The college basketball world shook earlier this month when it was announced Duke head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski will retire after the 2021-2022 season, his 42nd in Durham. Information rarely leaks from the Blue Devils’ program, but when it does, it’s often by Stadium’s Jeff Goodman, who broke the retirement story. The Boston native sat down with Awful Announcing to discuss what it was like breaking the news.
“It was a crazy morning, because I live in Boston and all the stuff that morning happened, Danny Ainge steps down from the Celtics, which wasn’t a surprise, but then Brad Stevens goes from coach to GM basically. I’m dealing with that in the morning, people are wanting me to come on locally and do some things, and then I get the tip that ‘Okay, later on this week, K’s going to announce that he’s going to retire in a year.’ And I’m like ‘Oh, man, all right, I’ve got to put the Celtics’ stuff to the side. That’s already done; weighing in on that doesn’t matter right now.'”
Kryzyzewski retired two months and a day after Duke’s fierce rival UNC’s head coach Roy Williams stepped down after 18 years in Chapel Hill. Williams — who retired effectively immediately — was replaced by his former player and assistant coach Hubert Davis. Duke took a play out of the Tar Heel playbook as it was announced Coach K’s former player and current assistant Jon Scheyer will take over the program after next season. Given the gravity of the news, Goodman made certain he had all his devils in a row.
“I got the first tip, and then I confirmed it, so I had two sources probably a half hour before I broke it. But I’m like ‘All right, it’s still K retiring.’ I know it, I’m 99.9 percent done, but I’m still like ‘It’s K retiring, you can’t ever be wrong on this one. Let me make sure.’ So I got a third source.”
Even with that certainty, Goodman says he still couldn’t believe the news himself. He knew that his name was going to be attached to the biggest college basketball story of the year.
“Literally, as I’ve got the tweet ready to go and as I’m ready to hit send, it was just one of those things that was surreal. With some things you don’t understand the magnitude, the impact; with this, it’s Coach K and retirement. Whatever else it is, it doesn’t matter. The words ‘Coach K’ and ‘retirement’ in a tweet, it’s going to blow up. So my finger is shaking as I’m hitting the send button, not because I was worried; I knew it was 100 percent. I just knew what it meant to the sport.”
Goodman also confirmed to Awful Announcing that both he and Brett McMurphy’s contracts are up in a couple of months.
