Wins and losses

The death of legendary North Carolina head coach Dean Smith brought the legacies of the game's great coaches—including Duke's Mike Krzyzewski—into perspective.
The death of legendary North Carolina head coach Dean Smith brought the legacies of the game's great coaches—including Duke's Mike Krzyzewski—into perspective.

One thousand. It's such a big, round, daunting number.

The college basketball world was so wrapped up in the number 1,000 when Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski captured the 1,000th win of his career Jan. 25 against St. John's, becoming the first coach in the history of men's Division I college basketball to reach that milestone.

The internet was flooded with columns and testimonials from the game's greatest players and pundits, praising the 35th-year Duke head coach for his unparalleled level of success. Even I became one of those people, publishing a column in The Chronicle's 24-page commemorative issue on the genius of the man known simply as Coach K.

Two weeks later, on the other side of Tobacco Road, legendary North Carolina head coach Dean Smith passed away at the age of 83. Coaching the Tar Heels for 36 years, winning 879 games, two national championships and taking his team to 11 Final Fours, Smith accrued a similarly impressive coaching resume to that of Krzyzewski. When he retired, Smith—who served for the last 17 years of his coaching career as Krzyzewski's foil in college basketball's greatest rivalry—held what is now the Duke head coach's place atop the sport's all-time wins list.

Smith never reached that mythical 1,000th win, but when he died his 879 career victories and all the accolades that came with them were merely an afterthought.

Instead, people remembered Dean Smith for the man he was. A father figure and mentor to not only some of the game's greatest players but every single person who was involved with the North Carolina basketball program. A champion of civil rights and one of the driving forces behind integration at a flagship institution in the American South. Someone not only larger than life, but potentially larger than his entire sport.

"The thing that Dean did best is that he made men of the boys that came to him," Krzyzewski said following his team's 73-70 win at Florida State two days after Smith's death. "And all those men revere him. They don't love him, they revere him. That's his biggest accomplishment, and he has done that better than anybody."

Hearing that type of testimony from Krzyzewski and countless other players and coaches has made me reconsider the significance of even a milestone as big as 1,000 wins. Records are set only for someone else to break them, and as unfathomable as it seems, one day someone will eclipse Krzyzewski's mark, regardless of where he ends up.

The impact one person can make on another is something that will truly never die.

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