An intense February rainstorm and an away loss in Chapel Hill does not seem the ideal combination for a campus visit by one of the nation’s top high school prospects. But it proved to be the winning combination in landing Johnny Dawkins, the young man whose commitment to the Duke Basketball family changed everything.
February 27, 1982 — The NCAA does not allow for a recruit to accompany a host team to a road game so, before heading nine miles down the highway for an afternoon match up with the No. 2-ranked Tar Heels, Coach K dropped his prized recruit at his family home to watch the televised game. Johnny had come to Durham alone, without his parents or his high school coach, so it would be a small party of five watching the game together: 18-year-old Johnny, Mickie Krzyzewski and the three Krzyzewski daughters who were 11 years old, four years old, and four months old at the time. “It was the natural thing to do,” says Mrs. K, referring to the circumstances. “We had an important recruit in town and Mike was on the road, Johnny would obviously come and watch the game with us.”
Mrs. K can remember sharing a meal and making small talk with the high school standout about various things including the Washington, DC area where they both had grown up. Then, the family plus one settled into the comfortable basement den to watch the game. Johnny remembers little of the small talk but does remember watching the game with Mickie. “I remember the passion that Mrs. K had pulling for the team. I was struck by the real emotion she was willing to share in front of a stranger.”
And it was an emotional evening for a coach’s wife, hosting a recruit they desperately needed while watching a painful game on television. Carolina shot nearly 70% from the field in the first half and, when the teams took the locker room at halftime, Duke was down 42-17.
A strong February rainstorm contributed to what was already a stormy afternoon for the Blue Devils and the day reached its lowest point when the lights went out at Carmicheal Auditorium, UNC’s home court. Mrs. K wondered what Johnny could have possibly been thinking as they waited out the twenty minutes it took for the lights to come back to life.
Mickie knew how important this young man was to her husband and to his fledgling program. And pre-visit talk about Johnny Dawkins must have been intense in the Krzyzewski home. So intense, in fact, that it was understood by a four-year-old girl. Near the end of the game that Duke ended up losing 84-66, a precocious Lindy Krzyzewski left the corner where she had been coloring and approached the 18-year-old Dawkins, handing him a folded up piece of torn notebook paper and a blue crayon. On it, she had written, “Will you come to Duke?” and provided two boxes labeled “yes” and “no,” asking the question that was on everyone’s mind and that certainly worried Mrs. K after the less than ideal day that had transpired. Johnny chuckled and put the note in his pocket.
After the game, Mrs. K put the girls to bed and she and Johnny waited. Coach K returned that evening and the two men sat down in the K home’s formal living room. The ensuing talk lasted hours as they dissected the game that had just transpired and Coach K relayed his vision of how Johnny would fit into the system and culture the 36-year-old head coach was trying to instill. When he left the Krzyzewski home that evening, Johnny knew which box he would check.
Even though Carolina had come away with the win that evening led by James Worthy’s 22 points and featuring a freshman Michael Jordan playing 22 minutes and contributing 11 points, Duke had won the evening’s more important victory.
When asked about his recruiting visit years later, Johnny smiles. “It was real,” he says. “Other recruiting visits felt like an act or a show that was being put on for me. This was real. I felt comfortable with Coach, his family, and his vision. I just knew.”
Johnny became a part of two new families that day: the Krzyzewski family and the Duke Basketball family.
“I felt like the luckiest kid in the world,” he says.
But it was Duke that lucked out most of all. His February campus visit was far from ordinary but, to hear Johnny describe it, you’d think it was the perfect plan: “It felt like family. It felt like home.”
Duke remains thankful for the day that Johnny became a part of the family.
