The Legends Club<\/em>, reminds us of those details, and also tells us a lot more we never knew. He relates, for example, the few choice words that Coach K\u2019s wife, Mickey, uttered when she heard that Valvano was also coming to the heart of Atlantic Coast Conference country and would be coaching in Raleigh, just a few miles from their new home in Durham. Valvano had been on the New York coaching scene at Iona while Coach K was at West Point, and she\u2019d been looking forward to a respite from his overwhelming personality.<\/p>\nBoth the the new coaches, in their early 30s, would labor to build their programs in the shadow of Dean Smith, who was already a larger-than-life presence at the third ACC school in the Triangle, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For the next 10 years, the three teams competed against one another and on the national stage. They won national championships \u2013 Carolina in 1982; State, most improbably, in 1983; and Duke, finally, in 1990. And then, also at the end of the 1989-90 season, Valvano was dismissed in disgrace from State.<\/p>\n
But the story doesn\u2019t end there, of course. Feinstein goes on to tell of Valvano\u2019s struggle to figure out what to do after he was no longer coaching, and of his valiant fight against the cancer that took his life in 1993, at age 47. He describes the evolving rivalry between the two greats who remained, Smith and Coach K, and eventually Smith\u2019s retirement, decline and death. And he talks about how Coach K has grown and changed over the years, both as a coach and as a person.<\/p>\n
Feinstein, a noted journalist and author who began his sports-writing career at Duke and graduated just three years before Coach K\u2019s arrival, has added a great deal of research to his extensive first-hand knowledge of the great rivalry among these three coaches who are all now college basketball legends. He drew stories and insights from not only the coaches, but also their families and those who worked with and played for them.<\/p>\n
The result is a wonderful book that does many things. It enables fans to relive the ups and downs of many years of memorable (and sometimes forgettable) basketball seasons, with more insight and less emotional stress than the first time around. It reminds us of such great players as Michael Jordan, Christian Laettner, Grant Hill and James Worthy, just to name a few who graced the courts in central North Carolina. (These were the days when many good players stayed in college until they graduated, or at least for more than one year.) When I\u2019d arrive at some destination after having listened to the book while driving, I\u2019d find myself wondering why everyone wasn\u2019t talking about what I\u2019d just heard, so vivid is Feinstein\u2019s reading of his own words.<\/p>\n
But The Legends Club <\/em>is far from just a recounting of past basketball games and seasons. One indication of the scope of the book is that Feinstein doesn\u2019t write in strictly chronological order, but rather moves back and forth in time when doing so helps give context and perspective.<\/p>\nThat context and perspective are part of what makes this book great. Feinstein helps us to see things more clearly than we could in the excitement, jubilation or heartbreak of the moments. We see both the bigger picture about college basketball, and the even bigger picture about how basketball fits into the world beyond the gyms and arenas.<\/p>\n
Feinstein also helps us see beyond the legends to understand more about these three men who have had such a presence in college basketball and American popular culture.<\/p>\n
The personal stories, the insights Feinstein gives us about the three and their evolving relationships are perhaps the most memorable part of the book. Coach K was with Jimmy V when Valvano died. In one way or another, all three men came to respect the others and value the rivalry that helped elevate them all. And even in the throes of intense, often cutthroat competition, there are higher values. It\u2019s interesting how often Feinstein quotes one or another of these men as saying he did something, maybe something unexpected or seemingly out of character, because it \u201cwas the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The book brought tears to my eyes several times, and not a one of those times involved the outcome of a basketball game. And there are also passages that will have you laughing out loud. There\u2019s the story, for example, of how Dean Smith\u2019s wife, having just given birth to one of their daughters, was sure the baby\u2019s life was ruined when, lying in a hospital, she heard that Duke had beaten Carolina. And how one of Coach K\u2019s daughters was apparently a result of his celebration after that same game, and the two sets of parents were seated side by side several years later when the two girls were performing in a piano recital\u2026<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t really speak to how enjoyable this book will be for someone who\u2019s not a fan of one of these basketball teams, but I suspect anyone with any interest in sports will find The Legends Club<\/em> highly entertaining, informative and moving. For those of us who\u2019ve lived and breathed this rivalry, the book is a gem.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Yes, I went to Wake Forest College\/University (it changed names midway through my student days). But Wake Forest had moved from Wake County to Winston-Salem in the 1950s, and although as a student I quickly learned that beating Carolina, especially in basketball, was a Big Deal, and even though we still talked about the ACC\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10,93],"tags":[858,863,861,859,865,862,864,860],"class_list":["post-1919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-contemporary-nonfiction","category-sports","tag-acc-basketball","tag-carolina","tag-coach-k","tag-college-basketball","tag-dean-smith","tag-duke","tag-jim-valvano","tag-john-feinstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1921,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions\/1921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>You think you remember these things, but you don\u2019t. I\u2019d forgotten, for example, that a young Mike Kryzysewski became the new head basketball coach at Duke the very same year (1980) that a young Jim Valvano took on that position at N.C. State.<\/p>\n