Thrown Together to Rebuild, and Now Joined at the Hip - New York Times

LONDON â€" Over the years, two key figures who returned USA Basketball to dominance, Mike Krzyzewski and LeBron James, plotted and practiced, strategized and analyzed. They shared a meal in James’s hometown. They lost a world championship and won a gold medal.

Mostly, though, they laughed.

As James needled Kobe Bryant over the size of his baggy warm-up pants, as he mimicked and teased teammates, Krzyzewski noticed that James regarded such barbs as compliments, humor as the highest form of respect. With that in mind, Krzyzewski walked up to James one day and tapped him on the shoulder.

“LeBron,” Krzyzewski said. “I want to get a tattoo.”

“Yeah, of what?” James asked.

“I’m going to get ‘Chosen 1’ tattooed across my back,” Krzyzewski said.

James, the bearer of that tattoo, laughed. So did Krzyzewski. And thus continued the evolution of perhaps the most important relationship in USA Basketball’s resurgence, between a coach among college basketball’s most successful and a player who skipped college altogether.

As the United States men’s national team climbed from bronze medal disappointment in 2004 to Olympic champion in 2008 to heavy favorite at these London Games, where it begins play Sunday against France, James and Krzyzewski went from relative strangers to trusted confidants. Krzyzewski saw the James of this N.B.A. season, when he won his first title with the Miami Heat in June, champion instead of choker, further removed from his infamous “Decision.”

“It’s not like I’m on a crusade to convert everyone,” Krzyzewski said last month inside the locker room at Duke, where he coaches during the winter. “But whenever I’m asked about him, I tell the truth. The truth about him is good. It’s really good. I love LeBron. And the dynamic I have with LeBron is huge.”

Funny how it all worked out. Before the Cleveland Cavaliers selected James with the first overall pick in the 2003 N.B.A. draft, Duke scouted him, basically for due diligence. Steve Wojciechowski, Duke’s associate head coach, said James was simply “the best high school player I’ve ever seen.”

At 19, James landed a spot on the 2004 Olympic team â€" for the most part, a spot on the bench. That squad secured a bronze medal that felt more like a defeat, a low point in the illustrious history of USA Basketball. James said he failed to understand “how big the Olympics were” and felt “out of the loop” in 2004.

Jerry Colangelo took control of the men’s national team in 2005 and hired Krzyzewski soon after. As far as 2004 pertained to James’s development, Colangelo said: “We overplay the fact certain players have been in three Olympics. They were too young to be there in the first place, and they didn’t really play in the second place. They were there.”

The relationship between James and Krzyzewski took off in 2006. James took part in Team USA classes, which included chart study, informational videos and guest lectures. That camp, among the first signs of Team USA’s system overhaul, did not prevent a loss to Greece in the semifinals at the world championships that year. The men’s national team has not lost since.

In 2008, Krzyzewski flew to Akron, Ohio, James’s hometown, for a sit-down. He wanted to meet James’s inner circle, to see where he grew up, to understand what drove him.

One specific answer proved instructive. James told Krzyzewski he wanted to learn from his more experienced teammates, the usual collection of N.B.A. All-Stars. Krzyzewski pressed James for an example. James mentioned Jason Kidd, the veteran point guard whom James described as the best passer in the N.B.A.

As the team prepared for the Beijing Olympics that year, whenever Krzyzewski saw Kidd, he saw James close behind.

At the Beijing Games, Krzyzewski said James had grown more than any of his national team players in that three-year period. He would watch James play cards against his teammates, and James always seemed to know what hand the opposition held, why someone bet a certain amount. He played basketball the same way.

Krzyzewski told James he admired his mathematical mind, the way he seemed capable of instant calculations. Krzyzewski later ventured that no one had ever said that to James before.

“I know what’s going on, Coach,” James responded.

“I plan to count on you,” Krzyzewski said.

James, then 23, emerged as a leader at the 2008 Games, although he yielded when necessary to elder statesmen like Kidd and Bryant. When he saw Krzyzewski’s family members in the hotel banquet room where the team ate, he hugged everyone and kissed them on the cheek.

Keith Dambrot, who coached James at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, said Krzyzewski became the college coach James never had and always wanted. Dambrot said “people get a little bit scared” of James, “a little in awe of him.”

“They’ve had to get along with him in order to keep their jobs,” Dambrot added. “But he always wanted to be coached. He wants to be told the truth. That’s what really struck me between the last Olympics and now. Coach K took one of the greatest talents in the world, maybe ever, and he got him to play defense like a guy at Duke.”

In Beijing, Krzyzewski divided leadership roles. He put James, with his deep, booming voice, in charge of the defense. James shouted out pick-and-rolls, called switches and broke down film. He knew what sets each opposing team would run â€" knew all of them.

That carried over to Team USA’s preparation for the London Games. James often played center, guarded forwards and pressured guards. Where in 2008 he expressed his thoughts mostly about defense, this year he began to speak up in offensive meetings, in team meetings and at walk-throughs.

Before the United States played Argentina in an exhibition Sunday, James suggested how to defend forward Luis Scola, and his scouting report proved invaluable in a 6-point victory.

“One of the things detractors say is, ‘He got so much attention before he earned it,’ ” said Krzyzewski, who has said this will probably be his last Olympics as national team coach. “Well, it’s not his fault. He did get a lot of attention. But he’s earned this. He’s grown so much as a player going into this pivotal time of when you become, like for him, legendary.”

Perhaps that is part of why Krzyzewski and James connected, because they understand the scrutiny, because their teams (Duke and the Heat) regularly surface on lists of the most hated teams, fairly or unfairly.

Wojciechowski said James “had to manage a career and decisions and becoming the best player in the world, really under a microscope that no other athlete in the game of basketball has had to endure.” Krzyzewski, with his four national championships and 900-plus wins and Duke’s goody-goody reputation, can relate to that.

On Friday, surrounded by a pack of reporters that stood 15 deep, James even sounded like his coach. He called it an honor to represent his country. So did Krzyzewski. He said he took that responsibility seriously. So did Krzyzewski. They laughed.

With that, they left the stage together, headed into another international tournament, probably their last â€" the Chosen 1 and his Olympic coach.