Coach K Honored...Wait, WTF?
This is not your normal feel good Coach K retirement story
Talk about burying the lede. In this article about former Duke coach being honored by the Franciscan Sports Banquet, we learn that on Sunday, daughter Debbie’s house burned to the ground.
Fortunately, no one was injured but that’s obviously going to be a total rebuild and the Savarinos will be living elsewhere for the next year or so.
Even so, can you imagine? Obviously the fact that everyone got out is the main news. Who cares about your things when your family might die in a fire? But still, at some point, you have to to catalogue the things that can be replaced and the things that cannot. What a terrible event for the whole family.
Jim Calhoun, who Coach K has known for decades, met him there and commented on Coach K’s decision to attend despite a very traumatic time for his daughter’s family, saying that “[h]e still came. That tells me more about him. I expect great things from a great man.”
For his part, Coach K told Calhoun and the assembled that ”[t]here was no way I wasn’t going to be here, for the Franciscans, and for you. I’d have your back anytime, and I know you’d have mine.”
The compliments flowed after that, with Krzyzewski calling Calhoun “the best program builder ever” and Calhoun saying that “[I]n my opinion, in this generation, he’s the most accomplished.”