Sports

Olympic loyalty runs deep for Coach K, Deng

LOUL DENG

LOUL DENG

LONDON — He is a lightning rod in so many ways, but there is one thing you can never question about Mike Krzyzewski, and that is this: There never has been a basketball coach for whom wearing the American flag on his shirt has meant more.

Ours is a nation so protective of its native game, and when we have taken it to the Olympics, it always has held deep meaning for the men in charge — so many of whom stacked gold medals in the history books. Dean Smith. Bob Knight. Chuck Daly. Rudy Tomjanovich. Lenny Wilkens.

Even the men responsible for the three earth-rattling basketball losses in the nation’s history — Henry Iba, John Thompson, Larry Brown — have impeccable credentials, and ached for coming up short. And all of them bled for the privilege of leading basketball teams into Olympiads.

Still, Krzyzewski has a little something extra on his dossier. He was a three-year point guard at West Point. He served five years in the Army, rising to the rank of captain. He retains a deep affection for his alma mater, and a deeper sense of duty representing the nation it exists to defend.

“Everything I am, everything I do, it has some basis in what I learned at West Point, and what I experienced serving my country,” Krzyzewski said recently, between answering questions about what may well be the deepest team the U.S. ever has brought to an Olympics. “And I am always very well aware that we are playing for the colors on our uniform, which are also the colors of the flag.”

POST’S OLYMPIC COVERAGE

Krzyzewski long has tried to establish in his players at Duke a sense of belonging to something higher than themselves. Though almost every coach does that to a degree, few can point to such a prodigious depth of duty as Krzyzewski himself. Many of his players have taken to the teaching.

Few have done as much about it as Luol Deng, who played only one year for Krzyzewski at Duke but nevertheless developed a strong bond with his coach that lasts to this day. In these Olympics, Deng will compete for Great Britain, the land that provided his family with asylum when life in their native Sudan became too dangerous.

“If not for this country, Luol might not be here, and I think he has always felt a debt of gratitude for that,” Krzyzewski said. “He is a man who feel deeply about these kinds of things. And the opportunity to give back to a country that has given him and his family so much … I know that was important for him. I’m proud of him.”

Though Krzyzewski inherited a USA Basketball program that has been an international powerhouse for close to 80 uninterrupted years, his former player is trying to provide England with a sliver of success that it has rarely known. It lost all five of its games at the 1948 London Games — its only Olympic appearance — and as of six years ago didn’t even have a national basketball federation.

The hosts are not likely to throw a scare into anyone, least of all the Americans. Deng, the Chicago Bulls All-Star, understands that, and he also knows it’s almost beside the point.

“I just know that when I put on that ‘GB’ shirt, it’s something I’m going to be really proud of,” Deng told The Guardian newspaper last week.

It’s a sentiment his old coach knows well. Maybe as well as anyone.

Whack Back at Vac

Daniel Peter Schuetz: People complaining the recent Penn State sanctions punish the innocent don’t understand the NCAA definition of institutional control. The institution is being punished because the institution did not prevent this from happening.

Vac: Penn State couldn’t get a mulligan. And anything less than a devastating punishment would have been construed that way. And rightly so.

@donstohrerjr: The past few Mets seasons have been like Fruit-Stripes gum — exciting for a little while, but halfway through you just want to spit it out.

@MikeVacc: Although throwing Matt Harvey into the mix does hold the possibility of the season being an Everlasting Gobstopper. At least every five days.

Derek Laino: The Yankees’ trade for Ichiro Suzuki makes no sense. They have two guys in Andruw Jones and Raul Ibanez who have combined for 24 homers and 69 RBIs, and they replace that with a 38-year-old slap hitter with an OBP under .300? I get that Jones and Ibanez are older guys, but Jones is three years younger and Ibanez is far more productive that Ichiro.

Vac: I was afraid it was the jet lag, because the trade makes absolutely no sense to me, either.

Mike Giordano: For the record: If Kate Upton, Scarlett Johansson, Bar Refaeli and Mila Kunis were playing a game of pickup beach volleyball, I would turn off Game 7 of the World Series between the Yankees and Mets.

Vac: The problem with that scenario: That likely will be four 70-somethings playing volleyball.

Vac’s Whacks

So AMC cancelled “The Killing” on Friday. Good start. Now it can do everyone a favor and change its mind on Monday, so it can recancel it on Tuesday. That’ll make us even.

* Felix Hernandez plunked three Yankees the other night? That’s no way to treat his 2015 teammates.

* Thursday night, I woke up at 4 in the morning, London time, for a glass of water and wound up catching an inning of Matt Harvey on the iPad, just the latest reminder of the eternal wonder of baseball: Even when the sky is falling, sometimes it brings a diamond in the wreckage.

* I never thought it ever would be possible for a New York champion to fly under the radar. I’m not sure it’s ever happened before. And I think it might actually be happening with the New York Football Giants.