The Legends Club
Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano, and an Epic College Basketball Rivalry
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The riveting inside story of college basketball's fiercest rivalry among three coaching legends—University of North Carolina's Dean Smith, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, and North Carolina State's Jim Valvano—by the king of college basketball writers.
"One of Feinstein’s best."—Chicago Tribune
On March 18, 1980, the Duke basketball program announced the hiring of Mike Krzyzewski, the man who would restore glory to the team. The only problem: no one knew who Krzyzewski was. Nine days later, Jim Valvano was hired by North Carolina State to be their new head coach. The hiring didn't raise as many eyebrows, but the two new coaches had a similar goal: to unseat North Carolina's Dean Smith as the king of college basketball. And just like that, the most sensational competitive decade in history was about to unfold.
In the skillful hands of John Feinstein, The Legends Club captures an era in American sport and culture, documenting the inside view of a decade of absolutely incredible competition. Feinstein pulls back the curtain on the recruiting wars, the intensely personal competition that wasn't always friendly, the enormous pressure and national stakes, and the battle for the very soul of college basketball.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Renowned sportswriter Feinstein has produced an engaging, mostly chronological history of three college basketball coaching icons and rivals, all from Atlantic Coast Conference universities within a mere 25 miles of one another. In 1980, new North Carolina State University basketball coach Jim Valvano shared his strategy for competing against Dean Smith, already a legend in the making as coach of the University of North Carolina: "I'll never outcoach Dean Smith, but maybe I can outlive him." Thirteen years later, Valvano was dead from bone cancer; he became even more famous posthumously. Smith coached until 1997, developing advanced dementia in retirement and dying in early 2015. That makes longtime Duke University coach Mike "Coach K" Krzyzewski the only surviving member of the triumvirate. Feinstein, who has covered college hoops most famously in 1986's A Season on the Brink, relies on years of unprecedented personal access, input from the widows of Valvano and Smith, former colleagues, and most heavily Coach K himself to tell this story with dignity and respect. Feinstein's long history with these coaches gives him intimate knowledge of his subjects, allowing him to provide an insider's perspective that likely will be new even to ACC aficionados.
