Coach K perfect builder of USA

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Mike Krzyzewski always had resisted the temptation to leave Duke for the jobs where another coach cast the longest shadow, where someone already staked his claim to that bench's gold standard. Through the years, he has turned down UCLA, the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers, leaving John Wooden, Red Auerbach and Pat Riley to be the forever faces of those places.

He waited for the right job, the right time and he still never had to leave the court named for him inside Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Now, Krzyzewski has a chance to go down as America's Olympic men's basketball coach. In the past, people have remembered the coaches who didn't win the gold medal. History remembers Henry Iba in 1972, and John Thompson in 1988, and Larry Brown in 2004. Now, Coach K gives himself the chance to be the forever face of the red, white and blue of basketball.

In Las Vegas, where Team USA is holding its tryout camp and practices prior to next month's World Championships in Japan, Krzyzewski is deepening one of this sport's most brilliant legacies.

For the longest time, coaching the U.S. Olympic team always has been a losing proposition, a job that brought far more shame in failure than glory in gold. The repeated failures of American basketball in international competition, punctuated with the U.S. struggling to salvage a bronze medal at the Athens Games in 2004, has made for the most unique of opportunities for Krzyzewski.

The U.S. Olympic basketball program needs an overhaul, needs a vision, a leader for the Beijing Games in two years. Now, everything you're hearing out of those practices and meetings this past week in the desert, every way that this young roster sounds like it's buying into a three-summer commitment of world championships and training camps on the way to Beijing, tells so much about how Coach K was born, bred and groomed to coach this team.

Already, Krzyzewski brought one of his old West Point players, Col. Bob Brown, and three of his soldiers who were wounded in Iraq to talk to the team the other day.

"A person doesn't become whole until you become a part of something bigger than yourself," Krzyzewski told his players. This is so far from the pro coaching model that's existed in USA Basketball the past several Olympics Games, and so refreshing.

He's trying something that's never been done with the pros in the Olympics, something that, frankly, the limited practice and training camp time never allowed.

True team-building.

"Simplicity will be the beauty of the team," Krzyzewski promised.

Krzyzewski has a young group, including kids such as LeBron James and Dwight Howard who never experienced the rah-rah of college basketball. USA Basketball didn't bother begging the older, jaded stars to be a part of the 2008 Beijing Games. When Krzyzewski pulled back the curtain for a brief glimpse of his workouts in Vegas this week, The Sporting News' Mike DeCourcy reported an inspired starting five on the floor of James, Howard, Chris Paul, Chris Bosh and Carmelo Anthony.

How's that for America's best young players, with Dwyane Wade as part of that core too? And how about the fact that so many bodies were reportedly hitting the floor, the intensity of the practices has been steamy?

This time, USA Basketball is doing it right. They stopped choosing the Olympic team as though they were going to play a video game with the participants. NBA pest Bruce Bowen is in the Olympic camp. So is ex-Dukie Shane Battier. Those are the kind of role players needed, the kind willing to set screens and make defensive stops and never seek a shot in return. Krzyzewski went so far to say that everyone on his roster ought to consider himself a role player.

Connecticut's Jim Calhoun had a great thought about why Coach K is perfect for the job, about why he was perfectly un-compromised for the duty. Krzyzewski never had to trade for any of these players in the NBA. He never had to try and sign them as free agents. This way, Krzyzewski could coach them. He could bench guys. He could discipline them. He could do whatever was necessary without a fear that someday his handling of particular players could come back to haunt him.

And it's far easier to be tough as a coach of this team when the players know that you're in it with them. And not just when it's going well. The biggest thing the U.S. gets with Krzyzewski over the Athens disaster with Brown is genuine, true leadership.

Brown was so consumed with absolving himself of blame for losing, he never invested the commitment it took for winning. His players weren't stupid. They knew that Brown started distancing himself from roster the moment the team gathered together in 2004. He kept tearing down the team, trying to sculpt an end-game that would see him as a genius for winning with them and blameless if he lost.

A transparent ploy, it enraged everyone from NBA commissioner David Stern to USA Basketball officials to the players.

With Coach K, that'll never happen. Maybe the U.S. won't win the gold in two years, but it won't happen with its coach throwing everyone else overboard.

Right now, though, you have to like the U.S.' chances in Beijing. Mike Krzyzewski has two years to keep building and building this thing, to sell his team, our team, on something bigger than itself. No one does that better in basketball. Yes, you've got to like America's chances for gold now, and the coach's for truly separating himself in history.