ESPN NBA

Great words from Mike Krzyzewski, as quoted in Chris Sheridan's column, just posted on ESPN.com:

"You and I both know better, and our players do not feel that way. And when you start saying 'easy' and 'impossible to lose,' we're going back to those few years ago where we're arrogant, we don't respect, and we don't know. And we're past those times. Hopefully with the experiences we've had over the past three years, we'll never visit those places again. Then we'll have a better chance to win. But we're not going back there, not as long as any of the people involved in this program go forward, because you set yourself up to lose. And we've gotten better, and American basketball has gotten better, because we've learned that we can learn from others.

"The thing that our American fans don't understand is that we've learned from other international coaches, from the way they conceive their systems, from individual players. We've always looked at it from an American basketball culture that we're always giving knowledge to the world. And that has changed. They're giving knowledge, and we're sharing knowledge of the game. To me, that's the one of best things about this whole experience, and I think the world sees that in us. They know we're not kidding when we say that, and that's something we have to take forward.

"Basketball is played at a high level all over the world; that's why a third of the NBA is international. I mean, why don't we come to the full realization that there are a lot of really good players and a lot of good systems all over the world?"