Dan Le Batard had Mike Krzyzewski on his radio show on Wednesday. Coach K was congenial in the interview, which covered his movie viewing habits (he said he hasn’t been to the theaters in 30 years), hip-hop (he cited Meek Mill), Duke’s recent national championship, and whether he dyes his hair (he says he doesn’t). Le Batard did not bring up the dismissal of Rasheed Sulaimon, who this season became the first player that had ever been dismissed for conduct purposes in Coach K’s 35 years at Duke.
If you recall, Duke’s student newspaper reported last month that two students had, well before his dismissal, accused Sulaimon of sexual assault, and that Coach K was aware of the allegations. However, official complaints were never filed. Though there’s no way to naturally bring something like this up in an interview two days after a national title, Le Batard’s radio and television programs were critical of the way Coach K deflected Sulaimon questions — citing his duty as an American citizen to uphold privacy laws — after the report emerged.
I asked Le Batard whether he considered bringing this up in the interview. He replied:
Considered and rejected. Probably should have. Still don’t know if I made right decision. But figured it would shut him down totally as an interview subject AND he’d just not answer it the same way he hasn’t every time. Bad combo, that one. So you just end up asking ONLY to say you asked it, not to actually extract anything or break new ground. Felt self-serving to look like tough-guy journalist when I figured I wouldn’t get anything but that’s an assumption that can’t be confirmed without asking.
Rewinding a bit, audio of the discussion Le Batard had on his radio show alongside co-hosts John Amaechi and Jon “Stugotz” Weiner last month is at the top of the page. A partial transcript:
Le Batard: He could talk about portions of this. There are ways to talk. If you want to be Leader Guy, and it’s important to you to be Character Guy in the face of scandal, there are ways to talk about this without violating federal privacy laws.
Stugotz: Well why do you think he did it?
Le Batard: Because it’s easier. And it’s safer.
Amaechi: Because he knows nobody in the media will challenge him on it. Nobody in that press conference is gonna come back to him and say, “Really? That’s a terrible answer.” — because of his largess. Because he’s such a huge figure. It’s ridiculous. You cannot be the person who has fully transcended the area of sports when it comes to leadership [and do this]. He is out there teaching the world how to be a better leader. If this is an example of what leadership looks like in a crisis, that is not a boat I want to be on.
It’s worth noting that while Le Batard was critical, he was less so than Amaechi and Stugotz. Le Batard took issue with Stugotz’s calling Coach K a phony, arguing that while he did not approve of the handling of this instance — “This sound is not great, character-soaked leadership; this is just self-protection.” — it would be unfair to wield these circumstances as a mechanism for tearing down 35-40 years of accrued reputation.
A few days before the radio segment last month, Le Batard had also discussed the situation on his Highly Questionable television program with Bomani Jones:
Jones: I understand that the privacy of Rasheed Sulaimon has to be respected. That being said, once you receive two allegations made in public about one of your players, you do kind of have to answer how he wound up still on the team given the fact that he’s still on campus. This is a private school. We can’t put in records requests and get back the information and find out what happened, but I think we need to know something.
Le Batard: One of the things that’s interesting about this to me is that this is the first dismissal in the history of Coach K’s program. This would be a large story anywhere. It’s a larger story because it’s at Duke, and I wonder if it’s fair to wonder if it’s the first dismissal at Coach K’s program because he runs such a great program, or if it’s because they’re awfully lenient when it comes to dismissal, and they’re able to keep this private. To answer this question, though, Coach K shouldn’t say anything. The only way this story goes away is if he doesn’t comment on it. If he comments on it more, we’re gonna sweep in and we’re gonna keep it in the news stream.
Jones: Here’s the thing, though. He doesn’t get all these credit card commercials and he doesn’t get all this outside money because he’s the guy who doesn’t say something at a time like this. A whole big part of this for Duke basketball and for Krzyzewski — what’s made everybody involved really rich — is the idea that they’re the guys that do this the right way. We have questions right now about whether this was done the right way. No accusations, but questions that I think are fair to ask.
Le Batard is almost certainly correct that Coach K would not have gone near the question in a thousand years. The PTI guys asked him about it several times when they had him on last month, and Coach K continued to go the FERPA route, saying, “I don’t have any other information on this. I would never feel compelled to talk about it because for 40 years I’ve done this. I understand the rules and regulations of having the privilege of coaching college kids — and it’s not just college athletes, it’s any kid in college. They have their rights and we should protect them, just like somebody’s protecting you guys.”
Nevertheless, as Le Batard brought up on his radio program after I reached out, there may have been a way for him to get Coach K to broach the subject on a tangent. “There are ways I considered asking the question,” he said. “What if I’d asked it this way: ‘Coach, I understand that you can’t talk about this because of federal education privacy laws — I understand you can’t talk about the specifics — but what about what it was like for you to go through that situation and have your integrity smeared when you’ve never dismissed a player from a team? Can you discuss at all what it felt like to go through that and to not be able to talk about it?’”
Ultimately, Le Batard’s original commentary on Highly Questionable came to fruition — by stonewalling everybody’s questions, Coach K succeeded in making the Rasheed Sulaimon story disappear.