Five Banners: Inside the Duke Basketball Dynasty

On an early morning in 1983, after the worst loss of his career (109-66 against Virginia) and amid the cries of powerful athletics boosters calling for him to be fired, Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski went to breakfast at 2:00 a.m. to vent with friends. Sports journalist and Duke alumnus John Feinstein was at the table. For Coach K, ＂the night at Denny’s＂ would mark a turning point in his career and for the team, and eight years later, the Blue Devils would win their first NCAA national championship.

In Five Banners, Feinstein tells the inside history of Coach K’s forty-two-year career at Duke and its five NCAA championships, from the first, against Kansas in 1991, to the most recent, in 2015 against Wisconsin. With unparalleled access to Coach K, the team, and its staff, Feinstein takes readers on a mesmerizing ride into the locker room and onto the court. Full of intimate details, personal memories, and previously untold on- and off-court stories, it is a book that only Feinstein could write.

Feinstein explores a basketball legacy that begins with his days as an undergrad Duke Chronicle reporter covering coaches Bucky Waters and Neill McGeachy (who went 10-16 in one year as head coach), includes the ＂drought years＂ of the 1980s and the glory of the teams of the 1990s, and moves into the present day with Jon Scheyer’s succession. Drawing on new interviews, Feinstein highlights the voices of Grant Hill, Nolan Smith, Christian Laettner, Tommy Amaker, and Bobby Hurley, who each bring new insights on the championship years.

Throughout, Feinstein unveils the momentous force of college basketball as a game of intense relationships and intimate conversations. Candid, revelatory, and engrossing, Five Banners is an essential book for all Duke fans and anyone who loves the college game.

John Feinstein is the award-winning author of forty-five books, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers A Season on the Brink and A Good Walk Spoiled. He has contributed to the Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest, ESPN, Sirius XM Radio, National Public Radio, and the Golf Channel, among many other publications and media outlets. A member of six halls of fame, including The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, The National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame, and The U.S. Basketball Writer’s Hall of Fame, Feinstein currently does color commentary for Virginia Commonwealth University basketball, George Mason basketball, and the Navy radio network.