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I'm onto you, Mike Krzyzewski. I see exactly what you're doing, and it's brilliant. You are brilliant. Diabolical and infuriating, but brilliant.
Now then, enough talking to you. The rest of this column is written for everyone else, because everyone else needs to understand just how cold, how calculating, you really are.
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| Believe it, Coach Krzyzewski is up to something here -- guaranteed. (US Presswire) |
First, quickly, the play and its aftermath:
With 15 seconds left and North Carolina on the brink of the win, Hansbrough elevates in traffic and has the ball knocked loose from behind by Duke's Steve Johnson. Henderson, challenging from the front with his right hand, sees the ball float past and tracks it by twisting his torso in mid-air. His right forearm follows through in a short, devastating arc that ends at Hansbrough's nose.
Hansbrough's nose is broken. Blood everywhere. Henderson gets an intentional foul, ejected, and suspended one game. Here's video.
Since then, Coach K has waged a public-relations war so inept, so disarmingly dumb, that it has to be intentional. He's mind-freaking us like he mind-freaked potential 2006 lottery pick Josh McRoberts into staying for his sophomore season. He wants everyone to be so busy hating him -- Coach K -- that we forget about Gerald Henderson.
Speaking only for myself ... it's working.
Starting Sunday, here's how Coach K has altered the physics of our mind:
• He indirectly blamed UNC coach Roy Williams by saying Hansbrough, an All-American, shouldn't have been on the court. "The game was over before that -- the outcome of the game, let's put it that way," Coach K said Sunday. "That's unfortunate that those people were in the game. ... I mean, 20 seconds left. You know what I mean. What I'm saying -- I'm not blaming anybody. It's unfortunate. We should have both probably had our walk-ons in. ... If they're still playing, we're going to play."
• Coach K implied -- oh, hell, he came out and said -- that the bigger victim was Henderson. Not Hansbrough, who might have to wear a protective mask during the ACC Tournament. Here's what Coach K said Monday: "I don't blame anybody. I'm just saying it's unfortunate, and the person it's most unfortunate for is 'G'. That wasn't his intent (to injure Hansbrough), and that's not what he was doing during that play."
• Coach K has spent most of his time with the media explaining Henderson's innocence, and very little expressing concern for Hansbrough. I counted 222 words on his version Monday of Henderson's foul, and two words -- "It's unfortunate" -- on Hansbrough's bloodied mess of a face.
• Coach K made it clear that a Duke player who plays dirty is subject to harsher punishment than anything the ACC could dole out. "I would suspend a player who would do that for longer (than one game)," he said Monday. "Because you would never want that conduct -- that's just unacceptable. I would hope we would have even higher standards on that."
As for that final point ...
A reporter on that ACC conference call Monday -- OK, me -- noted Coach K's tough personal stance on dirty play and asked how many games he had suspended Christian Laettner for stomping Kentucky's Aminu Timberlake at the 1992 NCAA Tournament.
"First of all," Coach K said to me, "would you call that a stomp?"
Absolutely, I said. I'd seen the replay many times.
"Well then," he said. "My judgment and yours would differ."
So there you have it. Laettner didn't stomp Timberlake, and Henderson didn't mean to hurt Hansbrough.
The thing is, Henderson didn't mean to hurt Hansbrough. Not in my opinion. I've watched it over and over, slowed it down, paused it. He was revved up to block a dunk, and when the ball popped free, all hell broke loose in mid-air. But there was no intent by Henderson to do anything more than challenge Hansbrough at the rim. That's what I believe.
What you believe will be colored as much by who you are as by what you saw.
On a Duke message board run by Scout.com, "WastnAway" wrote: "I honestly think if that ball hadn't been stripped on the way up you might have had one hell of a block. There was no way for GH to pull out of that once that arm got moving."
On Scout's UNC message board, "Dinguses" wrote: "Hans should file criminal charges against Henderson. A ball game is no excuse for an assault with battery."
How can two groups of people -- many of them educated at these top-notch schools -- have utterly different views of the same play? Because we're prejudiced. All of us. About everything. Show me a person who claims to be "objective," and I'll show you someone who hasn't paid enough attention to the topic to have a credible opinion. Or someone lying about their objectivity in the first place.
Me, I'm not objective. I wrote a fawning book on Krzyzewski in 1999, back when I was drinking the Coach K Kool-Aid. One of the worst books of all time. Don't buy it. Please.
No Coach K Kool-Aid for me. Not anymore. He's a great coach and recruiter, but is off-the-charts manipulative. He's eerily insightful, yet able to see no evil when the mood strikes. I'm not a Coach K guy. There's my bias. I admit it.
Which makes me an incredibly credible person to say this:
Gerald Henderson doesn't deserve your scorn, because he wasn't trying to hurt Tyler Hansbrough.
Coach K? Scorn him all you want. That seems to be his goal.