If you haven’t seen it, Carlos Boozer made an appearance on the Dan Patrick Show, and most of it, understandably, was about his sons, Cameron and Cayden, who are having terrific freshman seasons for Duke.
He talked about several things, like staying out of their recruitment and “retiring” when he knew he wouldn’t be able to win games in the driveway anymore. He said he wanted to retire undefeated.
He also told the Prince story, which is pretty great.
And he told a fairly astonishing story about his
coach, Mike Krzyzewski, and a way that he motivated his team.
There were signs up in the locker room reading “Attack! Attack! Attack!” And at a certain point, Coach K came somersaulting into the room, yelling “Attack! Attack!”
Plus there was video rolling of the scene from Braveheart where William Wallace is rallying his troops as they’re prepared to quit the battlefield rather than face Longshanks’ army.
As Boozer points out, this was after Coach K had had his hips replaced. It was not necessarily an easy thing to do.
It reminds us of one of his earlier motivational ploys, told to us by a player from one of his first Duke teams, before Duke played Louisville.
The lights went off, and Coach K came into the room with a single candle. After a few seconds, he said, “I come not to praise Louisville, but to bury them.”
The team went nuts and ran out all fired up.
Unfortunately, Louisville killed them, but the whole thing made a huge impression on the team and you got an idea of where things were heading with Krzyzewski and Duke Basketball.
