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Want to be elite change who you sit next to

20 Aug 2025 · 2 min

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1:39

This is a short transcript excerpt from the YouTube video "Want to be elite change who you sit next to" (Fortitude 365) featuring Mike Krzyzewski. In this segment Coach K shares an anecdote about calling a promising player repeatedly and hanging up when the player lacked self-belief ("I will stop hanging up on you when you stop hanging up on you"). He uses a plant/box metaphor to argue players should allow themselves to grow beyond self-imposed limits and explains he was hardest on his best players because they could take the team further.

He.
I know it'll be hard for you guys to believe this. As good as he was, he didn't think he was as good as he was.
Coach, he tells us this story about how he was interning in Chicago.
Yeah, yeah.
You'd call him and you hung up on it, you know, a couple times. Yeah, tell us about it. Yeah.
No, because we had a great team and we lost almost the whole team, and he. He was going to be the next great player. He was already a starter and a good player, and I needed him to be thinking of being the ACC Player of the Year and all that, so I'd call him and Shane Bassett. So when you went to bed last night, did you look in the mirror and say, I'm going to be ACC Player of the Year? He said, no, and I hung up on him. And I call him another next day and asked him something similar, you know, about winning national championship. And I hung up on him. And then the third day I called him and he said, coach, don't hang up on me. And I said, listen, I will stop hanging up on you when you stop hanging up on you.
Oh, that's cool.
You should be a plant that's not put in a case. It should just grow. And you're putting yourself in this.
Box, and it's a good box. I mean, you're a really good player, but you got a chance to be the best player. And that's why I enjoyed coaching, like elite talent.
Because he was and still is elite talent. But.
How can they maximize? How can you get and to be best friends with that best player? I was always hardest on my best players because they could take us to places that.
Good players could not take you to. But if you had your best player, the good players became better.