Perhaps because I’m a writer, and live with rejection, I’m fascinated by how people handle defeat. Winners tend to do it badly; the competitive drive that brings them success – and with it popularity – often makes them poor losers.
Mike Krzyzewski’s dream scenario was to win the final game of his career, i.e., the national championship. But a greater boost to his legacy would have been a gracious and generous attitude in defeat. He congratulated the opposing team’s coaches and players after the game, but most of his players – young men who had spent years under his tutelage – refused to engage in this time-honored ritual, heading off sullenly to their locker room. And he wore the look the whole time of a man aggrieved. He was so devastated by the shattering of his dream that he couldn’t manage a smile for the people who had shattered it. True, it would have taken a very big man, but that’s what over the years, in the eyes of many, he had become.
