The first day the 2008 U.S. Olympic men's basketball team met as a group, Olympic and Duke men's coach Mike Krzyzewski had a plan to blend this collection of superstars into a unit that would return the Olympic gold medal back to America. And the first part of the plan had nothing to do with practice.
As Krzyzewski related at Thursday's Primetime employee forum, he held a meeting where he let the players discuss the standards they would hold themselves to. Krzyzewski hoped every player would talk, but privately he had told key players, including Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwayne Wade, that they had to speak.
The meeting got off to a good start, with Bryant and others laying down the rules: Everyone must be on time. Everyone has each other's back.
But well into the meeting, Krzyzewski was still waiting for James to speak.
"I'm thinking, LeBron, don't punk me now," Krzyzewski said to laughter.
Then James stood up and spoke for several minutes explaining to Krzyzewski and the team that they would have no excuses for obtaining anything less than a gold medal because of the talent they had on the team. That ideal was the basis of what became a series "gold standards" Krzyzewski and his team would follow all the way to their gold medal performance in Beijing.
It was, Krzyzewski said, the first indication that the team would be built upon principles of teamwork, leadership and high expectations. After that moment, he had little doubt that the gold medal would be theirs.
"Standards are important because a standard is what you attempt to do all the time," he told more than 300 employees gathered in Griffith Theater. "It's the way you live."
Krzyzewski told the Primetime audience that working at Duke as a world-renowned institution, and that everyone in the audience contributed to that prestige.
"We're lucky to be a part of something bigger than us," he said.
"Anything any one of us does is important," said Krzyzewski, who coached his 950th game at Duke on Dec. 31. "That's why we should always act as a team to make good things happen."
Duke employees Debora Robinson, left, and Michele Jones listen during Primetime Thursday. Photo by Megan Morr.
Jennah Jones, a residence coordinator with Residence Life, was the first person to arrive to the Primetime event 45 minutes early to get a front-row seat. She said she wanted to take lessons from Coach K's speech to share with the first-year students she works with on Duke's East Campus.
"I've loved Coach K since I was in seventh grade," she said. "To hear him speak about leadership is amazing because he's obviously a great leader."
Chuck Hemric, the director of volunteer services at Duke Gardens, said he was inspired by how Krzyzewski took a group of superstar individual players on the U.S. Olympic basketball team and turn them into a cohesive group.
"You saw all these unique talents come together and for him to mold them together was very moving," Hemric said. "All of us that work at Duke are part of a team and we should show pride to be part of this team."
That's a team, Krzyzewski said, that can accomplish great things.
"Any idea you have for your department or the university could be a great idea, as long as we work together," he said. "Duke is great because of its people, and you know what? You are those people."