So I look at him and I say, ‘Yesterday, you took really bad shots.’”
After showing Bryant tapes from the game, Krzyzewski told him, “If you take those shots, we will not be able to win the gold medal. We won’t be able to medal—we won’t have a team…You cannot take those shots.”
Krzyzewski said he held his breath as he waited for Bryant to respond, recounting, “And he says, ‘Okay.’”
“And I’m thinking, ‘I stayed up all night for ‘okay,’” Krzyzewski said, and the audience broke out into laughter. “So I ask him, ‘You sure?’ He says, ‘Coach, I won’t take those shots again.’”
Later, when the American team was playing in the semi-finals, Krzyzewski said he was “in the toughest game” he ever coached, before or since. In a close game with eight minutes left on the clock, Krzyzewski called a timeout.
“So I’m getting ready to draw up a play, and all of a sudden, the hand of the guy I held accountable came on my hand,” Krzyzewski said. “And he says, ‘Coach, we don’t need a play. We’re ready. We’ve been training for this.’”
“And all of a sudden, LeBron James said something, Carmelo Anthony said something, Dwayne Wade said something, and we left the bench without a play that may have worked or may not have worked,” Krzyzewski recounted. “But I forgot to tell you: There’s a fourth A.”
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“And the fourth A is ‘attitude.’ We came off the bench with a winning attitude. And not only did we make one play, we made play after play after play,” Krzyzewski said. “And we won the gold medal.”
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