Mike Krzyzewski was on top of the college-basketball world, and he looked miserable.  It was January 1995, and Duke had reached the national-championship game in four of the previous five seasons, bringing home two titles. But the grind was killing Krzyzewski. He called a team meeting in the middle of the season and walked in with no color in his face, looking old and weak at 47 years old. Then he told the players his shocking news: He wouldn’t be coaching the team the rest of the season.  Twenty years later, Krzyzewski is 67. He looks neither old nor weak, and there is no sign of him slowing down. He has won two more national titles, and on Sunday he became the first Division I men’s coach to reach 1,000 wins as his fifth-ranked Blue Devils beat St. John’s, 77-68, in New York.  The 1994-95 season contributed as little to his 1,000 wins—nine—as any in his career, and is often written off as the one season Duke didn’t make the NCAA Tournament since 1983, his third year on the job. But those close to Krzyzewski say that period is when he learned how to pace himself and maintain that success for so long.  “Duke was run like a mom-and-pop shop with all the plugs plugged into Coach K,” said Marquette coach Steve Wojciechowski, a member of that 1994-95 team who later served as an assistant. “When he came back it was run much more like a Fortune 500 company where Coach was the CEO.”  Krzyzewski says that he suffered an injury that required back surgery in October 1994. But afterward, Krzyzewski—who attended Army and spent his first five seasons coaching there—refused to give it the proper time to recover. He had a special stool to sit on for back support, but it wasn’t a part of his mind-set to tone down the constant attention that running the program demanded.  Players and coaches knew he was pushing himself, but few knew the extent of what he was going through. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know when a coach is lying on the bleachers before practice, he’s hurting,” said Pete Gaudet, Krzyzewski’s assistant who later took over for the rest of the season.  In January, Duke was ranked No. 11 in the country but had just lost to Clemson. They faced a road trip to Georgia Tech and the only person who could get Krzyzewski not to go was his wife, Mickie. He listened, and the team was shocked. “What happened when the president got shot?” Gaudet said.  And he didn’t just take a step back; he completely removed himself from the team to allow himself to heal. Players were afraid when they heard the news. “Is he dying?” initially wondered Jeff Capel, then a sophomore on the team and a current assistant coach. Gaudet didn’t communicate with Krzyzewski once he took the leave and the players only rarely did, and never during practice. Krzyzewski dedicated himself to rest and recovery the same way he did to coaching.  Some, such as Mike Cragg, the sports information director at the time, and athletic director Tom Butters, received updates through his family. Radio shows speculated about his condition and whether he would ever return. “There wasn’t that 24/7 instant-information world,” said Cragg, now deputy director of athletics and operations. “He was off the grid for almost the entirety of those 2½ months.”  After a 9-3 start, the team went 4-15 the rest of the way. It felt like a dynasty had ended, even though only four of those defeats without Krzyzewski were by more than 10 points. Even as he watched the team struggle in close losses, Krzyzewski stayed out. After one, a two-point loss to Maryland, a discouraged Capel called him and was invited over to his home. “When he was with us, we felt like we would win those games,” Capel said. “The last time I had seen him was the day he told us he couldn’t coach.”  Then in March, he told reporters—who assembled on the floor of Cameron Indoor Stadium because of the crowd—that he was returning. In that news conference he said the time away taught him what he needed to coach over the long term.  His players saw immediate changes. He began giving more responsibility to his assistant coaches and surrounding himself with people that he could trust to carry out those roles. Almost all of his staff, since then, has been former players.  “He delegated more. When I played for him before, he was amazing, but he took on a lot of things by himself,” said ex-player Chris Collins, now the coach at Northwestern. “When I worked for him as an assistant coach, the responsibility that he gave [the assistants]—he allowed the three of us to do a lot of things that a lot of head coaches do.”  It isn’t that Krzyzewski has calmed down. On the sidelines and in practice, he is as fiery as ever. He still yells at officials, slaps the floor during games and watches film into the wee hours.  But it was a simple lesson of time-management. And it wasn’t just the back injury: Capel said having grandchildren has had a similar impact on Krzyzewski and that he is now more apt to “pick and choose” how to spend his hours in the day.  “Here’s a man who has accomplished everything in this game,” Capel said. “Yet he still has an incredible desire to learn.”
Long before he reached 1,000 career wins on Sunday, Mike Krzyzewski briefly walked away from his team 20 years ago—and it changed everything.