Coach K on President O

Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski spoke at the Association of the U.S. Army conference last month. According to the Daily Beast, he was critical of President Obama’s “no boots on the ground” approach to combatting ISIS. Coach K reportedly stated:

I know it’s upsetting to many of you when hear ‘no boots on the ground.’ It upsets me too, because that’s like saying I’m not going to play two of my best players.

Because that’s what you are trained to do. And for decades and decades, the fact that we are a free country and we don’t play home games here is a result of having boots on the ground. That’s the problem.

Krzyzewski went on to say that telling the enemy in advance what you will not do is bad coaching because it enables them to stop preparing for it and makes them more confident. The correct approach is to “let your opponent know we are going to use our best players.” Then, “whether you use them or not is up to the coach.”

Coach K compared Obama’s approach to saying “‘Hey Spain, I’m not going to start Lebron [James] and Kobe [Bryant] tonight.’” He added, “I don’t think you do that. Now how much I play them? Let the guy try to figure out how much I’m going to play them.”

Coach K’s analogy to sports isn’t perfect, but basically. . .yeah.

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