Coach K's team has no `I'

Here it came, on the run, Duke running--1999 the moment, 1991 the memory. Now came the guard Trajan Langdon running where the guard Bobby Hurley once ran. Now came Langdon throwing a pass from the top of the key as Hurley once threw a pass that might have landed out of town had not freshman Grant Hill leaped against the rafters to get his right hand on the basketball and throw it down, making two points and one legend.

Now came Langdon's pass to the freshman Corey Maggette. No extraordinary drama to match the 1991 Final Four when Hurley and Hill helped Duke win its first national championship. This was a February game against an inferior opponent. But Duke has written its story so vividly for so long that today's fast break conjures yesterday's, even if Langdon's pass to Maggette produced just one routine layup in a 44-point victory.

Someone at courtside for Langdon/ Maggette remembered Hurley/Hill and said Hill once was asked what he thought on seeing videotape of the astonishing sprint, levitation and dunk. "I thought, `Where'd I get that haircut?'" Hill said.

Perfect. Let the work speak for itself. Let others go on about the implausibility of the thing. Better to do the thing in the spotlight than to bring the spotlight to the thing.

Now look at Maggette. Out on the break alone, he could have taken Langdon's pass and made it a show starring himself. He's 19, 6-6, 220 pounds. He's such a blend of strength and quickness that some Duke people give Maggette the athlete's edge over Hill. But with a fast-break chance to fancy it up on this night, Maggette put the ball off the glass. The play went all but unnoticed. No showboating. Just excellence.

"It's the Duke culture," said Quin Snyder, once a Duke player and now Mike Krzyzewski's associate head coach. "The kids give up ego to be part of something special. It's not like coach tells them, `Don't do that.' It's more, `Why'd you do that?' "After which, the record would suggest, the offensive act is not repeated in coach K's presence.

As to how Duke persuades players to give up ego in an era of runaway ego, a brief tour of the locker room offers evidence of Krzyzewski's first rule of recruiting. "Get great kids," he said. Anyone meeting Elton Brand, Shane Battier and Trajan Langdon understands the coach's estimation of those players.

The sophomore center Brand said, "Here the team is the star." The big man who may be the nation's player of the year then added, "And I wanted that."

The junior forward Battier: "Individually, we know we're good, but we also know that getting that national championship ring depends on putting the team first Showboating just takes away from great basketball. And the Duke way is to put on a great basketball show."

The senior Langdon: "Five people must play as one. We've got enough individual talent on offense to go out there every night and outscore almost everybody. But the way to win consistently is to have balance on offense, defense and rebounding. To win the way we want to win, we have to be a team of players, not a team of egos."

Words to warm any coach's heart, they may be especially meaningful to Krzyzewski this winter. That's because he's playing hurt.

At 52, four years removed from back surgery, Krzyzewski now has a bad right hip. Though he limps noticeably and moves gingerly, as if a sudden turn might bring a lightning bolt of pain, the coach will tell you the hip is only a nuisance: "It's really not all that bad."

It causes him pain only at certain times, such as when he's awake, which is most of the time because he often can't sleep. Still, he insists, "The biggest problem is at practice because I can't move the way I want to on the floor. And in some game situations, when I want to get up and say something to a player or official, I have to ask a coach to do it."

Now sitting on a stool, Krzyzewski leaned back against a row of metal lockers in a small coach's locker room. His No. 1-ranked team had run off another in its series of astonishingly efficient performances. Even as Virginia played diligently and seemed to stay in contact, Duke somehow had moved far beyond reach. With no stars, no hemes, no unforgettable dramatics, Duke created and sustained excellence all night long. This one became a 44-point rout, Duke's 23rd victory in 24 games.

Krzyzewski, a master of persuasion, seldom has uttered words less persuasive than those intended to persuade listeners that the hip isn't all that bad. His body language spoke more directly. It screamed.

Only last month, before a January 20 game at Clemson, pain in Krzyzewski's left arm and shoulder frightened him. A heart attack? Doctors assured him the pain had radiated from the bad hip.

That night, numbed up with sedatives, Krzyzewski did something he'd never done before. He left his team's bench during a game and retreated to the locker room for a few minutes.

Small wonder, then, that Krzyzewski has asked his doctors to fix the blamed hip. They've scheduled surgery to do a hip replacement. The surgery is scheduled for April 5. That's the week after the Final Four.