"Five Banners" might not be John Feinstein's best book, but he probably "enjoyed" writing it more than most of his other works.
Feinstein graduated from Duke in 1977, and began a career in sports journalism that exists to this day. He had a really good seat for the Blue Devils' success over the years, which includes the five championships that Duke had under legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski.
The University is celebrating its 100th anniversary, and the school's publishing arm decided to put out a book on the school's history-making basketball team. If you can't slap yourself on the book over such a terrific run, who can?
Feinstein was the obvious choice to write it. He first visited the school in February 1973, looking for a landing spot for college. After seeing a basketball game in Cameron Indoor Stadium, young John decided that Duke was the place to go for a higher education. Feinstein writes that when he arrived on campus the following fall, the Blue Devils didn't even have a coach. In fact, Duke was in the process of reaching out to Adolph Rupp, the legendary coach at Kentucky who retired in 1972 after turning 70. But in one of those little history-making moments, Rupp's business assistant died and he had to stay on his farm to oversee operations rather than coach basketball in Durham, North Carolina.
From there, Bill Foster took over the Blue Devils and eventually built up the program. The fruits of that labor arrived just after Feinstein graduated as Duke reached the Final Four in the spring of 1978. Foster eventually jumped to the University of South Carolina in a few years, while Krzyzewski was hired as the new coach.
Well, you know how that turned out. The list of Coach K's accomplishments is almost endless; it's filled with regular-season titles in the Atlantic Coast Conference, plenty of ACC playoff championships, several trips to the Final Four (Krzyzewski finished one ahead of John Wooden's old record), and those five championships and the accompanying banners mentioned in the title.
Feinstein has written a lot about Duke basketball over the years, and he more or less empties the notebook from his observations of that era. Some of the stories mentioned here have come up in other books. Happily, the author also took the time to reach out to several of the players and coaches of the Krzyzewski Era. There is some fun information revealed along the way.
And it wouldn't be a Feinstein book without some strong opinions expressed along the way. The NCAA and CBS take the odd shot, as do a few others like Rick Pitino. We wouldn't expect anything less at this point.
"Five Banners" is a short book, checking in at a little more than 200 pages. It's not as if Duke's long-run of success was under-publicized at the time, so some basketball fans - especially the ones in Chapel Hill - might not want to go back there. But this easy read is certainly a well-done assignment on Feinstein's part, and certainly those in Durham will love revisiting those times. In other words, the book signings ought to be popular.
Four stars
Learn more about this book from Amazon.com. (As an Amazon affiliate, I earn money from qualified purchases.)
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