Pick any moment in the 40-plus years of Duke men’s basketball history and John Feinstein ’77 was there. The sportswriter, sportscaster and prolific author was courtside, on the bus or in the locker room for the highs and the lows. He was there for five NCAA championships. He was there for The Shot. And he was at an Atlanta Denny’s for one of the lowest points in Mike Krzyzewski’s career. After a particularly humbling 1983 loss, Krzyzewski swore to the table: “Here’s to never f***ing forgetting tonight.” And Feinstein saw Krzyzewski dust himself off and become the winningest coach in men’s college basketball. In his latest book, “Five Banners: Inside the Duke Basketball Dynasty” (published Oct. 15, 2024), this veteran sportswriter chronicles the program’s rise to greatness with a mix of humanizing intimacy and compelling immediacy.
DukeMag: How did being able to embrace Duke in the writing of this book feel after covering it neutrally as a journalist for so many years?
John Feinstein: This book is clearly a Duke book. It's about Duke’s five championships – some of their finest moments [and] some of their down moments, too. I think I was the right guy to write it not only because I was there, but because I have so much history with the school.
For the record, nowhere in the book do I refer to Duke as “we.”
DM: You were reporting these games when writers had access to the court. Without your level of access, could you have written this book?
JF: Absolutely not.When I was a beat writer at Maryland, I could go in the locker room before practice. I could sit and watch practice. When Mike [Krzyzewski] was first coaching, anybody who wanted to walk into practice could walk into practice. Now, you need a court order basically.
I was down there a few years ago, working on my book about Mike and Jim Valvano and Dean Smith. Mike and I had talked before practice. I went to get lunch. I came back for practice and I walked in the door. I got about five steps and four managers jumped me. “Sir, I’m sorry, this is a closed practice. You can’t be here.” I said, “Fellas. Fellas. It’s OK. Coach K knows I'm here. He’s expecting me.” The managers looked over at Mike and Mike said, “I don't know who that is. Get him out of here.” And they started to pick me up and carry me out. And Mike said, “Nah, I’m just kidding. He’s fine.” That’s the way it is now as opposed to the way it was then. I was lucky in the sense, with Mike specifically, that I knew him before he was Coach K. There was a trust and a friendship.
Listen to our interview with Feinstein here: https://dukemag.duke.edu/stories/devils-details
DM: Can you talk about the importance of having known the players for so many years?
JF: I knew the first championship team guys very well, because I was still out for the [Washington] Post covering a lot of games and, of course, my access to Mike. The ’91, ’92 teams and, to a lesser degree, the ’01 team. I knew Jason Williams ’03. I knew Shane Battier ’01 and of course [Christian] Laettner ’92, [Bobby] Hurley ’93 and Grant Hill ’94 – guys like that.
The younger guys I didn't know as well. Mike was great with that. I called guys who I really didn't know. They all called me back, I think partly because they knew my name, but also partly because they knew I was a Duke guy. They were willing to open up and talk. They were terrific.
DM: There’s not much nostalgia in “Five Banners.” How do you write levelly, whether something happened 40 years ago or three years ago?
JF: I didn't want to give the reader the impression that any of the five banners was more important than the others. Obviously ’91 was the first, and there had been that very close call in ’86. That made that one a little bit special.
I didn't want the guys on the ’15 team to feel like their championship was any less significant than the guys on the ’91 or ’92 teams.